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Trump Gets Even – Who Says Culture Doesn’t Matter?

September 10, 2025

President Donald Trump’s attacks on cultural institutions have come in rapid fire since the beginning of his second term only eight months ago, with the most visible targets being the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Kennedy Center for the Arts, Hollywood, and most recently, the Smithsonian Museums and the National Park Service for their representation of history. He also aims at memorials (ships and military bases) where he wants to replace the names of African American and gay heroes with those of confederate military leaders.


More recently, he is subjecting eight museums to a sweeping review of their content, which he claims put too much emphasis on race and slavery – on the most divisive aspects of American history, to the detriment of celebrating the grandeur of the country. He has also targeted public radio and television, as well as leading newspapers and elite universities. His efforts to police language in education has included various executive orders targeting DEI – “discriminatory equity ideology” – as well as what he calls “gender ideology”. Words such as diversity, equity, inclusion, and environmental justice have been flagged “for archiving or removal.”

Cultural institutions as shapers of shared identity



This comes to me as no surprise. As I argue in Seeing Others: How Recognition Works and How it Can Heal a Divided World (now out in paperback), these cultural sectors go a long way to shape collective memory and a sense of shared identity. In recent years, they have often emphasised social inclusion. With the emergence of Black Lives Matter in the early 2010s, they have engaged in a symbolic reordering of the status hierarchy that meant shedding light on past injustices and denouncing rosy depictions of American society. For instance. stand-up comics and Hollywood creatives have repeatedly poked fun at racist and homophobic narratives, building solidarity by making salient a shared understanding of how abhorrent and ridiculously backward such worldviews are. They have effectively used shared laughter against bigots to bring stigmatised religious, ethno-racial, and LBTQI groups into the mainstream.

In recent years, these cultural sectors have engaged in a symbolic reordering of the status hierarchy that meant shedding light on past injustices and denouncing rosy depictions of American society


Another particularly effective example of this type of symbolic reshuffling has been the 1619 Project led by New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones since 2019, which has fore-fronted the place of slavery in US history. This project developed into history curricula that was taught in over 3,500 US classrooms by 2020. In response to its rapidly growing influence, in his first presidential term, Trump hastily assembled a 1776 Commission and gave it the mandate to create a more sanitised view of American history centred on “patriotic education” – an account that downplayed the significance of slavery and racism in America’s past and included no input from professional historians. He revived this commission in one of his first executive orders on January 29, 2025.

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