National Parks Are Told to Delete Content That ‘Disparages Americans’; The New York Times, June 13, 2025

Lisa Friedman, The New York Times; National Parks Are Told to Delete Content That ‘Disparages Americans’

[Kip Currier: These Interior Department directives of the Trump administration are censorious and should not be normalized in a democracy.

Historical facts and accounts are communal and collective in nature. Historical narratives and chronicles are not the property of an administration to cherry-pick, deselect, deny, clean up, and cover up. Yes, history is interpretative in nature. But history belongs collectively to all of us, not the administrative government in charge at a particular time: the good, the bad, and the ugly aspects of history.

Sanitization and censorship of history is what totalitarian and autocratic states do. It's what the current Russian regime has done in whitewashing and rehabilitating the reputation of Stalin and Soviet Russia by closing down museums that present facts the Putin government does not approve of. It's what the present one-party state in China has done in squelching any mention of the Tiananmen Square student-led protests of 1989. It's also what Donald Trump has done in referring to the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol as a "day of love" and calling the insurrectionists "hostages". And it's what the Pentagon has wreaked in purging historical figures from its websites and removing books from its academy and military base libraries.

George Orwell's 1984 (published in 1949, four years after the Allied nations' defeat of the fascist Axis powers in 1945) warns us where this kind of state-sanctioned censorship can lead. A 2024 Smithsonian article ("What Does George Orwell's '1984' Mean in 2024?") on the 75th anniversary of the book identifies its most important themes as:

"the denial of objective truth, which we see everywhere about us, every war that’s currently taking place anywhere in the world and in quite a lot of domestic political situations, too; the manipulation of language … and the use of words to bamboozle people; and the rise of the surveillance society. … That to me, is the definition of the adjective ‘Orwellian’ in the 21st century.”

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-does-george-orwells-1984-mean-in-2024-180984468/

1984 describes the fictional Oceania totalitarian super-state's so-called Ministry of Truth: a department and policy approach that rewrites and represses history. It spreads propaganda. It inverts truth: 

"War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

 

Will more teachers and faculty members, historians, university and college administrators and boards, librarians, museum curators, archivists, and other U.S. citizens speak out against this administration's autocratic sanitization and suppression of history?]

[Excerpt]

"The Interior Department plans to remove or cover up all “inappropriate content” at national parks and sites by Sept. 17 and is asking the park visitors to report any “negative” information about past or living Americans, according to internal documents.

It’s a move that historians worry could lead to the erasure of history involving gay and transgender figures, civil rights struggles and other subjects deemed improper by the Trump administration.

Staff at the National Park Service, which is part of the Interior Department, were instructed to post QR codes and signs at all 433 national parks, monuments and historic sites by Friday asking visitors to flag anything they think should be changed, from a plaque to a park ranger’s tour to a film at a visitor’s center.

Leaders at the park service would then review concerns about anything that “inappropriately disparages Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times),” according to slides presented this week at a meeting with park superintendents. By Sept. 17, “all inappropriate content” would be removed or covered, according to the presentation."

The future of history: Trump could leave less documentation behind than any previous US president; Associated Press, May 18, 2025

Will Weissert , Associated Press; The future of history: Trump could leave less documentation behind than any previous US president

[Kip Currier: Every information center (e.g. libraries, archives, museums) and cultural heritage and higher education institution should think hard about the questions raised in this article. Like this glaring one the reporter raises:

"How will experts and their fellow Americans understand what went on during Trump’s term when those charged with setting aside the artifacts documenting history refuse to do so?"]

[Excerpt]

"For generations, official American documents have been meticulously preserved and protected, from the era of quills and parchment to boxes of paper to the cloud, safeguarding snapshots of the government and the nation for posterity. 

Now, the Trump administration is scrubbing thousands of government websites of history, legal records and data it finds disagreeable. 

It has sought to expand the executive branch’s power to shield from public view the government-slashing efforts of Elon Musk’s team and other key administration initiatives. Officials have used apps such as Signal that can auto-delete messages containing sensitive information rather than retaining them for recordkeeping. And they have shaken up the National Archives leadership and even ordered the rewriting of history on display at the Smithsonian Institution.

To historians and archivists, it points to the possibility that Trump’s presidency will leave less for the nation’s historical record than nearly any before it and that what is authorized for public release will be sanitized and edited to reinforce a carefully sculpted image the president wants projected, even if the facts don’t back that up.

How will experts and their fellow Americans understand what went on during Trump’s term when those charged with setting aside the artifacts documenting history refuse to do so?"

The Fascism Expert at Yale Who’s Fleeing America; Vanity Fair, March 31, 2025

 KEZIAH WEIR, Vanity Fair; The Fascism Expert at Yale Who’s Fleeing America

"Jason Stanley has spent the last two decades writing about power, language, and the ways both are corruptible. He is an expert on authoritarian regimes and the author of seven books, including 2018’s How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them and last year’s Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future, and has been a member of the Yale University faculty since 2013.

Last week, in what he calls an “impulsive” decision prompted by Columbia’s capitulation to Trump administration demands, he decided to leave—not just Yale, but the country altogether. This fall he’ll decamp to the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, where he was offered the position of Bissell Hyatt Chair in American Studies.

“Educational authoritarianism is frequently accompanied by more general restrictions on knowledge,” he writes in Erasing History, “and by attempts to push mythic representations in place of that knowledge.” In the book he likens conservative activist groups seeking book bans to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels keeping lists of books to be censored, and outlines attacks on the rights of LGBTQ+ people by various fascist regimes throughout history (among which he counts the Trump administration). When I ask whether he sees warning signs in sectors outside of education, he responds, “Are you fucking with me?”"...

[Vanity Fair] I think an anxiety for many people is, will we only really realize how bad things are once it becomes too late to do anything about it? How would you counsel people who are wondering how you know that it’s time to try to get out?

[Jason Stanley] Not my business. My business is to describe what’s happening. And you can read what I write and decide for yourself, but I’m not going to make other people’s decisions for them. I’m not into moralizing or lecturing; that’s not my thing. I’m an intellectual. What I do is I describe reality as I see it. I would love to live in the United States, but I want to live in the United States because it’s a place that is free. A lot of Americans don’t care about freedom. If you look at the polls, they say that Americans don’t value democracy at all. I have a different set of values. Democracy comes before the price of eggs. But what I think is particularly foolish and naive and stupid is to give up democracy and raise the price of eggs."

The Rewriting of a Pioneering Female Astronomer’s Legacy Shows How Far Trump’s DEI Purge Will Go; ProPublica, January 30, 2025

Lisa Song, ProPublica ; The Rewriting of a Pioneering Female Astronomer’s Legacy Shows How Far Trump’s DEI Purge Will Go

[Kip Currier: Information professionals and centers can be leaders in preserving histories -- like that of influential astronomer Vera Rubin. Right now, too, libraries, archives, and museums can continue to collect books by and about these kinds of trailblazers. They can digitize and make available illuminating records and artifacts, like diaries and photos. They can create interactive exhibits and virtual reality experiences to raise our awareness of their struggles and triumphs. 

And when purges and sanitization actions occur, journalists can tell us about them, just as they did in this ProPublica story about Vera Rubin.

Once this phase of selective erasure and targeted minimization of historically marginalized persons and groups has inevitably passed, so too can information professionals, historians, reporters, authors, and myriad others work to restore these pioneering people to the historical record.

A larger question is why the current administration is laboring so hard to erase and undervalue the histories and achievements of individuals who have inarguably faced discrimination -- and in countless inspiring instances have surmounted formidable barriers -- as members of disenfranchised communities?

Why do they fear these histories and uplifting achievements?

They work to erase these histories so that others won't be empowered by these stories and lessons. Not knowing these stories enables the erasers to control the narratives and, more importantly, influence how people think. They don't want people to be aware of what boundary breakers have done to break through barriers to equal opportunities. Why?

They benefit from unequal power structures. They fear equality and change. They want to define "truth". So, they stoke fear, apathy, division, and distrust to fortify the inequitable power structures that advantage them and disadvantage everyone else.

The world has seen revisionist campaigns like this many times before, though, and I'm confident that truth and reason will eventually prevail again. But it's going to take hard work and strategy and creativity and resilience and teamwork to achieve.

Media outlets, like ProPublica and others committed to truth telling and accuracy of information, serve inestimable roles in uncovering deception, revealing truths, and reporting the facts. As the renowned lawyer John Adams (and future 2nd President of the United States from 1797-1801) pointed out to a Massachusetts court in 1770, "Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."

Those of us in the information professions who care about truth and the historical record -- and the stories of everyone, not just the privileged few -- are going to have to do our parts to stand up to the self-appointed revisionists, censors, and erasers. Many information professionals are already stepping up in ways that make a positive difference every day. Like challenging those who want to remove books from our libraries.

Filmmakers, graphic novelists, photographers, screenwriters, faith leaders, investigative reporters, musicologists, grant funders, poets, independent bookstores, lawyers, actors, civil watchdog groups, data analysts, publishers, ethnographers, artisans, and countless others are also working to push back against erasure and disenfranchisement of diverse peoples.

I will share stories about ongoing efforts to counter the silencing of diverse voices in future blog posts throughout this year.]

[Excerpt]

"During his first presidential term, Donald Trump signed a congressional actnaming a federally funded observatory after the late astronomer Vera Rubin. The act celebrated her landmark research on dark matter — the invisible, mysterious substance that makes up much of the universe — and noted that she was an outspoken advocate for the equal treatment and representation of women in science.

“Vera herself offers an excellent example of what can happen when more minds participate in science,” the observatory’s website said of Rubin — up until recently.

By Monday morning, a section of her online biography titled, “She advocated for women in science,” was gone. It reappeared in a stripped-down form later that day amid a chaotic federal government response to Trump’s campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

While there are far more seismic changes afoot in America than the revision of three paragraphs on a website, the page’s edit trail provides an opportunity to peer into how institutions and agencies are navigating the new administration’s intolerance of anything perceived as “woke” and illuminates a calculation officials must make in answering a wide-open question:

How far is too far when it comes to acknowledging inequality and advocating against it?"