On November 8, Yale University will host “Public History in Authoritarian Times,” a symposium featuring a panel that aims to discuss threats to the National Park Service. The panel, “The Smithsonian Institution and the National Park Service, Here and Now,” will feature former staff members and affiliated scholars to discuss the threats to the two organizations, as well as ideas about how to maintain fortitude and resilience.
The panel comes as a recent executive order directed staff to remove signage at national parks that “disparages” American history. Critics say the effort whitewashes history on public lands and erases mentions of the impacts of climate change.
The announcement for the symposium explains that “recent efforts to accurately and honestly grapple with historical complexity in classrooms and cultural institutions are under attack. These attacks on public education, and on the independence and integrity of key institutions such as the National Park Service and the Smithsonian, demonstrate that the current presidential administration in the United States is waging war against historical and critical truth-telling.”
The panel will be moderated by Stephen Pitti, professor of History and of American Studies and the director of the Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity and Transnational Migration at Yale University.
Speakers on the panel will include:
- Gerry Seavo James, deputy director of the Sierra Club Outdoors for All Campaign
- Kate Masur, John D. MacArthur professor at Northwestern University
- Chuck Sams, inaugural director of Indigenous programs for the Yale Center for Environmental Justice and the first Native American to serve as director of the National Park Service (2021-2025)
- Sarah Weicksel, executive director of the American Historical Association
- Chad Williams, Tomorrow Foundation chair of American History and professor at Boston University
The symposium will be held at the MacMillan Center at Yale University. The event is free and open to the public.
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