U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., February 18, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
“The Museums throughout Washington, but all over the Country are, essentially, the last remaining segment of ‘WOKE,’” Trump wrote recently on his Truth Social. “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.”
So, Trump has ordered that the Smithsonian replace “divisive or ideologically driven language with unifying, historically accurate and constructive descriptions.”
JD Vance calls American universities “fundamentally corrupt” and has referred to them as “the enemy.” In his 2021 speech at the National Conservatism Conference, Vance stated that universities “control the knowledge in our society” and promote “deceit and lies” rather than truth, and he pledged to “aggressively attack” these institutions to reform what he sees as their left-wing ideological domination.
So, the Trump regime has attacked Harvard, Columbia, and many other institutions of higher learning and is withholding government funds until they agree to the Trump regime’s terms for deciding what they teach.
Trump has for years condemned what he terms the “liberal bias” in the the media, calling journalists the “enemy within.”
So, he has defunded PBS, NPR, the Voice of America, and Radio Free Europe. He has sued ABC and CBS. His Federal Communications Commission refused to allow CBS’s parent company, Paramount, to be sold until CBS purged itself of commentary and programming critical of Trump, including Stephen Colbert’s late-night comedy show.
Are Trump and Vance correct that museums, universities, and the media have a left-wing “woke” bias?
It’s the wrong question. It’s the question Trump would like everyone to be asking, but it obscures the more important question: Should government be determining the content of museums, universities, and the media? Or should the responsibility rest with these institutions?
Logically, someone has to decide what a museum will display; usually this is left to people known as “curators.” Someone has to decide what courses universities will offer; usually this is left to university professors and professional staff. Someone in media corporations has to decide what stories they’re going to report and which news items they’ll feature as important; usually these decisions are left to managing editors and senior producers.
We’d be concerned if wealthy donors or advertisers played roles in these choices, because their economic interests may conflict with our interests as members of the public in learning the truth.
We’d also be concerned if politicians played roles in such choices, because their interests in remaining in power may conflict with our interests in learning the truth.
Better that professional museum curators, university faculties, and managing editors and producers make those choices because they’re “unbiased” in the sense that they don’t have ulterior motives.
The issue isn’t any mythological left-wing “woke.” It’s trust that potential conflicts of interest don’t determine content.
We wouldn’t and shouldn’t trust what we learn from a museum curated by Trump and his lapdogs, or a university whose curriculum and faculty were influenced by them, or a media corporation under their patronage. Why? Because Trump and his lapdogs would want to promote themselves and their views and censor anything critical of them.
Just as many readers are now suspicious of the editorial page of The Washington Post because the paper’s owner, Jeff Bezos, has censored pieces critical of Trump — and many worry about CBS News because the network’s new owner, David Ellison, has promised Trump’s FCC that its news coverage will reflect “varied ideological perspectives” — we have reason to worry that the museums, universities, and media with which Trump is “negotiating” will censor themselves from writing anything critical of Trump for fear of offending him.
We don’t trust Trump because he has shown a brazen disregard for the truth.
But we shouldn’t trust any administration to decide what museums, universities, or the media tell us. It’s not a matter of right or left or “woke.” It’s about the political independence of truth-tellers.
A free people needs to know things that an administration may not want them to know and must be able to trust that the agents of truth — museums, universities, the media — are not compromised.
Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/."
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