President Donald Trump is waging a campaign against our Smithsonian museums, in particular the National Museum of African American History and Culture, because they tell the truth about our nation and its history.
Few Americans understand the importance of history and of the free study of it. I spent the 1975-76 academic year in Soviet Russia doing doctoral dissertation research in Russian history. I got to know a Russian journalism student who said he was an atheist. Nonetheless, before I left Russia I gave him a copy of a book by Nikolai Berdyaev, a prominent Russian philosopher and Orthodox theologian from early in the 20th century. My friend said to me: “You will never know what you have done for me.”
What I had done for him was to give him at least a little window into his country’s actual history, something the communist regime of the USSR did not want people to have. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union monopolized the study and teaching of Russian history. It completely distorted and lied about that history. My friend knew that that was true, and having the opportunity to read something from Russian history that his government would never allow him to read nearly reduced him to tears.
Donald Trump treats American history the way the Soviet communists treated Russian history. If we let him get away with doing so, the consequences will be dire for our country. We simply must not let the MAGA movement take control of and distort the study and teaching of history.
Rev. Dr. Thomas C. Sorenson
Sultan
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