Podcasters, professors, journalists and ordinary citizens will gather in Washington as the Trump regime wages war on history
O
n 26 October, podcasters, professors, journalists and ordinary citizens will gather on the steps of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History for a teach-in in defense of history and museums.
The teach-in comes at a moment when the Smithsonian system faces unprecedented attacks from the Trump administration, which has threatened to bar funding for any exhibits that touch on the darker sides of US history. The threats against the Smithsonian are part of the administration’s war against history and historians: interfering in history curricula at schools across the country, redirecting federal grants to projects that promote American exceptionalism, and yoking the country’s 250th anniversary celebration to the Maga agenda.
That’s why we’re staging an intervention in the form of a teach-in, put together by the hosts of two historical podcasts, This Day and The Memory Palace. In an authoritarian regime, one of the first things that is taken from the public is honest and credible information. The past itself becomes treacherous terrain: authoritarians attempt to seize control of the country’s history, reworking it into a vision of a glorious, powerful, patriotic – and largely fictional – past. The people and events may be real, but the stories they’re used to tell are false. In such a moment, telling the truth, and teaching the truth, about the country’s history is an act of both defiance and solidarity.
