Gå frakoblet med Player FM -appen!
Postscript: Donald Trump is Erasing History – What YOU Can Do about it
Manage episode 471324066 series 3460165
On January 20th, Donald Trump issued an executive order entitled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” The order announced that “It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality. Under my direction, the Executive Branch will enforce all sex-protective laws to promote this reality...”
The enforcement of this executive order has rippled through the United States – and has included removing words and images from websites and papering over interpretive panels in museums. For example, material related to the Enola Gay -- a WWII Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, named after Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets – was removed because it contained the word “gay.” As a new joint statement from the American Historical Association and Organization of American Historians recounts, “Some alterations, such as those related to topics like the Tuskegee Airmen and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, have been hurriedly reversed in response to public outcry. Others remain. The scrubbing of words and acronyms from the Stonewall National Monument webpage, for instance, distorts the site’s history by denying the roles of transgender and queer people in movements for rights and liberation. This distortion of history renders the past unrecognizable to the people who lived it and useless to those who seek to learn from the past.”
To discuss how – and why – the Trump administration is censoring and removing historical materials, my guest is Dr. Wendy L. Rouse, Professor of History at San Jose State University where she is the program coordinator for the History/Social Science Teacher Preparation Program. Her research focuses on the history of gender and sexuality in the Progressive Era – and her publication for the National Park Service was changed after the executive order. She is the author of books and articles, including Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement published by NYU Press in 2022. Susan’s NBN conversation with Wendy about the book is here.
Mentioned in the Podcast:
- Organization of American Historians (OAH)’s Records at Risk Data Collection Initiative for individuals to report removed or changed material
- Reports by AP about scrubbing military websites and NPR on removal of photographs and mentions of trans and queer on National Park Service websites
- LBGTQ Historian statements and articles including letter signed by 360 historians
- Wendy’s blogposts on OutHistory and the NYU Press blog
- 5calls ap for connecting with senators and representatives
- GLBT Historical Association
- Multiple LGBTQ organizations, represented by Lambda Legal, have filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump Administration's executive orders attempting to erase transgender people and deny them access to services
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
1400 episoder
Manage episode 471324066 series 3460165
On January 20th, Donald Trump issued an executive order entitled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” The order announced that “It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality. Under my direction, the Executive Branch will enforce all sex-protective laws to promote this reality...”
The enforcement of this executive order has rippled through the United States – and has included removing words and images from websites and papering over interpretive panels in museums. For example, material related to the Enola Gay -- a WWII Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, named after Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets – was removed because it contained the word “gay.” As a new joint statement from the American Historical Association and Organization of American Historians recounts, “Some alterations, such as those related to topics like the Tuskegee Airmen and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, have been hurriedly reversed in response to public outcry. Others remain. The scrubbing of words and acronyms from the Stonewall National Monument webpage, for instance, distorts the site’s history by denying the roles of transgender and queer people in movements for rights and liberation. This distortion of history renders the past unrecognizable to the people who lived it and useless to those who seek to learn from the past.”
To discuss how – and why – the Trump administration is censoring and removing historical materials, my guest is Dr. Wendy L. Rouse, Professor of History at San Jose State University where she is the program coordinator for the History/Social Science Teacher Preparation Program. Her research focuses on the history of gender and sexuality in the Progressive Era – and her publication for the National Park Service was changed after the executive order. She is the author of books and articles, including Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement published by NYU Press in 2022. Susan’s NBN conversation with Wendy about the book is here.
Mentioned in the Podcast:
- Organization of American Historians (OAH)’s Records at Risk Data Collection Initiative for individuals to report removed or changed material
- Reports by AP about scrubbing military websites and NPR on removal of photographs and mentions of trans and queer on National Park Service websites
- LBGTQ Historian statements and articles including letter signed by 360 historians
- Wendy’s blogposts on OutHistory and the NYU Press blog
- 5calls ap for connecting with senators and representatives
- GLBT Historical Association
- Multiple LGBTQ organizations, represented by Lambda Legal, have filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump Administration's executive orders attempting to erase transgender people and deny them access to services
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
1400 episoder
Alle episoder
×
1 Michael Rosino, "Democracy Is Awkward: Grappling with Racism Inside American Grassroots Political Organizing" (UNC Press, 2025) 28:19

1 Constitutional Private Law: A Conversation with Garrett West 53:31

1 Neil Kraus, "The Fantasy Economy: Neoliberalism, Inequality, and the Education Reform Movement" (Temple UP, 2023) 1:15:23

1 Colleen A. Dunlavy, "Small, Medium, Large: How Government Made the U.S.into a Manufacturing Powerhouse" (Polity Press, 2024) 42:47

1 Engage and Evade in 2025: Asad L. Asad on Latino Immigrants in America 51:48

1 James Davison Hunter, "Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of America's Political Crisis" (Yale UP, 2024) 38:43

1 Kathleen Thelen, "Attention, Shoppers!: American Retail Capitalism and the Origins of the Amazon Economy" (Princeton UP, 2025) 50:03

1 Benjamin M. Studebaker, "Legitimacy in Liberal Democracies" (Edinburgh UP, 2024) 1:04:06

1 Jonathan Rauch, "Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy" (Yale UP, 2025) 53:23

1 Sam Klug, "The Internal Colony: Race and the American Politics of Global Decolonization" (U Chicago Press, 2025) 1:11:44

1 We Have Never Been Woke: A Conversation with Musa al-Gharbi 45:37

1 Postscript: History, Narratives, and Political Power--An Emergency Oral History Project 46:07

1 Andrew Canessa and Manuela Lavinas Picq, "Savages and Citizens: How Indigeneity Shapes the State" (U Arizona Press, 2025) 1:01:11

1 Lincoln A. Mitchell, "Three Years Our Mayor: George Moscone and the Making of Modern San Francisco" (U Nevada Press, 2025) 31:09
Velkommen til Player FM!
Player FM scanner netter for høykvalitets podcaster som du kan nyte nå. Det er den beste podcastappen og fungerer på Android, iPhone og internett. Registrer deg for å synkronisere abonnement på flere enheter.