Washington crossing the Delaware on December 25–26, 1776, depicted in Emanuel Leutze’s 1851 painting.
The belief that Russia is a country with an unpredictable past is a common one, frequently cited in academic and cultural studies. Now the Trump administration has taken a step largely ignored by the mainstream media that will pave the way to an unpredictable past for the United States. Russia has a complicated and tumultuous history that found czars and commissars rewriting the past for their own benefit. Until now, the United States has never had a president who was so focused on altering the historical narrative of the country.
For the past 165 years, the Office of the Historian in the Department of State has produced an official documentary historical record of U.S. foreign policy decisions and diplomatic activities, using declassified records from foreign affairs and even intelligence agencies. Congress created the publication series during the Civil War to ensure an official account of President Abraham Lincoln’s foreign policy during the Civil War. The publication is called the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), and is essential to the work of congressional lawmakers and academic researchers. The publication series is also available to the public in major libraries and online.
An advisory committee of diverse historians helps ensure that the publications remain unbiased, transparent, and thorough. Well, no more. In April, Donald Trump, who has been vigorously attacking major aspects of our democratic civil society, quietly fired all the members of the committee. No reason was given, which is typical of the abrupt firings that Trump has made to the civil service, accompanied by a simple “Thank you for your service.” The Historical Advisory Committee (HAC) consisted of nine distinguished academics who served rotating terms and formed one of the most prestigious associations in the field of history. The committee itself was created by President George H.W. Bush in 1991. Dismantling the HAC cannot be described as a cost-cutting move, since the members of the advisory committee received a stipend of $250 for each quarterly meeting.
Bush created the HAC in the wake of the controversy over Iran-Contra and the questioning of the accuracy of the foreign relations series in describing key events during the Cold War. Former CIA directors such as Robert Gates were omitting or censoring documentation on CIA’s covert involvement in the Iran coup d’etat in 1953, the Guatemalan coup d’etat in 1954, the assassination of Patrice Lumumba in 1960, and the mass killings in Indonesia in 1965-1966. The appointment of the HAC led to a far more thorough and judicious FRUS series.
Trump’s move will ensure that future volumes will be far less thorough and judicious, if they are produced at all. This move is typical of his attacks on the inspectors general, government auditors, Department of Justice monitors, and research agencies that are designed to ensure responsibility and integrity in governance. Trump tried to dismantle the history committee in his first term, but accepted a compromise in requiring term limits for committee members to ensure greater rotation. The committee was designed to provide oversight of the work of the State Department historians. The absence of oversight will lead to a product that will be heavily partisan and incomplete. This is a major victory for Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who couldn’t be more eager to do Trump’s bidding.
No one is safe from Trump’s axe. Even the director of the National Portrait Gallery was fired; Trump called her “highly partisan.” The gallery is part of the Smithsonian Institution, which Trump has castigated for “divisive narratives” and an “anti-American ideology.” He called the director a “highly partisan” person, and a strong supporter of “DEI, which is totally inappropriate for her position.” The Smithsonian is not under the purview of the executive branch, but that hasn’t stopped Trump from making his purges.
The mayor of the District of Columbia is helping Trump to do his job, which she didn’t do in his first term in the White House. Mayor Muriel Bowser recently extended pre-trial detention, which means immigrants and others could be detained without being charged; repealed the Sanctuary Values Act, which means neighbors could be turned over to ICE; and increased funding for the police department, which has been cooperating with ICE.
Trump’s attacks on law, higher education, and research is reminiscent of Adolf Hitler’s campaign against similar institutions in Germany in 1933-1934. The humanities and the law were attacked in Germany in the early 1930s. The humanities and the law are certainly under attack in the United States, although we are starting to see some semblance of a pushback from key institutions such as Harvard University and the universities that make up the Big Ten. Hitler’s attacks on the judicial system were very successful, and the United States today finds a significant increase in threats against federal judges and the law itself. Even decisions from the Supreme Court are being ignored with impunity.
The major loser in the dismantling of the advisory committee is our democracy. George Washington University professor of American studies, Melani McAlister, attributed the firings to an effort to have power over the telling of history. “You would have to try very hard to even know the History Advisor Committee even existed,” McAlister said. “When people start targeting the telling of history, that becomes very dangerous for democracy.”
Trump’s moves in just under five months are consistent with Adolf Hitler’s moves in 1933 and 1934. In his first six months, Hitler managed to turn the democracy of the Weimar Republic into the police state of the Third Reich, mobilized around the cult of its leader. At that point in time, no one could have predicted how radical the transformation would become.
Trump has not turned the United States into a police state, although the actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which includes raids at churches and schools, have certainly been transformative and frightening. Trump has attacked virtually every aspect of civil society, as we have witnessed heavy-handed moves against law firms and legal institutions, federal judges and their decision making, higher education, and the most basic research in science and medicine…and now history.
Trump’s campaign will ensure that a very different America will emerge from these vicious attacks over a period of time. It is impossible to predict what the United States will resemble after a full four-year term for Donald Trump.