With its executive regulations on the Smithsonian, the Trump government opens a brand new front within the history of history

I teach history in ConnecticutBut I grew up in Oklahoma and Kansas, where my interest in the subject was triggered by visits to local museums.

I prefer to remember in travel Mitreeves Museum in Wichita, Kansas and the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. A photograph of my great -grandparents from 1908, picking cotton, was utilized by the Oklahoma Historical Society as a poster.

This love for learning history continued as a doctoral student in my years once I spent hours within the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution to learn the history of human flight and ballooning. As a professor, I integrated the institution's exhibits into my historical courses.

However, the Trump government just isn’t satisfied with the way in which the Smithsonian Institution and other US museums represent history.

On March 27, 2025, the President granted an executive regulation “Restore truth and reason in American history“He claimed:” In the past ten years, the Americans have seen a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite the history of our nation and to replace objective facts with a distorted narrative, which is more powered by the ideology than by the truth. Under this historical revision, the unprecedented legacy of our nation, freedom, individual rights and human happiness, is reconstructed in nature racist, sexist, depressing or irrevocably incorrectly. “

Trump has chosen some museums, including the Smithsonian, who devoted an entire a part of the order to the “rescue” of the institution in front of “split, racial -centered ideology”.

Of course the story is controversial. There will at all times be a wide range of views about what’s to be contained and excluded from America's history. For example, in my very own research, I discovered that the Prohibition period school authorities within the Nineteen Twenties spoke out to see whether it was suitable for history books to drink pictures of soldiers for instance The whiskey rise up from 1791.

However, the newest debates deal with how much attention to the history of the nation's achievements needs to be given to its darker chapters. The Smithsonian as a national institution This receives most funds from the federal governmentSometimes was present in the crosshairs.

America's historical repository

The Smithsonian Institution was founded in 1846 due to its namesake British Chemist James Smithson.

Smithson let his estate to his nephew and explained the cash – roughly 15 million US dollars in today's dollars – can be donated to the USA to seek out “an establishment for the increase and spread of knowledge”.

The idea of ​​a national institution that was dedicated to history, science and learning right from the beginning was controversial from the beginning.

In your book “The stranger and the statesman“, Historian Nina Burleigh, shows how Smithson's legacy has almost been lost on account of struggles between competing interests.

Southern Plantation owners and western borders, including President Andrew Jackson, saw the establishment of a National Museum as an unnecessary assertion of the federal power. They also challenged the thought of ​​accepting a present from a non-American and thought that it was under the dignity of the federal government to offer someone immortality only due to a fantastic donation.

In the tip, a bunch under the direction of the Congress Member and former President John Quincy Adams ensured that Smithson's vision was realized. Adams believed that the country didn’t meet its early promise. He thought a National Museum was a crucial option to burn the ideals of the young Republic and lift the general public.

Today the Smithsonian runs 14 educational and research centers, the National Zoo and 21 museums, including the National Portrait Gallery and The National Museum for African American history and culturewhich was founded with cross -party support in the course of the administration of President George W. Bush.

In the introduction to his book “Smithsonian's history of America in 101 objects“Cultural anthropologist Richard Kurin talks about how the institution also supported lots of of small and huge institutions outside the country's capital.

In 2024, The Smithsonian sent over 2 million artifacts Borrowed on museums in 52 US states and territories and 33 foreign countries. It also works with over 200 affiliate museums. Yougov repeatedly persecuted The approval of the Smithsonians' Americanswhich has been rejected with a permit of around 68% and a pair of% since 2020.

Smithsonian within the crosshairs

The forerunners of the Trump administration's efforts to revamp Smithsonian within the Nineteen Nineties took place within the Nineteen Nineties.

In 1991 the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which was then referred to as the National Museum of American Art, created an exhibition entitled “The West As America, Newly Interpreting Images of the Border, 1820-1920”. Conservatives complained That the museum represented the western expansion as a history of conquest and destruction and never as considered one of the progress and the structure of countries. The Wall Street Journal was editored That the exhibition was “a completely enemy ideological attack on the foundation and history of the nation”.

The exhibition proved to be popular: visit to the National Museum of American Art was 60% higher than in the identical period within the previous yr. In the controversy, nevertheless, questions were raised as as to if public museums could express ideas which might be critical of the United States without the danger of censorship.

In 1994 an argument broke out again, this time within the National Air and Space Museum Over An upcoming exhibition focuses on the Enola GayThe aircraft that dropped the primary atomic bomb on Hiroshima 50 years earlier.

Should the exhibition explore the lack of Japanese life? Or highlight the US war victory?

Veteran groups insisted that the atomic bomb ended the war and saved 1 million American life. and demanded the gap of photos of destruction and a melted Japanese school lunch box from the exhibition. Now other activists Protested the exhibition By arguing that an emblem of human destruction mustn’t be reminded of an establishment that’s alleged to rejoice human achievements.

The Republicans won the home in 1994 and threatened the Smithsonian budget over the Enola Gay exhibition that’s convinced Curators to go on a turn. In the tip, the fuselage of the Enola Gay was exhibited within the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian. But the exhibition wouldn’t tell the entire history of the role of the aircraft within the war from a wide range of perspectives.

Trump enters the fight

2019 the New York Times Started the 1619 projectwho aimed to place the history of the country through slavery and its consequences in the middle. The first Trump administration reacted quickly by forming her commission from 1776. In January 2021 it created a report Criticism of the project from 1619The emphasis on the history of racism and slavery of the country is counterproductive for the promotion of “patriotic education”.

In the identical yr, Trump promised In order to “build a huge outdoor park in which the statues of the largest Americans can ever be seen”, 250 statues characterize the 250th anniversary of the declaration of independence.

President Joe Biden raised the order Trump in 2021 recent After withdrawing the white house and declaring in characters that he would really like to see, like Christopher Columbus, George Washington, Betsy Ross, Sitting Bull, Bob Hope, Thurgood Marshall and Whitney Houston.

I don't think something is fallacious to honor Americans, though I feel The fascinating stories of atypical Americans. I also find it worrying that there appears to be a concerted effort to make the teaching and the understanding of history so violent through threats and bullying. Yale historian Jason Stanley wrote about it How emerging authoritarian governments try to regulate historical stories and to explore the complexity of the past.

Historical science requires an openness to the controversy and the willingness to simply accept recent knowledge and perspectives. It also includes accepting humility that no one – the least of the federal government – has a monopoly on the reality.

In his executive order, Trump found that “museums should be in the capital of our nation where individuals learn.” I share this view. However, this implies not to cut back history, but to complicate the story – in all its chaotic fame.