Exploring the efforts to control how U.S. history is presented in museums and monuments

Transcript

Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.

Amna Nawaz: In its first 100 days, the Trump administration has sought to put its mark on various parts of the nation’s cultural sector, the Kennedy Center, funding for federal arts agencies, and more.

One focus, how American history is told and presented in museums and public monuments. And that has roiled many in the academic and art world.

Senior art correspondent Jeffrey Brown has a look for our series Art in Action, exploring the intersection of art and democracy, and as part of our Canvas coverage.

Donald Trump, President of the United States: Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values and indoctrinate our children.

Jeffrey Brown: July 4, 2020, Donald Trump at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, a fiery response to protests following the murder of George Floyd, as monuments were defaced and torn down amid a renewed reckoning with the uglier sides of American history.

The president pointed to a — quote — “radical ideology attacking our country and vowed action.”

Donald Trump: Today, we will set history and history’s records straight.

Jeffrey Brown: Now, that is beginning to take shape. An early target of his second term, the Smithsonian Institution, the world’s largest museum, education and research complex.

A recent executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” accused the Smithsonian of promoting — quote — “narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.”

The order points to a “revisionist movement in America undermining the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.”

Among several prominent steps taken to change that, the National Endowment for the Humanities recently canceled most of its grants that support historical sites, scholarship museums, and much more. Some of those funds will be redirected toward the creation of a National Garden of American Heroes, which the president has touted as a centerpiece of national plans to celebrate 250 years of American independence.

Donald Trump: Under the executive order I signed last month, this new beautiful outdoor statue park, it’s going to be a statue park, it’s going to be unbelievable, will honor hundreds of our greatest Americans.

Jeffrey Brown: And joining me now is David Blight. He’s professor of history and African American studies at Yale University and outgoing president of the Organization of American Historians.

One charge by the president and others is that there has been an ideological shift in the universities and the art world that emphasizes race and identity in the teaching and presentation of history. What’s your response to that?

David Blight, Yale University: There have always been ideological shifts in academic approaches.

The charge that the entire production of history in this country has become nothing but ideology is more than shortsighted. But this is the use of ideology by the Trump administration to attack what they perceive as a liberal, skeptical, critical vision of American history, which is ultimately our job.

Jeffrey Brown: For critics like the president and others, this has meant a loss of acknowledgement of heroes, of heroism, of many of the positive aspects of American history.

David Blight: Well, that’s, frankly, nonsense. I mean, it all depends on what people consider to be a hero. It also depends on what people consider to be, as the Trump administration has explicitly said, patriotic history.

It is not the job of professional historians, whether they’re in universities, in the National Park Service, in the Smithsonian, or anywhere else, to fashion an openly patriotic history. Our job is to search everywhere and anywhere for the truth and then to convert it into narrative and convert it into stories that are compelling.

Americans love history, and they want a history they can trust. They want a history they think is honest. There are all kinds of heroes in American history. I happened to be the biographer of Frederick Douglass. A book came out recent — five years ago or so. Millions of people in this country consider Frederick Douglass a hero.

My job was to present him as a real human being. Sometimes, that was heroic, and, sometimes, it wasn’t. But that’s what historians do.

Jeffrey Brown: One could argue that this is partly a question of who owns American history. And it’s not exclusively the purview of professional historians like yourself, is it?

David Blight: It belongs to all of us. But professional historians play a role in doing research, assembling evidence and facts, and converting that into story.

History ultimately belongs to everyone, but there are such things as trained authorities. And that can sound elitist, I suppose, and that word elitist has become an epithet. But we do — we want our doctors to be trained, and we want them to revise what they know based on new evidence and new techniques.

We also want our historians to revise the past. There is no single, static, sacred version of anyone’s past.

Jeffrey Brown: So what should the Smithsonian Institution and other museums do now? What should professional historians do?

David Blight: Well, in the March 27 executive order by President Trump, the one that declared they were going to restore — quote — “sanity” to American history, they effectively declared war on our profession, whether that’s curators at the Smithsonian, or historians in universities, or the interpreters at a historic site.

So, if this is a political, cultural war upon how history is told and written and exhibited, then we have to, with our meager sources, fight back. We have to get out into the public. We have to probably get into right-wing media and make the case. We have to invite the authors of such executive orders to debate us, because I think we can win those debates if they’re done in some kind of fair environment.

The past is full of surprises. It’s full of triumph, but it’s also full of a lot of tragedy. And if you don’t learn that kind of history, it’s always going to come back and hit you right between the eyes.

Jeffrey Brown: David Blight, thank you very much for joining us.

David Blight: Thank you, Jeffrey.

Amna Nawaz: Late this afternoon, three groups, including the American Historical Association, filed a lawsuit in federal district court to reverse the recent actions to slash the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Tomorrow, we will hear a different view from Christopher Scalia of the American Enterprise Institute.