In late August, the Trump administration launched an initiative to review Smithsonian museums and potentially thousands of other American museums. In a letter to the Smithsonian Institution Secretary, Lonnie Bunch III, the White House released a statement, claiming that the initiative was meant to “ensure alignment with the President’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism” as well as “restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions.”
In this same statement, the term Americanism is used to convey a “revitalized curatorial vision” of how museums should be. Not patriotism but Americanism.
I hope the sirens in your head are going off. President Trump is making it painfully clear that he wants to change and repackage American history as mostly positive … because slavery and forced removal of Native Americans were just blips in time that didn’t hold any weight, right?
The White House has a whole page dedicated to dissecting the faults of American museums for representing diverse groups of people or portraying the “bad parts” of America. This goes beyond dismantling wokeness – it is yet another explicit attempt to censor institutions with an iron fist. In fact, Trump stated that he will use the same tactics he used with Harvard University on the Smithsonian institutions by threatening federal research funding.
And, mind you, this is all under an executive order titled Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History. The irony is unbelievably palpable.
As a history major, I think this is pitiful. I spent so much of my academic career researching social history and learning about how much we’ve censored our mistreatment of marginalized groups. In the current administration, seeing how “history repeats itself” is disheartening. Seeing how a renowned historian and professor such as Ibram X. Kendi can be called a hardcore woke activist is depressing.
This executive order sets a dangerous precedent for how we handle our history. It’s disturbing how easily the government can cut out the bad and ugly parts of our nation’s history and instead, solely focus on American exceptionalism. And, this is the same government adopting rhetoric like PragerU’s depraved message that “slavery isn’t as bad as murder,” so I can’t say I’m too surprised that we’re entering an era of censorship.
I can’t overstate how maddening it is seeing this pressure on museum curators and administrators to adhere to Trump’s vision of America: America the beautiful, America the godly, America the nation that can do no wrong. I didn’t think we could sink so low as to warp our own history and downplay atrocities that the U.S. has committed, with “all men are created equal” cruelly slapped on for good measure.
I know this censorship won’t stop at museums. It will continue (and has continued) with libraries, public broadcasting, environmental preservation, research fellowships, and more. They will no longer be sites of education and community – they will be sites facilitating Trumpian propaganda.
On my birthday, I spent a day museum-hopping in Philadelphia; that very same day, Trump decried on Truth Social that “woke is broke” and “everything [in Smithsonian museums] discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was … nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.”
When I saw that post, I couldn’t help but think, “My god, this man has never entered a museum, has he?” I visited the National Museum of the American Revolution, and the exhibits not only demonstrated the success, brightness, and future of the newly formed United States of America, but they also shed light on the struggles of black enslaved soldiers and indigenous tribes caught in the middle between the loyalists and patriots.
Talking to Moravian professors and students helps to contextualize how concerning this can be for those who study or engage in history.
“I think any effort to whitewash and censor history is dangerous and does a serious disservice to the nation. In an activity that I do in one of my U.S. history classes, students consider what artifacts should be included in a museum exhibit on the dropping of the atomic bomb during World War II. Students want all sides included, so that museum visitors can come to their own conclusions. said Dr. Berger, associate professor and history department chair.
“When we edit out the ‘bad’ parts of history, we also erase the people who fought against those things. Gone are the abolitionists who ended slavery, the workers who won the 8-hour day, and the suffragists who secured for women the right to vote,” she continued.
Historical studies major, Karen Martinez ‘26 expressed, “The criticism of the Smithsonian Museum made by President Trump is not only ridiculous but terrifying. Any attempt to minimize the effects of slavery or parts of American history would make that history untrue. As someone who wants to be a social studies teacher, I’m concerned about what this can mean for what students are being taught. American history is not about success or the future; it is about all groups of people who have brought us to where we are now—not just a selected few.”
I’m also relieved that associations such as the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) and the Organization of American Historians are speaking out against the initiatives. It’s important that we support our national and local museums not just for the sake of our nation’s history but also to gain a deeper understanding of how America has operated for almost 250 years. As AAM eloquently wrote in their statement: “America needs museums and the professionals who steward them. They educate, connect, and help us understand one another – something we can’t afford to lose.”
