The Trump administration’s heavy-handed revision of U.S. history has put fear into Smithsonian employees, eliciting comparisons among staffers to 1930s Germany.
Workers at the government-created museums are censoring historical content that they believe could upset the president. Tensions have gotten so high that staffers have been warned against putting any complaints about the current climate at the institution in writing, while volunteers are considering quitting, HuffPost reported Thursday.
On Tuesday, White House officials laid out detailed plans to eliminate exhibits that they determined represented “improper ideology,” sparking alarm and panic among staffers. The memo challenged the application of educational lenses on race, gender, and oppression in U.S. history and accused the Smithsonian directly of advancing a “divisive, race-centered ideology.”
The administration’s critiques also veered toward eugenics, torching a specific Smithsonian exhibit for describing race as “not a biological reality but a social construct” and underscoring that “race is a human invention.”
But the memo wasn’t a suggestion: failure to comply will turn the faucet off on funding for the world’s largest educational institution, effectively crippling the Smithsonian and nixing two-thirds of the organization’s revenue.
“Everyone is so scared,” one longtime Smithsonian worker told HuffPost.
“It’s an impossible position to put us in,” they continued. “We can’t be political with our content, but they have politicized everything. We need to prove we’re not partisan by following this very partisan directive. What are we supposed to do? It’s like up is down. It’s maddening.”
Employees have quietly conceded to the White House’s demands in an effort to save Smithsonian head Lonnie Bunch from losing his job. Staffers described Bunch as “loved” and “respected.” But kowtowing to Donald Trump has not yet proved to be a winning strategy for the Smithsonian.
Earlier this month, the Smithsonian removed Trump from its exhibit on impeachments, under direct pressure from the White House. That left the exhibit focusing on Presidents Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton, effectively returning the exhibit to the way it looked in 2008. The “American Presidency” wing’s revised signage explained that “only three presidents have seriously faced removal” over the course of American history. The change was the result of a White House–initiated content review in the wake of an art director’s ousting.
The Smithsonian has since re-added Trump to the impeachment exhibit, but with some changes to how the proceedings against him are described.
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