August 18, 2025 • 23 mins
In this episode of One Thing Trump Did, we look at the mounting pressure that the Trump administration has been putting on the Smithsonian Institution and how that affects more than just museum exhibits. Jeremy is joined by Samuel Redman, a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. #Smithsonian #impeachment #Trump #museum #museums #DC #history
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Welcome to One Thing Trump Did. I'm Jeremy Hobson. As usual,
there is a lot going on, a lot to keep
track of. There is the National Guard being sent into Washington,
d C. There are the Epstein files. There is the
president firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics
because he didn't like a jobs report that came out.
And maybe we will talk about all of those things
on episodes of One Thing Trump Did, because that's the
(00:36):
point of this podcast, to not let things slip by,
to take our time with them in a nonpartisan way. Today,
we're talking about something that's been kind of bubbling up
for months, and that is what the Trump administration is
doing with the Smithsonian Institution, a one hundred and seventy
nine year old organization that is a group of museums
(00:57):
and research centers. You've probably been to them if you've
visited Washington in DC, some of the big museums. It
was founded by the government, and it is partially funded
by the federal government, but it is not a government
agency now. The President just this week ordered a review
of a number of Smithsonian museums to make sure that
they align with his goals to quote celebrate American exceptionalism,
(01:19):
remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our
shared cultural institutions. Now, since Trump assumed office in his
second term, he's also tried to fire the head of
the National Portrait Gallery, who eventually quit on her own.
He also said the institution is under the influence of
a divisive race centered ideology. And oh, by the way,
(01:39):
and exhibit about impeachments removed reference to his two impeachments
until they were put back in the display after an uproar,
joining me out to talk about all of this, and
there was a lot here is Samuel Redman, a professor
of history at the University of Massachusetts Amherston, author of
the book The Museum, A Short History of Crisis and Resilience.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Samuel, thank you for being on.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Okay, so a big picture and you heard a lot there.
What is going on here?
Speaker 3 (02:04):
We're facing an unprecedented moment in the history of the
nation and also the history of the Smithsonian Institution in particular,
the Smithsonian has gone through episodes of crisis previously, as
recently as the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties. There was
controversy about what should go in the Smithsonian exhibits or not,
(02:24):
how patriotic or celebratory they should be, And it's happened
on some level, but by and large people have understood
that the Smithsonian is an independent organization that is attached
to the federal government but not under executive control. And
in the new Trump era, sort of the second iteration
(02:47):
of this administration, there has been a direct frontal, politically
driven assault on Smithsonian hiring and firing decisions, as well
as the content of the exhibitions. So we are in
uncharted territory where we're experiencing this really remarkable crisis on
all levels for the institution.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Well, and how much authority does the president have over
the Smithsonian? Because actually, if you look at the board
and I didn't even know this until I started getting
ready for this, the Chief Justice of the United States,
John Roberts, in this case, is like the chair of
a board of people that oversee the Smithsonian. The Vice
President is also on that board, and then there are
citizens and some senators and members of Congress, but not
(03:28):
the president. Does the president have a lot of authority
over what happens at the Smithsonian?
Speaker 3 (03:32):
You know, there's a good reason for not knowing that, Jeremy,
because it's never mattered before, None of us have ever really,
I mean, it has definitely been when the board gets
together and takes a vote on a new secretary, which
is the terminology that the Smithsonian uses for its leader.
It's like president or a chancellor of the organization is
(03:53):
called the secretary. So when those votes were taken, the
Chief Justice would come and sort of nominally cast a vote.
But the President has never issued a firing proclamation for
a staff member of the Smithsonian. There's sort of this
tension operating here on some level, is that the Smithsonian
(04:14):
is really important. It's consequential. Millions of visitors encounter the institution.
It sets a tone or a tenor for museums all
across the country and around the world. Also, I think
a lot of previous administrations haven't really bothered to care.
They've sort of been somewhat of a benign neglect during
some administrations and an other administrations maybe they've done enough
(04:36):
to support the institution, but there really hasn't been meddling
on this granular of a level previously. And where that
all came to a head was that the executive branch
issues this truth social post it wasn't in the form
of an official memo or a government document, and calls
(04:57):
for this individual's immediate firing. And she started coming to
work the next week and then ultimately, as you said
in your introduction, resigned on her own accord. All of
this is tremendously unfortunate, and we're all trying to figure
out what the heck is going on here and what
sort of authority does something like a truth social post have.
But in that meeting a couple of weeks ago where
(05:19):
the board gets together and notably the Chief Justice is there,
according to recent reporting, he focused on procedure and precedent
and wanted to move forward with business sort of as usual,
rather than acknowledging this truth social post. So it is
sort of this tension too, between an older branch of conservativism,
(05:40):
which isn't that old in terms of American history. You
think of like neo conservatives and George W. Bush, who
in many respects really supported the opening of the National
Museum of African American History and Culture. And it's so
radically different from what we're seeing in the current administration.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
So if you listen to what the White House has
said about some of this. The President said in his
March executive order, the National Museum of African American History
and Culture has proclaimed that hard work, individualism, and the
nuclear family are aspects of white culture. The forthcoming Smithsonian
American Women's History Museum plans on celebrating the exploits of
male athletes participating in women's sports. These are just a
(06:20):
few examples. The administration says of like the Smithsonian gone woke?
What is wrong in theory with the President taking issue
with things like that, which obviously he's doing across all
parts of the government, and it even ages. He's like
the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which they just completely defunded.
He says that this isn't aligned with my priorities. You've
(06:41):
got to get rid of all the diversity, equity, and inclusion.
What's wrong with the President saying, Okay, we're funding half
of this thing. We can decide what they do and
what they don't do.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
I'm not about to say that the Smithsonian should just
operate completely independently without any sort of form of oversight
or any sort of conversation about it. In fact, the
purpose of my first book was to critique the Smithsonian
Institution and to have a more honest and open and
transparent conversation about its history. But this is not the
(07:11):
way to go about it, right that instead of enlisting
other experts and other scholars and museum professionals to think
through these issues in a serious way, this is instead
a top down directive driven by political actors, not scholars.
So what we have here are people cherry picking examples
(07:32):
from throughout the institution that meet an ideologically driven political critique.
And one could go through conversely and point out a
lot of places, frankly where the Smithsonian expresses a fairly
conservative point of view of the history of the United States,
(07:54):
and that a lot of us have critiqued the institution
for not going far enough in terms of acknowledging colonialism
or racism, or acknowledging the history of collecting of the institution,
the practices of behind how these objects got to the museum.
The museum certainly could do more in all of those ways,
but we need to listen to more indigenous voices, people
(08:15):
of color, as well as scholars who can look at
the institution in new ways but add value to it
from a larger, more collaborative conversation rather than top down
directives from the White House.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Well, and one of the things that we've seen in
a number of areas, whether it be museums or law
firms or educational institutions, where the President may not have
the authority directly to say you can't do this, is
that people start to self censor because they think, I
don't want to get on his bad side. Maybe if
we start doing these things ourselves, he won't come after
(08:49):
us any longer. Do you see that happening right now
within the world of the Smithsonian, that they're already going
in there and saying, okay, well, let's take this out
because this might annoy President Trump.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Looking at this from an outsider's vantage point, and I
certainly have ongoing conversations behind the scenes with a lot
of my friends at the Smithsonian, and all throughout they
have expressed concern, and all throughout people are thinking about
how do we survive this episode, how do we keep
this enterprise intact and keep going. There's a great degree
(09:22):
of responsibility right that we have inherited millions of objects
and stories from around the world, across the country and
around the world, and how do we ensure that that
goes to the next generation. But that doesn't mean keeping
everything in a hermetically sealed bubble, right. That involves like
pruning a healthy tree. Sometimes collections need to be sent
(09:46):
home or traded or deaccessioned. New points of view and
perspectives are brought in. But to be more direct, I
do think that there has been a chilling effect or
a sort of self censorship of what people believe as
possible at this moment for exhibitions, for public programming, for research,
and so forth.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Do you think that if I went into one of
the museums right now, I would notice the difference versus
what it looked like back in twenty twenty four under
the Bid administration.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
To me, the differences would be really subtle, and in fact,
that makes it particularly scary, right, It's almost more scary
to have this go incrementally, sort of by inch of
having sort of a creeping fascism than having a black
and white thing that where we can point to and say, see, look,
this is how they change this exhibit label or emme
at Till's casket has been taken off display or some
(10:36):
of the things that have been in the discourse recently.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
So the way that you're talking about the Smithsonian is
as it's almost like a journalistic organization, like you want
it to be as objective as possible. And I guess
that's that's my question is should the museum that's the
National Museum basically is it a like news organization that
(10:59):
we can all go and learn the most objective form
of history of what's happened, or is it a government
propaganda agency that gets to tell us the way that
they want us to see what happened in.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
This is another great question. Yes, for sure, the Smithsonian
presents a point of view. They are not neutral. They
have a historical bias that is ingrained in all of this.
On the other hand, those exhibits are reached by consensus. Right.
So these are expert historians who rely on the work
(11:30):
of many, many other experts. So you know, one of
the experts I know there, for example, works on health
and medicine. And you can know a lot about health
and medicine, but one cannot know every last thing about
health and medicine. Right. So let's say there's a new
exhibition coming up on the AIDS epidemic. This curator might
(11:50):
consult other outside experts and bring in other points of view,
and through this dialogue, through the conversation, frankly, through the
debate that often happens internally, we arrive at a picture
of the story that we'd like to tell through more
of a consensus. So much like an introductory US history textbook,
professors across the country aren't going to use it if
(12:13):
it is radically off base, probably in one direction or another.
That you're trying to find something that can meet as
many people as possible in the middle. So I think
Smithsonian curators take that very seriously, but are also trying
to reach a consensus on some level.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
I have to say, as somebody who goes to museums,
I want to see the truth. Why would I want
to go to a museum that's not going to tell me,
at least the best version of the truth that they
possibly can of what will would be the point?
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (12:39):
I mean, and these are not necessarily nice stories right
There are, as I mentioned previously, conversations about Native American
genocide enslavement in the National Museum of African American History
and Culture, and not only the successes of the civil
rights movement, but the blowback. We get sort of a
fairy tale version of American history, and it's a celebratory
(13:03):
thing that focuses on American exceptionalism. It doesn't put things
in conversation with other sort of global trends or ideas,
and it's sort of just about us. And I think
the Smithsonian, especially since the nineteen fifties, sixties, seventies, has
really radically altered how they take on these stories. But
(13:24):
it's in step with how other history professionals are talking
and thinking about this. My colleagues at the Smithsonian they
go to professional conferences about history. They're sitting there next
to me and my other students learning about new trends.
But I've never seen someone from the White House other
than I guess the nonprofit White House History Association. Certainly,
(13:46):
no political actors I've ever seen at any one of
these conferences.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Well, some people have compared what is happening to what
dictators do in other countries. We're going to talk about
that in a moment. One thing Trump did with University
of Massachusetts Amherst history professor Samuel Redman will be back.
(14:18):
Welcome back to one thing Trump did exclusively on the
Middle podcast feed I'm Jeremy Hobson. In this episode, we're
talking about the Trump administration and the Smithsonian efforts by
the president to control what is.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Seen and displayed in the museums.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
I'm joined by Samuel Redman, Professor of history at the
University of Massachusetts Amherst. So what do you make of
the removal briefly of the impeachment displays about President Trump?
Speaker 3 (14:40):
In some respects, this says less about the impeachment itself,
right than how we in this present day are trying
to carefully interpret or talk about these stories in the
midst of this new era of censorship and in the
midst of this new era of political assault on the Smithsonian,
whereas the impeachment of Clinton was not taken up in
(15:07):
any way by the Obama administration or how the exhibits were.
I mean, it's sort of like I use the word
petty in another instance, and I don't want to dismiss
this as being somehow unimportant, because it really is, like, right,
like the same way that truth is important in terms
of talking about how large or small a rally is
at an inauguration is a small thing, but it's also
(15:30):
just about truth in general. The way in which we
talk about the facts of the first impeachment or the
second impeachment are consequential, and it certainly, and it's to
a national audience, but it's also on some level it's
so small and the exhibit is naturally supposed to breathe
and evolve. I'd be curious personally to talk to more
(15:50):
Smithsonian curators and exhibit designers who are behind making those choices.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
At this moment, there's nothing about the January sixth stuff
in any of the museum, I would assume, because if
there is, then that I would imagine Trump would want
to portray that very differently than what actually happened.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Well, and certainly I know that Smithsonian curators have been
collecting efemera relevant to that episode, working to document it
in a variety of ways. And this is when people
talk about like whitewashing the past. Frankly, like this is
the type of stuff that we're talking about, right, Like
that happened, you know, Like we saw it on television,
we read about it in the newspaper. There are hundreds
(16:29):
and hundreds of eyewitnesses, there's testimony, much like we talk
about Holocaust denial in this country and around the world.
It cuts to the core of our conversations about evidence
and historical truth when we have mountains and mountains of
evidence about the moon landing, the historical accuracy of the
moon landing, and yet either to be edgy or out
(16:53):
of ignorance, people try to espouse a different view. And
of course, from time to time that's in some scenarios
this is appropriate, right. There have been certain things that
we have felt like were historical truths, where there's lots
of evidence and the story will eventually need to be
revised and thought of in a different ways new evidence
(17:14):
comes to light. But this is not that. This is
so clearly not that what we're talking about is a
more fascistic control and whitewashing of episodes of the past
that for some people are uncomfortable.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
The President also named himself chair of the Kennedy Center
and said there will be quote no more drag shows
or other anti American propaganda.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
That's a quote.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
The Guardian did a story about this and compared that
to what dictators have done in other countries, naming among others,
Joseph Stalin, Mao Zadong and even Adolf Hitler.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
What do you think about that?
Speaker 3 (17:49):
Well. Certainly, efforts to control culture and efforts to control
history have appeared in authoritarian and fascistic regimes throughout time
and history. That is one of the first places that
authoritarian regimes go to assault the other side, the other
points of view. Right that in Nazi Germany, that quote
(18:13):
unquote undesirable art was for a time brought together and
even publicly displayed, until too many people came to see it,
and Hitler decided to take it off public display. Right
that this is something that has happened in extremely scary
times and places, extremely dangerous times and places throughout our history,
and we need to call it out and to be
(18:34):
open and honest with that. That trying to control culture
in this sort of way from a top down perspective
is not a way that healthy democracies and societies operate
and function.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Why is that, though?
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Why are the cultural institutions do you think the target
of dictators and authoritarians?
Speaker 3 (18:53):
In my view, the stories that we tell about ourselves
are extremely important. They help us create an identity of
who we are as Americans, and they help us think
about very deep things about human life and society, and
they can inspire us. So the original Kermit the Frog
(19:16):
or seeing ruby red slippers from the Wizard of Oz.
I'll admit it, like that's neat. That stuff's cool to
see and it inspires me. But we also need to
understand the other parts of the story that frankly, are
often difficult to think about. They're more meditative. They cause
you to question government authority. So here's one example that
(19:38):
if we're having an open, honest conversation about the my
Lie massacre and what happens in Vietnam towards the end
of the Vietnam War, many people in America start at
that moment to become more critical of the government. You
know what we often describe as a credibility gap, where
journalists are pointing out, hey, these numbers or pictures or
(19:58):
stories that the government is given us don't coalign with
the truth. And similarly, here we are in a place
where the Smithsonian offers knowledge and information open for free,
where so many people can access these objects, including ones
that don't tell nice stories about American history, through the website,
through databases entirely for free, and in times and places
(20:23):
where that goes against the story that the government or
the state is trying to tell about the nation. Where
that doesn't jive, then they try to control cultural places
of cultural expression or cultural production.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
So, as one of the foremost experts in this area,
and by the way, I've seen you quoted in just
about every article about what's going on, everybody knows you're
the guy.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
What do you do now about this?
Speaker 3 (20:50):
I think a lot of this starts in the classroom
right where how it is we're talking about this all
the way from kindergarten all the way through higher education
and graduate school. Are we creating spaces where people can
have more open and honest conversations about the truth and
about the past without fear of reprisal. Can people engage
(21:12):
in free and open discourse but also understand evidence in
this era that is sometimes called the post truth era,
right that what is the truth here? Are we selecting
our cherry picking bits and pieces of what something says
in order to construct a story, or are we really
considering the weight and the balance of the evidence. I
(21:35):
think teaching people how to think through that, how to
think critically about different episodes in the past, as well
as doing what we can to support Smithsonian curators who
have been working in many instances for decades telling stories
that need to be told that aren't necessarily being told
in other places. I think a lot of people who
(21:56):
are there now a lot of their careers have been
reacting to the older fashion stories that maybe we told
in the nineteen fifties into the early nineteen sixties, and
they're inspired by the growth of social history, where people
realized to a large degree that history isn't just about famous,
dead white dudes, right, that history is also about social
(22:20):
change and where people went to work, and what people's
relationships or what comedy was like throughout history, what love
and relationships were like throughout history, and that to me
is far more interesting. Right, It's more complicated, but it
gives us a more honest and rich portrait of the
American past. Then let's say a sculpture garden that is
(22:41):
celebrating quote unquote American heroes, which to me is very
uninteresting and doesn't really teach us all that much about history.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
That's Samuel Redman, a professor of history at the University
of Massachusetts Amherst.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Samuel, thank you so much for joining us, thank you
for having me, and thanks to you for listening to
One thing Trump did. It was produced by Harrison Patino.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
If you liked it, please rate it wherever you get
your podcasts, and write us a review. Our theme music
was composed by Noah Haid. I'm Jeremy Hobson. I will
talk to you soon.
Welcome to One Thing Trump Did. I'm Jeremy Hobson. As usual,
there is a lot going on, a lot to keep
track of. There is the National Guard being sent into Washington,
d C. There are the Epstein files. There is the
president firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics
because he didn't like a jobs report that came out.
And maybe we will talk about all of those things
on episodes of One Thing Trump Did, because that's the
(00:36):
point of this podcast, to not let things slip by,
to take our time with them in a nonpartisan way. Today,
we're talking about something that's been kind of bubbling up
for months, and that is what the Trump administration is
doing with the Smithsonian Institution, a one hundred and seventy
nine year old organization that is a group of museums
(00:57):
and research centers. You've probably been to them if you've
visited Washington in DC, some of the big museums. It
was founded by the government, and it is partially funded
by the federal government, but it is not a government
agency now. The President just this week ordered a review
of a number of Smithsonian museums to make sure that
they align with his goals to quote celebrate American exceptionalism,
(01:19):
remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our
shared cultural institutions. Now, since Trump assumed office in his
second term, he's also tried to fire the head of
the National Portrait Gallery, who eventually quit on her own.
He also said the institution is under the influence of
a divisive race centered ideology. And oh, by the way,
(01:39):
and exhibit about impeachments removed reference to his two impeachments
until they were put back in the display after an uproar,
joining me out to talk about all of this, and
there was a lot here is Samuel Redman, a professor
of history at the University of Massachusetts Amherston, author of
the book The Museum, A Short History of Crisis and Resilience.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Samuel, thank you for being on.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Okay, so a big picture and you heard a lot there.
What is going on here?
Speaker 3 (02:04):
We're facing an unprecedented moment in the history of the
nation and also the history of the Smithsonian Institution in particular,
the Smithsonian has gone through episodes of crisis previously, as
recently as the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties. There was
controversy about what should go in the Smithsonian exhibits or not,
(02:24):
how patriotic or celebratory they should be, And it's happened
on some level, but by and large people have understood
that the Smithsonian is an independent organization that is attached
to the federal government but not under executive control. And
in the new Trump era, sort of the second iteration
(02:47):
of this administration, there has been a direct frontal, politically
driven assault on Smithsonian hiring and firing decisions, as well
as the content of the exhibitions. So we are in
uncharted territory where we're experiencing this really remarkable crisis on
all levels for the institution.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Well, and how much authority does the president have over
the Smithsonian? Because actually, if you look at the board
and I didn't even know this until I started getting
ready for this, the Chief Justice of the United States,
John Roberts, in this case, is like the chair of
a board of people that oversee the Smithsonian. The Vice
President is also on that board, and then there are
citizens and some senators and members of Congress, but not
(03:28):
the president. Does the president have a lot of authority
over what happens at the Smithsonian?
Speaker 3 (03:32):
You know, there's a good reason for not knowing that, Jeremy,
because it's never mattered before, None of us have ever really,
I mean, it has definitely been when the board gets
together and takes a vote on a new secretary, which
is the terminology that the Smithsonian uses for its leader.
It's like president or a chancellor of the organization is
(03:53):
called the secretary. So when those votes were taken, the
Chief Justice would come and sort of nominally cast a vote.
But the President has never issued a firing proclamation for
a staff member of the Smithsonian. There's sort of this
tension operating here on some level, is that the Smithsonian
(04:14):
is really important. It's consequential. Millions of visitors encounter the institution.
It sets a tone or a tenor for museums all
across the country and around the world. Also, I think
a lot of previous administrations haven't really bothered to care.
They've sort of been somewhat of a benign neglect during
some administrations and an other administrations maybe they've done enough
(04:36):
to support the institution, but there really hasn't been meddling
on this granular of a level previously. And where that
all came to a head was that the executive branch
issues this truth social post it wasn't in the form
of an official memo or a government document, and calls
(04:57):
for this individual's immediate firing. And she started coming to
work the next week and then ultimately, as you said
in your introduction, resigned on her own accord. All of
this is tremendously unfortunate, and we're all trying to figure
out what the heck is going on here and what
sort of authority does something like a truth social post have.
But in that meeting a couple of weeks ago where
(05:19):
the board gets together and notably the Chief Justice is there,
according to recent reporting, he focused on procedure and precedent
and wanted to move forward with business sort of as usual,
rather than acknowledging this truth social post. So it is
sort of this tension too, between an older branch of conservativism,
(05:40):
which isn't that old in terms of American history. You
think of like neo conservatives and George W. Bush, who
in many respects really supported the opening of the National
Museum of African American History and Culture. And it's so
radically different from what we're seeing in the current administration.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
So if you listen to what the White House has
said about some of this. The President said in his
March executive order, the National Museum of African American History
and Culture has proclaimed that hard work, individualism, and the
nuclear family are aspects of white culture. The forthcoming Smithsonian
American Women's History Museum plans on celebrating the exploits of
male athletes participating in women's sports. These are just a
(06:20):
few examples. The administration says of like the Smithsonian gone woke?
What is wrong in theory with the President taking issue
with things like that, which obviously he's doing across all
parts of the government, and it even ages. He's like
the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which they just completely defunded.
He says that this isn't aligned with my priorities. You've
(06:41):
got to get rid of all the diversity, equity, and inclusion.
What's wrong with the President saying, Okay, we're funding half
of this thing. We can decide what they do and
what they don't do.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
I'm not about to say that the Smithsonian should just
operate completely independently without any sort of form of oversight
or any sort of conversation about it. In fact, the
purpose of my first book was to critique the Smithsonian
Institution and to have a more honest and open and
transparent conversation about its history. But this is not the
(07:11):
way to go about it, right that instead of enlisting
other experts and other scholars and museum professionals to think
through these issues in a serious way, this is instead
a top down directive driven by political actors, not scholars.
So what we have here are people cherry picking examples
(07:32):
from throughout the institution that meet an ideologically driven political critique.
And one could go through conversely and point out a
lot of places, frankly where the Smithsonian expresses a fairly
conservative point of view of the history of the United States,
(07:54):
and that a lot of us have critiqued the institution
for not going far enough in terms of acknowledging colonialism
or racism, or acknowledging the history of collecting of the institution,
the practices of behind how these objects got to the museum.
The museum certainly could do more in all of those ways,
but we need to listen to more indigenous voices, people
(08:15):
of color, as well as scholars who can look at
the institution in new ways but add value to it
from a larger, more collaborative conversation rather than top down
directives from the White House.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Well, and one of the things that we've seen in
a number of areas, whether it be museums or law
firms or educational institutions, where the President may not have
the authority directly to say you can't do this, is
that people start to self censor because they think, I
don't want to get on his bad side. Maybe if
we start doing these things ourselves, he won't come after
(08:49):
us any longer. Do you see that happening right now
within the world of the Smithsonian, that they're already going
in there and saying, okay, well, let's take this out
because this might annoy President Trump.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Looking at this from an outsider's vantage point, and I
certainly have ongoing conversations behind the scenes with a lot
of my friends at the Smithsonian, and all throughout they
have expressed concern, and all throughout people are thinking about
how do we survive this episode, how do we keep
this enterprise intact and keep going. There's a great degree
(09:22):
of responsibility right that we have inherited millions of objects
and stories from around the world, across the country and
around the world, and how do we ensure that that
goes to the next generation. But that doesn't mean keeping
everything in a hermetically sealed bubble, right. That involves like
pruning a healthy tree. Sometimes collections need to be sent
(09:46):
home or traded or deaccessioned. New points of view and
perspectives are brought in. But to be more direct, I
do think that there has been a chilling effect or
a sort of self censorship of what people believe as
possible at this moment for exhibitions, for public programming, for research,
and so forth.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Do you think that if I went into one of
the museums right now, I would notice the difference versus
what it looked like back in twenty twenty four under
the Bid administration.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
To me, the differences would be really subtle, and in fact,
that makes it particularly scary, right, It's almost more scary
to have this go incrementally, sort of by inch of
having sort of a creeping fascism than having a black
and white thing that where we can point to and say, see, look,
this is how they change this exhibit label or emme
at Till's casket has been taken off display or some
(10:36):
of the things that have been in the discourse recently.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
So the way that you're talking about the Smithsonian is
as it's almost like a journalistic organization, like you want
it to be as objective as possible. And I guess
that's that's my question is should the museum that's the
National Museum basically is it a like news organization that
(10:59):
we can all go and learn the most objective form
of history of what's happened, or is it a government
propaganda agency that gets to tell us the way that
they want us to see what happened in.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
This is another great question. Yes, for sure, the Smithsonian
presents a point of view. They are not neutral. They
have a historical bias that is ingrained in all of this.
On the other hand, those exhibits are reached by consensus. Right.
So these are expert historians who rely on the work
(11:30):
of many, many other experts. So you know, one of
the experts I know there, for example, works on health
and medicine. And you can know a lot about health
and medicine, but one cannot know every last thing about
health and medicine. Right. So let's say there's a new
exhibition coming up on the AIDS epidemic. This curator might
(11:50):
consult other outside experts and bring in other points of view,
and through this dialogue, through the conversation, frankly, through the
debate that often happens internally, we arrive at a picture
of the story that we'd like to tell through more
of a consensus. So much like an introductory US history textbook,
professors across the country aren't going to use it if
(12:13):
it is radically off base, probably in one direction or another.
That you're trying to find something that can meet as
many people as possible in the middle. So I think
Smithsonian curators take that very seriously, but are also trying
to reach a consensus on some level.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
I have to say, as somebody who goes to museums,
I want to see the truth. Why would I want
to go to a museum that's not going to tell me,
at least the best version of the truth that they
possibly can of what will would be the point?
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (12:39):
I mean, and these are not necessarily nice stories right
There are, as I mentioned previously, conversations about Native American
genocide enslavement in the National Museum of African American History
and Culture, and not only the successes of the civil
rights movement, but the blowback. We get sort of a
fairy tale version of American history, and it's a celebratory
(13:03):
thing that focuses on American exceptionalism. It doesn't put things
in conversation with other sort of global trends or ideas,
and it's sort of just about us. And I think
the Smithsonian, especially since the nineteen fifties, sixties, seventies, has
really radically altered how they take on these stories. But
(13:24):
it's in step with how other history professionals are talking
and thinking about this. My colleagues at the Smithsonian they
go to professional conferences about history. They're sitting there next
to me and my other students learning about new trends.
But I've never seen someone from the White House other
than I guess the nonprofit White House History Association. Certainly,
(13:46):
no political actors I've ever seen at any one of
these conferences.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Well, some people have compared what is happening to what
dictators do in other countries. We're going to talk about
that in a moment. One thing Trump did with University
of Massachusetts Amherst history professor Samuel Redman will be back.
(14:18):
Welcome back to one thing Trump did exclusively on the
Middle podcast feed I'm Jeremy Hobson. In this episode, we're
talking about the Trump administration and the Smithsonian efforts by
the president to control what is.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Seen and displayed in the museums.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
I'm joined by Samuel Redman, Professor of history at the
University of Massachusetts Amherst. So what do you make of
the removal briefly of the impeachment displays about President Trump?
Speaker 3 (14:40):
In some respects, this says less about the impeachment itself,
right than how we in this present day are trying
to carefully interpret or talk about these stories in the
midst of this new era of censorship and in the
midst of this new era of political assault on the Smithsonian,
whereas the impeachment of Clinton was not taken up in
(15:07):
any way by the Obama administration or how the exhibits were.
I mean, it's sort of like I use the word
petty in another instance, and I don't want to dismiss
this as being somehow unimportant, because it really is, like, right,
like the same way that truth is important in terms
of talking about how large or small a rally is
at an inauguration is a small thing, but it's also
(15:30):
just about truth in general. The way in which we
talk about the facts of the first impeachment or the
second impeachment are consequential, and it certainly, and it's to
a national audience, but it's also on some level it's
so small and the exhibit is naturally supposed to breathe
and evolve. I'd be curious personally to talk to more
(15:50):
Smithsonian curators and exhibit designers who are behind making those choices.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
At this moment, there's nothing about the January sixth stuff
in any of the museum, I would assume, because if
there is, then that I would imagine Trump would want
to portray that very differently than what actually happened.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Well, and certainly I know that Smithsonian curators have been
collecting efemera relevant to that episode, working to document it
in a variety of ways. And this is when people
talk about like whitewashing the past. Frankly, like this is
the type of stuff that we're talking about, right, Like
that happened, you know, Like we saw it on television,
we read about it in the newspaper. There are hundreds
(16:29):
and hundreds of eyewitnesses, there's testimony, much like we talk
about Holocaust denial in this country and around the world.
It cuts to the core of our conversations about evidence
and historical truth when we have mountains and mountains of
evidence about the moon landing, the historical accuracy of the
moon landing, and yet either to be edgy or out
(16:53):
of ignorance, people try to espouse a different view. And
of course, from time to time that's in some scenarios
this is appropriate, right. There have been certain things that
we have felt like were historical truths, where there's lots
of evidence and the story will eventually need to be
revised and thought of in a different ways new evidence
(17:14):
comes to light. But this is not that. This is
so clearly not that what we're talking about is a
more fascistic control and whitewashing of episodes of the past
that for some people are uncomfortable.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
The President also named himself chair of the Kennedy Center
and said there will be quote no more drag shows
or other anti American propaganda.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
That's a quote.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
The Guardian did a story about this and compared that
to what dictators have done in other countries, naming among others,
Joseph Stalin, Mao Zadong and even Adolf Hitler.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
What do you think about that?
Speaker 3 (17:49):
Well. Certainly, efforts to control culture and efforts to control
history have appeared in authoritarian and fascistic regimes throughout time
and history. That is one of the first places that
authoritarian regimes go to assault the other side, the other
points of view. Right that in Nazi Germany, that quote
(18:13):
unquote undesirable art was for a time brought together and
even publicly displayed, until too many people came to see it,
and Hitler decided to take it off public display. Right
that this is something that has happened in extremely scary
times and places, extremely dangerous times and places throughout our history,
and we need to call it out and to be
(18:34):
open and honest with that. That trying to control culture
in this sort of way from a top down perspective
is not a way that healthy democracies and societies operate
and function.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Why is that, though?
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Why are the cultural institutions do you think the target
of dictators and authoritarians?
Speaker 3 (18:53):
In my view, the stories that we tell about ourselves
are extremely important. They help us create an identity of
who we are as Americans, and they help us think
about very deep things about human life and society, and
they can inspire us. So the original Kermit the Frog
(19:16):
or seeing ruby red slippers from the Wizard of Oz.
I'll admit it, like that's neat. That stuff's cool to
see and it inspires me. But we also need to
understand the other parts of the story that frankly, are
often difficult to think about. They're more meditative. They cause
you to question government authority. So here's one example that
(19:38):
if we're having an open, honest conversation about the my
Lie massacre and what happens in Vietnam towards the end
of the Vietnam War, many people in America start at
that moment to become more critical of the government. You
know what we often describe as a credibility gap, where
journalists are pointing out, hey, these numbers or pictures or
(19:58):
stories that the government is given us don't coalign with
the truth. And similarly, here we are in a place
where the Smithsonian offers knowledge and information open for free,
where so many people can access these objects, including ones
that don't tell nice stories about American history, through the website,
through databases entirely for free, and in times and places
(20:23):
where that goes against the story that the government or
the state is trying to tell about the nation. Where
that doesn't jive, then they try to control cultural places
of cultural expression or cultural production.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
So, as one of the foremost experts in this area,
and by the way, I've seen you quoted in just
about every article about what's going on, everybody knows you're
the guy.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
What do you do now about this?
Speaker 3 (20:50):
I think a lot of this starts in the classroom
right where how it is we're talking about this all
the way from kindergarten all the way through higher education
and graduate school. Are we creating spaces where people can
have more open and honest conversations about the truth and
about the past without fear of reprisal. Can people engage
(21:12):
in free and open discourse but also understand evidence in
this era that is sometimes called the post truth era,
right that what is the truth here? Are we selecting
our cherry picking bits and pieces of what something says
in order to construct a story, or are we really
considering the weight and the balance of the evidence. I
(21:35):
think teaching people how to think through that, how to
think critically about different episodes in the past, as well
as doing what we can to support Smithsonian curators who
have been working in many instances for decades telling stories
that need to be told that aren't necessarily being told
in other places. I think a lot of people who
(21:56):
are there now a lot of their careers have been
reacting to the older fashion stories that maybe we told
in the nineteen fifties into the early nineteen sixties, and
they're inspired by the growth of social history, where people
realized to a large degree that history isn't just about famous,
dead white dudes, right, that history is also about social
(22:20):
change and where people went to work, and what people's
relationships or what comedy was like throughout history, what love
and relationships were like throughout history, and that to me
is far more interesting. Right, It's more complicated, but it
gives us a more honest and rich portrait of the
American past. Then let's say a sculpture garden that is
(22:41):
celebrating quote unquote American heroes, which to me is very
uninteresting and doesn't really teach us all that much about history.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
That's Samuel Redman, a professor of history at the University
of Massachusetts Amherst.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Samuel, thank you so much for joining us, thank you
for having me, and thanks to you for listening to
One thing Trump did. It was produced by Harrison Patino.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
If you liked it, please rate it wherever you get
your podcasts, and write us a review. Our theme music
was composed by Noah Haid. I'm Jeremy Hobson. I will
talk to you soon.
Host
Jeremy Hobson
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