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history
Racist Trump Rebuked for Demanding Smithsonian Stop Focusing on 'How Bad Slavery Was'
The White House said it would expand its review of museums' historical content to other institutions after it holds the Smithsonian "accountable."
Aug 20, 2025
A week after the White House announced it was examining the Smithsonian museums' exhibits to ensure they align with President Donald Trump's own "interpretation of American history," the president on Tuesday said the publicly funded museum system is "out of control" and contains materials that are overly negative about one of the most significant aspects of U.S. history: chattel slavery and its legacy.
"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," said the president on his social media platform, Truth Social.
Trump's comments came days after Russell Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, sent a letter to the Smithsonian—which includes 21 museums, 14 educational centers, and a zoo—ordering officials at eight of its museums to turn over information about exhibits that are being planned to commemorate the United States' 250th anniversary next year.
The officials were given 120 days to adjust the "tone, historical framing, and alignment with American ideals" to match the administration's view of history—which, judging from Trump's comments, doesn't include the history of how Black Americans were impacted by enslavement, despite the fact that Republicans at the party's 2020 national convention claimed credit for abolishing the practice.
"Anyone who thinks there’s ANYTHING GOOD about enslaving human beings has no business running ANY country… much less the world's most influential democracy," said U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) in response to Trump's comments.
The White House also pushed the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History this month to remove references to the president's two impeachment trials—once for pressuring Ukraine to investigate his political opponents and once for inciting his followers to attack the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
"Anyone who thinks there's ANYTHING GOOD about enslaving human beings has no business running ANY country… much less the world's most influential democracy."
In May, NBC News reported that after Trump issued his executive order demanding the Smithsonian take down exhibits that he claimed "divide Americans based on race," officials removed at least 32 artifacts from the National Museum of African American History and Culture, including a hymn book owned by Harriet Tubman, a former slave who later fought for the abolishment of the institution.
The White House told NBC News Tuesday that Trump plans to hold the Smithsonian "accountable" and "then go from there," expanding his review of museums to other institutions.
In his post at Truth Social Tuesday, Trump said his attorneys will "go through the Museums, and start the exact same process that has been done with Colleges and Universities where tremendous progress has been made"—a reference to the pressure the White House has placed on universities including Columbia and Harvard to suppress academic freedom and curb free speech.
The administration has pushed some schools to end diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives while coercing hundreds of millions of dollars in settlement payments.
Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley told The New York Times Tuesday that it was "the epitome of dumbness to criticize the Smithsonian for dealing with the reality of slavery in America."
"It's what led to our Civil War and is a defining aspect of our national history," said Brinkley. "And the Smithsonian deals in a robust way with what slavery was, but it also deals with human rights and civil rights in equal abundance."
Cornell William Brooks, a professor at Harvard, warned that "the SAME propaganda that said slavery wasn't so bad allowed people to feel so good about lynchings they mailed thousands of postcards" showing people who were lynched at public gatherings.
"My enslaved ancestors were kidnapped to South Carolina and subsequently beaten, raped, and humiliated," said Brooks. "'Brightness' is IN the history. Read the slavery narratives, talk to some Black people, OR just visit our powerful Smithsonian museums."
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The US Must Understand: The Story of the Gaza Genocide Did Not Begin on October 7
When those who seek to help resolve a conflict are captive to one side’s definitions and perspective, it’s a recipe for continued tension and ultimately disaster.
Aug 05, 2025
Our understanding of an historical event’s meaning is a function of two factors. The first is what we choose to identify as the starting point leading up to the event. The second is the lens through which we view it. This should be obvious, but unfortunately it is not, and the failure to acknowledge or understand it has consequences in everything from public policy to personal relationships.
This truth can be ignored due to thoughtlessness, blindness to one’s biases, or just plain ignorance. On some occasions there can be malign intent, including efforts to deliberately hide what one knows to be an event’s antecedents for political or personal reasons.
Before examining the issue that prompted this column, I want to share an example. The comedian Dick Gregory once noted that despite what we were taught in school, “Columbus didn’t discover America, because it wasn’t lost.” His point seems simple enough, but upon closer examination it reveals deeper truths.
“Columbus discovered America” erases the history, civilization, and contributions of the Indigenous groups who populated the lands that Europeans came to call the New World. Even the term “New World” was a thinly veiled masking of their imperial self-understanding and intent. “We discovered these lands, and they are ours to take, name, and exploit.”
U.S. reporters appear to be required to include a line in their stories that reads, “The hostilities began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas militants attacked Israel killing 1,200 and taking 250 hostages.”
The American history we were taught was an extension of European history. It began with Columbus. Then moved to the Spanish, British, and French colonialists, culminating in the Revolutionary War and the birth of the United States. The native peoples were treated as bit players in the unfolding story—at times, a footnote, at others an inconvenient obstacle.
This story of American history results from choosing Columbus as the starting point and using a lens so Eurocentric that it only sees the Indigenous peoples who populated this land as less than human and therefore less deserving of defining their own history or even remaining on their land. They were removed and massacred, their humanity was ignored, and their treatment was justified because they were of less worth than the Europeans who displaced them.
This reflection was prompted by the way Israel’s war on Gaza continues to be reported in the press and discussed in policy circles. U.S. reporters appear to be required to include a line in their stories that reads, “The hostilities began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas militants attacked Israel killing 1,200 and taking 250 hostages.” It isn’t accidental that this line (or something very close to it) occurs in almost every U.S. print story.
We all must agree that what happened on October 7 was traumatic for Israelis. It was a shock that their security was breached and that some horrible and condemnable atrocities were committed by Hamas and others who joined in their attacks. But history didn’t begin or end on October 7.
Recall that just a few weeks before that the Hamas attack, then-U.S. President Joe Biden’s national security adviser noted that the Middle East was the calmest it had been in years. This statement gave short shrift to the Palestinian reality and made clear the biased lens through which he saw the region. He was ignoring Israel’s continued economic strangulation of Gaza (which made Palestinians increasingly dependent on Israel or Hamas for their livelihood) and the growing threat of settler violence, settlement expansion, and land confiscations in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
A few weeks after October 7, I met with this same individual and listened to him describe the pain and fear of Israelis and how October 7 evoked the traumas of their history. I told him that I completely understood and agreed that Hamas stood rightly condemned for what they had done. I cautioned him, however, not to ignore the trauma of the Palestinians—their pain and fears—and their history of dispossession. He became angry, waving off my comments as “what aboutism.”
As the weeks and months wore on, when I would write a comment about: the growing Palestinian civilian casualty toll; or the bombing of hospitals; or the denial of water, food, medicine, and electricity; or the deliberate destruction of more than 70% of Gaza’s buildings; and the repeated forced expulsions of families—the responses I would receive invariably included “Hamas started it,” “What about the hostages,” or worse. In other words, Israeli lives were all that mattered. And the Israeli narrative became the only acceptable one. In other words, since the story began on October 7, what followed was a justifiable response.
The Israelis’ ability to control the narrative has long characterized the conflict. They would say: “The Balfour Declaration gave Israel a legal right to Palestine”; or “In 1948, tiny Israel was attacked by all surrounding Arab armies”; or “In 1967 Israel was only defending itself.” All of these Israeli-defined “starting points” are fictions that ignore everything that led up to them and the stories they tell are seen only through the biased lens of those who have imposed them.
This problem of false narratives based on biased histories isn’t just a problem for Israel or the U.S. It is unfortunately all too common, especially in conflict situations. When those who seek to help resolve a conflict are captive to one side’s definitions and perspective, it’s a recipe for continued tension and ultimately disaster.
Peacemaking requires that an effort be made to rise above false narratives, self-serving starting points and the biased perceptions of one or another side. That’s not “what-aboutism”—it’s leadership. And it’s been sorely lacking in the U.S.
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Restorative Archaeology? Time to Return Looted Treasures to Sardinia
A range of voices continue to demand the return of the island's looted treasures from private and public venues, including the British Museum in London.
Jun 28, 2025
When the small statues of a 3,000-year-old Bronze Age priestess and her archer protector take the stage at a Christie's auction next week in London, the Nurnet nonprofit organization in Sardinia plans to make their own bid to bring the sacred bronze pieces back home.
Despite decades of protests against the sale of the island's patrimony, where thousands of UNESCO-recognized Nuragic tower complexes attest to Sardinia's central role in the Mediterranean Sea during the Bronze Age, 2,000 years before the rise of the Roman Empire, a range of voices continue to demand the return of the island's looted treasures from private and public venues, including the British Museum in London.
"We think that the purchase could be of interest to the entire Sardinian community of enthusiasts," the all-volunteer organization Nurnet said in a statement, in launching a GoFundMe campaign for the auction. °The institutions do not have regulations that allow them to intervene in the short term and allocate the funds. We decided to intervene, with the savings of the members and the help of enthusiasts."
The history of Sardinia, especially the extraordinary findings from its Nuragic civilization in the Bronze Age, remains in a state of eternal recovery.
The Sardinian group successfully purchased four bronze pieces in 2015 at a similar auction, and then donated them to a local museum.
Last week, in fact, the Monte Prama Fondation, which has recently gained international attention for its 50-year restoration of massive stone giant sculptures from the Bronze Age, called on the British Museum to repatriate thousands of ancient Punic gold jewelry and Nuragic items that had been notoriously raided in the 19th century.
Despite the massive hoard of artifacts, which have been documented in various reports and a 270-page book, only a handful are on display at the London museum, while the rest have remained in storage for over a century.
While the British Museum Act of 1963 forbids the return of artifacts obtained by the institution, critics point to the museum's ability to "loan" their treasures back to the host country.
"Returning the bronzetti," Nurnet pointed out, "is also a way to tell a beautiful Sardinia story, to bring this work of art back to domu sua," the Sardinian language for "home."
For Nurnet advocates and other Sardinian groups, the extraordinary detective work of a Sardinian policeman and actions of the Cleveland Museum could serve as an example for the British Museum and other institutions.
In fact, the bronze priestess on sale at Christie's next week shares a common origin—the shadowy Switzerland art market in the 1990s.
On a recent trip to the Ferruccio Berreca Archaeological Museum in Sant'Antioco, I visited a small bronze archer in a glass case, straddling the piece of stone, with two long unwieldy horns thrusting up on his helmet, as if challenging anyone to a charge. Yet, this miniature figure in bronze, a little over eight inches tall, which was tall for the rest of the pieces in the Bronze Age collection, stood there with a gesture of confidence, his hand outstretched in an offering, as if willing to tell the story of his twisted journey.
Centuries before Homer composed The Odyssey, the Sardinians cast miniature bronzes or bronzetti, including ships, among hundreds of other types of bronze pieces. They were vessels of stories. Found mainly in sacred water temples or a rare tomb, they served as exquisite votive offerings dating back to the 12th or 11th centuries B.C.
In 1865, a shepherd uncovered a trove of bronzetti at the Nuragic sanctuary site of Abini in the heart of the central mountains, including an otherworldly figure with four arms and four eyes, with two long horns jutting from its helmet, holding the two round shields that some associated with the ancient Shardana or "People of the Sea" that arrived in Egypt, while others believed it referred to Plato's Symposium on the original four-eyed humans divided in half by Zeus.
These tiny artifacts, often no more than 5-12 inches, spread across sacred sites on the island, including the most remote uplands, and then crossed over the sea into Etruscan tombs, at numerous sites in Tuscany, Lazio, and Apuglia. They journeyed along the Italian boot of civilizations, entering the Greek Sanctuary of Hera Lacinia at the tip of Calabria, on the Ionian Sea, on the eastern coast of Italy.
Each one of these boats, like the hundreds that remained behind in Sardinia, observed archaeologist Fulvia Lo Schiavo, was "not only a work of refined artistic craftsmanship and a precious and sacred object," but it was also "in itself a story and a message," following its own cosmology and narrative.
The Cleveland Museum had hailed one bronzetti figure as an "exceptionally fine example" of bronze work in the lost-wax method, produced by "a rather mysterious group of people who lived in Sardinia in the first millennium B.C. and who left no written records." In the catalog of their notable acquisitions in 1991, the American museum dated the artifact back to the ninth century B.C. They called it "the warrior," and used it as the logo for a section in the museum.
Anyone in Sardinia would have called it "the archer," given the extraordinary longbow hanging off the shoulder of the figure, the distinctive arm guard on the left forearm, a quiver for the arrows on his back. At least, that's what Lieutenant Roberto Lai thought when he saw the Polaroid photo of the bronze figure for the first time. Serving with the heritage protection unit of the Carabiniere police, Lai had been placed in charge of sorting through a treasure trove of documents and artifacts traced to a notorious trafficker of art in Basel, Switzerland in the mid-1990s.
Thanks to two strange, fatal car crashes in Sardinia over a 10-year period, both of which left behind briefcases of cash, diaries with addresses of clandestine diggers and their contacts, and a chart of acquisitions, Lai was able to connect the dots with the infamous Swiss brigand and his warehouse.
Turning over the photo of the archer, Lai got the surprise of a lifetime. "Grutt'e Acqua" was scrawled across the back, tracing the piece to its origins at the 1500 B.C. Nuragic site on the smaller island of Sant'Antioco, where Lai had grown up. It was neither "mysterious," that fulsome code word often trotted out to cover a lack of historical inquiry, nor legally acquired, in Lai's view.
Lai knew the legacy of the nuraghe at Grutt'e Acqua or Grutti 'e Acqua, variously translated as "the grottoes of water," or "the grottoes and water," was not just a pile of rocks, but an intricate architectural wonder of waterways and millennial planning. But he wasn't alone.
The tomb raider also knew, like any shepherd in Sardinia, that the ornate water temples or sacred wells nearby housed the bronze sculptures that had been left as communal offerings. Trudging up my same path, the raider most likely bypassed the Nuragic reservoir that sat at the basin of the hill, a green pool encased by small boulders with the mystic air of a lake in the woods.
"Electrified" by the discovery of the photo and its connection to his island, Lai followed the trail left by the trafficker, his Polaroid in hand, only to come up empty-handed with its match to any institution or collector. Where had the archer gone? No final receipts of his transactions were to be found. The cultural heritage detective didn't give up. Over the next few years, he obsessively dug through any announcements or catalogs or listings at museums, auctions, and private collections with artifacts from Sardinia and Italy. The collections were endless. They still are today.
An entire book on ancient Sardinian artifacts behind lock and key at the British Museum dated back to "boatloads" of "very remarkable" items that had been plundered at 36 tombs in the 1850s. Much of it came from the Tharros and Mont'e Prama areas. The British Museum had its own Sardinian archer, too, though he dramatically drew back his arrow, as if to protect himself. The Getty Museum in Los Angeles featured its Nuragic archer, though it differed in the details. In 1990, The New York Times featured a show at the Merrin Gallery in New York City: "Bronzes Conjure Up Images of a Fabled Past." It included the "raw power" of a Nuragic priest from the ninth century B.C. (The Merrin Gallery would be embroiled in fraud and the acquisition of "questionable antiquities" for years.)
In fact, hardly any major archaeological museum didn't have artifacts from the Bronze Age in Sardinia. While Christie's famous auction house once called off a million-dollar auction for a 4,000-year-old stone carving from the island in 2014, after the Italian police objected to the "robbery of the heritage and civilization of Sardinia," it still continues to peddle Sardinian bronzes. One five-inch Nuragic figure from the Bronze Age went for $125,000 in 2017. It also came from a private dealer in Switzerland.
The trafficking of these prized pieces, among other riches, was an old tradition, of course, dating back to the Roman period. In 1365, the governor of Cagliari brought ancient jewels dug up from a prehistoric site to the Court of Spain, as an elaborate offering from the island. The honeycombing of ruins was so bad that a law was passed in 1481 to stop the digging for treasure, especially among the clergy.
Not just for jewels. By the mid-16th century, a common proverb recounted how the stone walls of the Nuragic, Phoenician, and Roman city of Tharros were "transported away in cartloads." In 1851, the pioneering archeologist and clergyman Giovanni Spano called on government officials to protect the prehistoric sites, which he feared had fallen into the hands of "other people who will not know how to appreciate them."
In 1923, National Geographic magazine lamented the national pasttime of tomb raiders and archaeological thieves in Sardinia, as if the craze hadn't let up. Even the Nazis craved Sardinian artifacts. During a visit to the island in the late 1930s, Adolf Hitler's deputy Hermann Göering attempted to take a priceless glass-beaded necklace that had been recently excavated at a Punic necropolis dating to 300 B.C.
One evening, scrolling online, doing his usual regimen of going museum by museum, the Sardinian detective landed on the Cleveland Museum of Art site. He was stunned by the match. It was the archer in his Polaroid.
It took 18 months of high-level negotiations, including the involvement of the attorney general in Ohio, but the Sardinians managed to convince the American museum to return the stolen artifact. In exchange, in fact, the Italian government had to agree to two conditions: that the archer, among other stolen goods, would be returned to its native place, and that Italy would loan 13 exhibits of similar value for the next 25 years.
When the archer finally arrived at the Ferruccio Barreca Archaeological Museum in Sant'Antioco in 2009, Lai stood by for its installation. The archer's placement in that little glass case was deceiving with its significance. The detective would eventually write a book, as well as a graphic novel, on the true crime adventure, as well as other histories of Sant'Antioco. Lai declared the Nuragic archer had returned to "where history had placed it."
Or recovered it, perhaps. Just like the Nurnet effort today with the bronze figures at the Christie's auction.
In effect, their campaign amounts to a new trend that should be called "restorative archaeology." In a period of cultural revival, it speaks to the process of "re-storying" the island and its history.
Meanwhile, the history of Sardinia, especially the extraordinary findings from its Nuragic civilization in the Bronze Age, remains in a state of eternal recovery.
At least until tomb raiders, and institutions like the British Museum, follow the example of the Cleveland Museum.
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