President Trump has declared war on History.

David W. Blight, Professor of History (Yale University), has written an op-ed published in The New York Times, responding to the Trump administration’s attack on the Smithsonian Institution.

He writes that “On Thursday President Trump issued an executive order, ‘Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.’ In Mr. Trump’s customary bluster, the order bursts with accusations against unnamed persons who are presumably my fellow historians and museum curators for our ‘concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our nation’s history.'”

Blight observes that “The order’s repeated invocation of the Smithsonian Institution echoes now-familiar right-wing goals outlined in Project 2025 and elsewhere: ending the alleged ‘woke’ agendas on race and gender, creating ‘parents’ rights’ and school choices and promoting history aligned with founders’ ‘values.’

“According to the president, ‘objective facts’ have been replaced with a ‘distorted narrative driven by ideology.’ And then comes that penetrating epithet, the order’s organizing logic: the desire to end the ‘revisionist movement’ carried out by unnamed historians.”

Blight is a specialist in the history of the American Civil War and the author of Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Harvard University Press, 2001), Frederick Douglass’s Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee (LSU Press, 1989), and many other historical books and articles. He currently serves as President of the Organization of American Historians, the leading organization of professional historians who work on the History of the United States. Blight is well positioned to analyze President Trump’s executive order and assess its arguments.

Blight rightly argues that “The order is nothing less than a declaration of political war on the historians’ profession, our training and integrity, as well as on the freedom — in the form of curious minds — of anyone who seeks to understand our country by visiting museums or historic sites.”

The Trump administration at its so-called DOGE team may destroy many historical institutions, but their attempts to control historical research, writing, and education simply cannot win, Blight argues.

“In this naïve effort to control how the past is recorded and interpreted, the Trump administration has stepped into a minefield. While it remains unclear how much will change as a result of the executive order, it is already evident that the administration has started a war it cannot win in the long run.”

Ultimately, no single person or organization can control historical representations of the past.

Blight, David W. “Trump Cannot Win His War on History.” The New York Times (31 March 2025).