To paraphrase Queen Elizabeth II, 2025 is not a year we’ll look back with undiluted pleasure

It was indeed a challenging year, or as the late queen said in 1992, an “annus horribilis,” for postsecondary education. It was a particularly distressing year for many historians, especially those of us who focus their scholarship on racial, gender, social, and cultural history.

Since his inauguration, Donald Trump wasted no time dismantling many progressive and apolitical institutions benefiting a wide variety of Americans. Organizations such as the National Institutes of Health, the US Institute of Peace, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts have witnessed Trump’s callous destruction of their institutions.

The Trump administration also attacked the 179-year-old Smithsonian Institution, authoring a disingenuous executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” Trump argued (without proof) the Smithsonian had come under “the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology” and had attempted to “rewrite history” in an effort to discredit various segments of the population. Interestingly, although not surprisingly, Trump specifically targeted the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the forthcoming Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum for derision and criticism.

More recently, the Trump administration dismantled a display........

© Yuma Sun