NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 It would seem the most straightforward of notions: A thing takes place, and it goes into the history books or is added to museum exhibits. But whether something even gets remembered and how \u2014 particularly when it comes to the history of a country and its leader \u2014 is often the furthest thing from simple.<\/p>\n
The latest example of that came Friday, when the Smithsonian Institution<\/a> said it had removed a reference<\/a> to the 2019 and 2021 impeachments of President Donald Trump from a panel in an exhibition about the American presidency. Trump has pressed institutions and agencies under federal oversight, often through the pressure of funding, to focus on the country\u2019s achievements and progress and away from things he terms \u201cdivisive.\u201d<\/p>\n A Smithsonian spokesperson said the removal of the reference, which had been installed as part of a temporary addition in 2021, came after a review of \u201clegacy content recently\u201d and the exhibit eventually \u201cwill include all impeachments.\u201d There was no time frame given for when; exhibition renovations can be time- and money-consuming endeavors.<\/p>\n In a statement that did not directly address the impeachment references, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said: \u201cWe are fully supportive of updating displays to highlight American greatness.\u201d<\/p>\n But is history intended to highlight or to document \u2014 to report what happened, or to serve a desired narrative? The answer, as with most things about the past, can be intensely complex. <\/p>\n It\u2019s part of a larger effort around American stories<\/p>\n The Smithsonian\u2019s move comes in the wake of Trump administration actions like removing the name<\/a> of a gay rights activist from a Navy ship, pushing for Republican supporters in Congress to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting<\/a> and getting rid of the leadership at the Kennedy Center.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cBased on what we have been seeing, this is part of a broader effort by the president to influence and shape how history is depicted at museums, national parks, and schools,\u201d said Julian E. Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. \u201cNot only is he pushing a specific narrative of the United States but, in this case, trying to influence how Americans learn about his own role in history.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s not a new struggle, in the world generally and the political world particularly. There is power in being able to shape how things are remembered, if they are remembered at all \u2014 who was there, who took part, who was responsible, what happened to lead up to that point in history. And the human beings who run things have often extended their authority to the stories told about them.<\/p>\n In China, for example, references to the June 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing\u2019s Tiananmen Square are forbidden and meticulously regulated by the ruling Communist Party government. In Soviet-era Russia, officials who ran afoul of leaders like Josef Stalin disappeared not only from the government itself but from photographs and history books where they once appeared. <\/p>\n Jason Stanley, an expert on authoritarianism, said controlling what and how people learn of their past has long been used as a vital tool to maintain power. Stanley has made his views about the Trump administration clear; he recently left Yale University to join the University of Toronto, citing concerns over the U.S. political situation. <\/p>\n \u201cIf they don\u2019t control the historical narrative,\u201d he said, \u201cthen they can\u2019t create the kind of fake history that props up their politics.\u201d<\/p>\n It shows how the presentation of history matters<\/p>\n In the United States, presidents and their families have always used their power to shape history and calibrate their own images. Jackie Kennedy insisted on cuts in William Manchester\u2019s book on her husband\u2019s 1963 assassination, \u201cThe Death of a President.\u201d Ronald Reagan and his wife got a cable TV channel to release a carefully calibrated documentary about him. Those around Franklin D. Roosevelt, including journalists of the era, took pains to mask the impact that paralysis had on his body and his mobility. <\/p>\n Trump, though, has taken it to a more intense level \u2014 a sitting president encouraging an atmosphere where institutions can feel compelled to choose between him and the truth \u2014 whether he calls for it directly or not.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are constantly trying to position ourselves in history as citizens, as citizens of the country, citizens of the world,\u201d said Robin Wagner-Pacifici, professor emerita of sociology at the New School for Social Research. \u201cSo part of these exhibits and monuments are also about situating us in time. And without it, it\u2019s very hard for us to situate ourselves in history because it seems like we just kind of burst forth from the Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n Timothy Naftali, director of the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library and Museum from 2007 to 2011, presided over its overhaul to offer a more objective presentation of Watergate \u2014 one not beholden to the president\u2019s loyalists. In an interview Friday, he said he was \u201cconcerned and disappointed\u201d about the Smithsonian decision. Naftali, now a senior researcher at Columbia University, said museum directors \u201cshould have red lines\u201d and that he considered removing the Trump panel to be one of them. <\/p>\n While it might seem inconsequential for someone in power to care about a museum\u2019s offerings, Wagner-Pacifici says Trump\u2019s outlook on history and his role in it \u2014 earlier this year, he said the Smithsonian had \u201ccome under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology\u201d \u2014 shows how important those matters are to people in authority.<\/p>\n \u201cYou might say about that person, whoever that person is, their power is so immense and their legitimacy is so stable and so sort of monumental that why would they bother with things like this … why would they bother to waste their energy and effort on that?\u201d Wagner-Pacifici said. Her conclusion: \u201cThe legitimacy of those in power has to be reconstituted constantly. They can never rest on their laurels.\u201d<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 It would seem the most straightforward of notions: A thing takes place, and it…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":112276,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[9600,9710,413,47395,69,171,71051,57,118,13025,63689,71050,56269,5603,1165,50,80,15119,28642,61,67,370,132,68,93,71052],"class_list":{"0":"post-112275","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"category-us","9":"tag-activism","10":"tag-beijing","11":"tag-civil-rights","12":"tag-corporation-for-public-broadcasting","13":"tag-donald-trump","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-franklin-d-roosevelt","16":"tag-general-news","17":"tag-human-rights","18":"tag-impeachment","19":"tag-jackie-kennedy","20":"tag-jason-stanley","21":"tag-josef-stalin","22":"tag-lgbtq","23":"tag-lifestyle","24":"tag-news","25":"tag-politics","26":"tag-ronald-reagan","27":"tag-smithsonian-institution","28":"tag-u-s-news","29":"tag-united-states","30":"tag-united-states-government","31":"tag-unitedstates","32":"tag-us","33":"tag-washington-news","34":"tag-william-manchester"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}