When government threatens history, citizens must themselves become historians. In January, the U.S. Air Force under anti-DEI pressure removed from their training courses instructional videos of the storied Tuskegee Airmen and of female World War II pilots (WASPs). Citizen outcry got the videos restored — with the Trump administration sputtering disingenuous explanation about the material needing updating.
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This doesn’t mean every student must major in history — but it’s important to study it.
Why? To be an educated person? Sure. But there’s another more courageous reason — to be a good citizen.
We are living in a time when the federal government is deliberately erasing historical documents and manipulating history. The New York Times reports the views of archivists and historians, “As the Trump administration pulls government websites and data offline, it is selectively stripping away the public record, letting the president declare his own version of history.”
It’s understandable that a new administration might scrub partisan policy platforms posted by the former government. But what is happening now goes far, far beyond what might normally be done. The current administration is removing informational pages about the U.S. Constitution and past presidents — material that has been available since President George W. Bush was in office.
The New York Times goes on to report, “The casualties are not just digital. The head of the National Archives, which has been described as ‘the custodian of America’s collective memory,’ was fired by Mr. Trump in February.”
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is threatening the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), which are major sources of funding for museums, libraries and other cultural organizations, particularly those in Philadelphia.
Do not be deluded that these are necessary cost-saving measures. Please recall your own experiences at Philadelphia cultural institutions large and small to testify to the beyond-scale educational benefits of federal support. NEH provided $400,000 to last year’s Philadelphia Museum of Art Mary Cassatt exhibition. The Atwater-Kent Collection at Drexel awaits a promised IMLS check (now on hold) for a Civil War display.
The Atwater-Kent exhibit may seem more clearly historical than the Mary Cassatt exhibition. But I would argue that in addition to aesthetics, artwork provides visual first-hand accounts of historical periods. In addition to enjoying the beauty of Cassatt’s paintings, we learned a great deal from her canvases about the role of women, raising children, and domestic realities of the late nineteenth and early 20th centuries.
The NEH helped make that possible.
History across the curriculum
In my own career I have designed and implemented many NEH projects, several focused on writing across the curriculum, when I was a faculty member and administrator at Arcadia University (then Beaver College). But one NEH-funded project, which I led when I was a dean at Queens College (CUNY), involved working with teams of public school teachers to study first-hand accounts of history, from the Renaissance to the Holocaust. We studied the records of spies in the court of Queen Elizabeth I, personal statements and memoirs from German citizens observing (or ignoring) the Holocaust, but, most dramatically, artwork from the various periods we were studying.
We visited New York museums to view stunning reflections of the times that produced them. After the NEH-sponsored summer seminars, the teachers returned to their classrooms prepared to engage students fully and actively in the study of history. The NEH participants were not all history teachers. History is something that can and should be taught across the curriculum. And today there is new urgency to do so.
I recommend that teachers from grade school to grad school consult the website for the Library of Congress (LOC) resources for teachers. There you will find exciting lesson plans to bring history alive through studying primary sources — actual documents that create and define history. These are not political interpretations. They are the real thing.
The site has not been wiped yet, but please hurry.
And let me say emphatically, Trump’s withdrawal of federal funds from university budgets profoundly and massively threatens the study of history and teacher-preparation programs.
It’s not Christmas season, but current events have me thinking about It’s a Wonderful Life, the classic movie showing a dystopian version of Bedford Falls, called Pottersville, which would have been the reality of the place if George Bailey had never been born. It’s an alternative history that would have happened except for Bailey’s actual, historical existence, as depicted in the film. We have to prevent the erasure of real George Baileys from American history.
Who will record history accurately and save us from Pottersville? The answer is — all of us working together to make sure that documents are preserved and accurate stories are told. It’s often said that the winners write history. The American people must be the winners.
What we can do?
- Protest the removal of historical documents from archives and museums.
- Protest the impulsive, retributive withdrawal of federal funding from universities and colleges.
- Protest diminished funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Library of Congress, and other federal and state organizations that preserve and promote the teaching of history.
- Encourage schools, colleges and universities to teach history across the curriculum.
- If you can, donate philanthropically to history programs at schools, colleges and museums.
- Read and write history, your own memoirs for a start. Be an accurate historian.
Elaine Maimon, Ph.D., is the author of Leading Academic Change: Vision, Strategy, Transformation. Her long career in higher education has encompassed top executive positions at public universities as well as distinction as a scholar in rhetoric/composition. Her co-authored book, Writing In The Arts and Sciences, has been designated as a landmark text. She is a Distinguished Fellow of the Association for Writing Across the Curriculum.
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