Trump is liberating the Smithsonians from ‘Woke’

Back in March, Donald Trump issued an executive order called “Restoring Truth And Sanity To American History.” Its aim was to counter the “revisionist movement” in our cultural institutions that sought “to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.”  

Exhibit number one was the Smithsonian Institution, the sprawling agglomeration of museums, libraries, historical landmarks and assorted educational centers in and around Washington DC with affiliate institutions in 47 states. 

Founded in 1846, the Smithsonian was the culmination of an earlier movement, supported by such luminaries as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and John Quincy Adams, to “promote science and the useful arts.” 

The institution is named for the British chemist James Smithson, whose fortune was bequeathed to the United States in order “to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an Establishment for the increase & diffusion of knowledge among men. Back then money made a physical impression. President Andrew Jackson deputed the diplomat Richard Rush to retrieve the pelf, which he did in 1838: 105 sacks containing 104,960 gold sovereigns, worth about $500,000 at the time – $15 million today.

Back then the phrase “useful knowledge” was touted everything. That’s what the Smithsonian was created to promote. That was then. “In recent years,” as Trump notes, the Smithsonian has “come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology. This shift has promoted narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.” 

Trump mentions an exhibition called The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture which purports to show how “societies including the United States have used race to establish and maintain systems of power, privilege, and disenfranchisement.” What it really does is undermine any sense of patriotism and shared American identity.  

Executive orders are one thing. Enacting or enforcing them is something else. Donald Trump understands this. Thus it is that his order to abolish the racist practice of the “diversity, equity and inclusion” industry was followed up by fines of hundreds of millions at Columbia, Harvard and many other institutions that continued the practice overtly or by stealth in defiance of the law. 

And thus it is that Trump’s order to restore “truth and sanity” to the institutions charged with preserving and disseminating American history has just been given teeth. Yesterday, Lonnie G. Bunch III, Secretary of the Smithsonian, received a letter whose subject line reads “Internal Review of Smithsonian Exhibitions and Materials.” Signed by Lindsey Halligan, Special Assistant to the President, Vince Haley, Director of the Domestic Policy Council and Russell Vought, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, the letter announces a “comprehensive internal review” of the Smithsonian, its exhibitions and curatorial procedures. “This initiative aims to ensure alignment with the President’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions.” 

How will that happen? Well, the administration will review “exhibition text, wall didactics, websites, educational materials, and digital and social media content to assess tone, historical framing, and alignment with American ideals.” It will interview curatorial staff “to better understand the selection process, exhibition approval workflows, and any frameworks currently guiding exhibition content.” One major focus will be on how the Smithsonian plans to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary next year. Out will go the divisive anti-American racialist rhetoric that has disfigured so much official cultural patronage in recent years. In will come affirmative exhibitions that acknowledge America’s many achievements and that emphasize the traditions and historical realities that unite us.

What is happening, and what is going to happen, at the Smithsonian museums may seem like a footnote to the larger Trump agenda of “Making America Great Again.” In fact, it stands at the center of that project. Donald Trump understands something that the left has grasped at least since the 1960s but that conservatives have grasped dimly if at all. If you want to restore society, you must commandeer the institutions that represent elite culture. Over the last several decades, those institutions have gradually become captive of a woke ideology that denigrates America while simultaneously celebrating the entire radical menu of racialist redress, sexual exoticism and political intransigence.  

Back in January, I wrote an column claiming that Donald Trump was “a great man of history.” That occasioned a fair amount of ridicule. But as the months pass and Trump moves from one triumph to the next, doing beneficent things that no previous president would have thought possible, my description seems more and more apt. Trump is not only making Americans safer and more prosperous. He is also moving on several fronts to give them back their cultural and educational institutions. His actions at the Smithsonian are the tip of that liberating spear.