Telling America's story at the National Archives

Colleen Shogan, archivist of the United States, joins us for a conversation about democratizing access to national records and running a non-partisan organization in an increasingly polarized country. Shogan was appointed by President Biden and has been criticized by both sides of the political spectrum for trying to use the National Archives to tell a partisan story about America's history.

Shogan is a political scientist by training and talks about making the transition from academia to government and how her background as a scholar of the presidency informs the work she does now. We also discuss the National Archives and Records Administration's efforts to digitize billions of records housed in facilities across the country.

We recorded this episode before the 2024 election, but as you'll hear, it takes on new significance in the face of a second Trump administration.

Mentioned in this episode:

National Archives Citizen Archivist program

Wall Street Journal article about Shogan

Shogan's response to the Wall Street Journal article

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Michael Berkman
From the McCourtney Institute for Democracy on the campus of Penn State University. I'm Michael Berkman and I'm Chris Beem.

Jenna Spinelle
I'm Jenna Spinelle, and welcome to Democracy Works. This week, we are talking with Colleen Shogan, who is the Archivist of the United States. She is just the 11th person to hold that position. She took office last year in 2023 she visited Penn State at the end of October, and so we recorded this conversation before the election, and this is the first time the show has been on, and the three of us have been together since the election. And I think that this is maybe a little bit different than we thought things were going to be with having Dr Shogan on as a guest.

Michael Berkman
So I don't think many of us really paid much attention to the archives, unless we've visited it on the National Mall, where there is a sort of reverence around our certain of our fund founding documents, but many of us, you know, started to think about the National Archives when Donald Trump was charged with multiple felonies for not returning documents. And what that really should bring to our attention is that the National Archives are huge. They're not just that building on the on the mall, but they're actually warehouses and warehouses of material, because the archives is essentially collecting. What is it collecting? It's collecting almost everything relevant to the American to American government, with the exception of, I think she'll talk about in the interview. Library of Congress is responsible for copyrighted material, but all kinds of government documents end up in the archives. And I think what we know about it right now from the Donald Trump case is that you're not supposed to walk away with the documents that there is a Presidential Records Act controlling many of those documents, but from this interview, I think we'll learn that the archives are also responsible for telling national stories, yeah,

Chris Beem
And, and for for representing the the American people in terms of preserving and collecting those documents, right? 

Michael Berkman
Because the decision about what documents to put out? There is a choice, sure, right, right? So what's in the archives? Building on the National Mall, the Constitution is there. Constitution declaration, the Declaration of Independence is there. And Bill of Rights, and the Bill of Rights is there.

Chris Beem
I'm not sure if anything else is there? I don't it's not, as I recall, not a very big room.

Michael Berkman
It's a very small room.

Chris Beem
It doesn't take long to get through it. Yeah, there probably are other documents up there, but, and we'll talk about the documents that she wants to that she's planning on adding right rotunda.

Michael Berkman
And she's a political appointee, and so immediately you have to start to think that there is a, you know, a sort of story that's chosen to be told, as opposed to other stories that are going to be told because she's picked by she's picked by a partisan person, right? She's picked by the President and has to be approved by the Senate, and so there's going to be political back and forth over how the archivist chooses to use these documents in a way that tells a story about the United States. You know, those three documents are, those are our founding documents, of course. But you know, there are many that would argue that we didn't really even become a democracy until the 14th Amendment, or the Voting Rights Act, or the Voting Rights Act, really the voting rights act of 1965 Thurgood Marshall, for example, wrote a brilliant little essay about why he refused to celebrate the Constitution at its, I think, 150th anniversary, because he feels like it's not democratic, and that the United States didn't really become a democracy until the flaws in the Constitution were fixed. But talking about those flaws as we're learning these days more and more. And maybe the 1619 project, you know, really highlighted in certain ways. And the emphasis on and the emphasis on anti racism, for example, has really driven home the some of the racist basis of some of these documents, and it made them highly contested in some quarters. So

Chris Beem
Colleen Shogan has two really significant challenges associated with her tenure. One is this, you know, the idea that finding a presentation. Of American history that both parties find acceptable is, is a challenge, and the other challenge is, seems, dealing with this, you know, flood of information in a digital age where you know it's not simply a matter, a matter of collecting papers, but you're collecting emails and you're collecting social media posts and whatever else, and all of that just explodes the amount of information that that has a legitimate claim to being in the archives. But how do you keep them, and how do you store them, and how do you make them accessible? Those are, those are two very separate but very, very operative, very timely problems that the archivist is having to deal with. 

Michael Berkman

It seems like there are really two main jobs there. As that, I'm sort of pulling out of this, that one is the repository for all of this information, and then the responsibility, of course, to make that information available to scholars and the public. And she'll talk about that. I mean, that's, that's one of their main that's one of their main functions. Now, that doesn't require telling a story of any kind. That just requires providing the information for people to tell their own stories about the American history. And I mean, it always seems to me that a diverse country tells a diverse set of stories about its founding and what it what it's become. But the second is that they do have this job of putting some documents out and not others, and having other sorts of displays, and I feel like I'm not using the right language, but immersive experiences, or whatever it is that they're doing that is intended to use the documents in a way that tell these stories. So I see these two as sort of separate. One is just making the information available, and then the other is the choice that they make to tell certain kinds of stories rather than others. And in this day and age, boy, we just fight about these stories, right and left.

Jenna Spinelle
 And I think we will certainly get to that in the interview, maybe perhaps a little bit after. It's also worth noting that just after we did this interview, there was an article about Dr Shogun that came out in the Wall Street Journal, and some of you might have seen it. We'll link to it in the show notes, and I'm sure that we'll come back and talk about it here after the interview, but for now, let's go to the interview with Colleen Shogun. 

Jenna Spinelle
Colleen Shogan, welcome to Democracy Works. Thanks for joining us today.

Colleen Shogan
I'm thrilled to be here.

Jenna Spinelle
So lots to talk about regarding your work at the National Archives. But to kick things off, I think some of our listeners may be surprised to learn that you are not a historian or a librarian by training, but you are, in fact, a political scientist. So we do have some academic listeners of the show. Might be curious to hear about your trajectory. How did you go from political science to the National Archives?

Colleen Shogan
Absolutely. Well, I Yes, I am a political scientist. That's what I was trained to be. I went to graduate school and got a PhD in Political Science, and when I finished my degree, I went to George Mason University and as an assistant professor to teach in the in the government department there. And really, quite frankly, when I got to George Mason, which is right outside of Washington, DC and in Virginia, Northern Virginia, I thought that I might be at George Mason for the remainder of my career. Because a lot of people, especially when you get a very good job, like at a place at George Mason, a really respected research university right outside of Washington, DC. I was teaching American politics. It really doesn't get much better than that. And really, I probably would have stayed at George Mason for my career. I took a detour. About four years in, I decided to apply for an American Political Science Association congressional fellowship because I was teaching students at George Mason who had a lot more experience working in the institutions that I was teaching about, and I had been a traditionally trained academic without a lot of experience outside of my discipline training. So I decided to apply for the fellowship, and I got it, and I thought it would be a great experience for me to work on Capitol Hill, work in Congress for a year and then return back to George Mason and prove my teaching and also potentially affect my. Search, agenda and trajectory, and that proved to be a really life defining moment for me, even though I didn't know that was going to be at that point in time, because I went to work on Capitol Hill, I worked in the Senate, and I found out that I just really enjoyed it. There was all kinds of things that I was doing that I had never done before in my life. I liked working in an office. It was, I liked the writing and the research that was done in a congressional office. And I really liked the fact that when I wrote something that, you know, it was only one or two other people had to read it or approve of it before it got to a United States senator, and that, you know, I could actually help define what that agenda was going to be, what questions were asked at hearings, and to really see the efficacy of some of the work that I had done. So after that fellowship year, I was asked to my boss, the senator asked if I wanted to stay for a full time position, a permanent position on his staff, and it was a really hard decision to make, because I was on tenure track at George Mason. I was doing very well. I had written a book, you know, I had a lot of articles published, and I was fairly confident that I would be tenured. So I was really trying to decide whether I wanted to stay on that track as a tenured professor, or if I wanted to do something else. And I, you know, I just decided that if I was going to do something different in my life, this was absolutely the time to do it. So I stayed in the Senate. I accepted the job. I resigned from George Mason, and that really changed my entire career, because after working in the Senate for another year and a half or so, I decided to join the Congressional Research Service in the Library of Congress, which is the non partisan organization that provides research and analysis to all members of Congress and their staffs. I went to CRS and worked there for about eight years, and I became the deputy director of CRS, and then my career changed again when I was asked if I would step out of my role at CRS and change jobs at the Library of Congress to help run a new division of the Library of Congress, which had gathered together all of the public programming at the Library of Congress. So think about our K 12 education programming, our visitor services, exhibits, the National Book Festival, all the things that were public facing at the library were kind of disseminated throughout the library, which is a pretty big place. I did that for many years, and decided I had an opportunity to join the nonprofit, nonpartisan White House Historical Association, which is the organization the 501 c3 non profit organization that works alongside the White House, whoever is in the White House, for the preservation of the White House and telling the history of the White House and the people who lived and worked there. And that my PhD, my dissertation, was on the presidency, and that was the course that I taught most frequently at George Mason, and it's really my first love the presidency. And I thought, well, this is the only point in time if I ever want to pivot back to studying the presidency and working on the presidency. This is it. So I decided to accept that position leave the Library of Congress, and that also ended up being very important as well, because taught me a lot about nonprofit management, and obviously put me on the radar at the White House, which is then, which resulted eventually in my nomination as Archivist of the United States.

Jenna Spinelle
You mentioned the National Archives organization that you lead, as well as the Library of Congress. Can you tell us what the differences and similarities are between those two? Maybe any other organizations that are also in that orbit?

Colleen Shogan
It's a great question. So the Library of Congress. One difference, just to be to start at the very beginning, the very basics, is the Library of Congress is in the legislative branch of government. So that is legislative branch agency, the National Archives. We are an independent agency, but we are in the executive branch. So there's we're in different branches of government. That's one difference, but we both are have collections that reflect the history of the United States, and in different ways, the Library of Congress, and I'm gonna say things that are generalities. There's always exceptions, but in general, the Library of Congress deals mostly in its collection with copyright copyrighted materials. So think books for sure, films, you know, photographs that might be have copyright assigned to them, not 100% of course, they have things that do not have copyright assigned to them, like the first the presidential papers all the way up through Calvin Coolidge, but in other manuscript collections, but in general, the Library of Congress, that's what they are collecting. Like you might expect a library to collect the National Archives. We collect our nation's records, so we are only dealing in government records. And there's two types of. Of government records. There are federal records, which are records from our federal agencies all the way from the biggest agency, like the Department of Defense, all the way down to a small agency, or, for example, what I worked on, the women's suffrage Centennial Commission, all the commissions we have, but those would be considered temporary federal agencies as well, and their records, if it's a federal commission, would become part of the National Archives as well. So we have federal records, which is the vast majority of our collection, and then we also have presidential records, and the presidential records, of course, originating from the night the 1978 Presidential Records Act. So we deal in governmental records, and that's how we collect the history of the United States as citizens and as agencies interact. You know, produce government documents, products of government. It doesn't just have to be documents, it could be maps, it can be photographs. They can be films, of course. So we have a very eclectic and heterogeneous collection as far as the media is concerned, but that's how the difference is about Library of Congress, copyright us, federal records.

Jenna Spinelle
Yeah, and you and your team were recently featured on 60 minutes. We'll link to the segment in the show notes, hopefully our listeners will check that out, but in that segment, I learned that the National Archives has billions of documents and records, and so understanding that history is, of course, about document preservation and all that, but it's also about the narrative and the stories that we Tell. How do you think about the relationship between those two things and creating narratives and storylines from those billions of documents? 

Colleen Shogan
Yes, so we have, as far as paper records go, or analog records, so records that you can physically touch, we have about 13 and a half billion analog records in our collection at the National Archives, not all in one building. We have about 40 locations and facilities across the United States, between presidential libraries, Federal Records Centers, archival locations, and then in Washington DC, we have two buildings in the Washington DC area. So it's a vast, vast collection, what we really focus on at the National Archives, and what I've made very clear as archivists the United States, our job is to provide access to those records. Now we have to follow laws that determine access and how we provide that access, but that's really our job, is to provide access and enabling citizens in the United States to have access to those records, to tell the stories that they they want to tell, and they could be stories from researchers, academics who come to our presidential libraries, Fellow political scientists, and, of course, historians and people who study communications coming to our presidential libraries to do academic research. We have high school students that work on National History Day projects that are telling stories from our records. And then, of course, we also have genealogists who are coming to look at their own family's history, or local historians who are looking at their particular county or their own particular town or city, and they're looking for something that we may have in our collection. So our job, and what our archivists do really well, is figuring out ways when you come to us and you want to find something in our nation's records, first, figuring out which location and facility you have to go to, so that's the first step, and then enabling to figure out how we can help you tell your story that you want to tell. And that's that's really our job is, is providing that access. 

Jenna Spinelle
It's one thing, as you said, for people to use the archives for their own stories, their own research, but I know that your office also puts out educational materials, and of course, the presidential libraries and museums are educational sites of their own. So we talk a lot about civics education on this podcast and the role that it plays in our democracy. I wonder how you see the National Archives fitting into civics education. 

Colleen Shogan
It's a big priority for me, and we are definitely doubling down on what we can do in civics education. It's something that worries me as a political scientist, because, as you know, the past couple of years, they nationwide tests, and in civics and in history education, we actually have seen a dip in knowledge of civics and history education. We have done a terrific job in this country in improving education, as far as STEM education and knowledge of science and technology and mathematics and I am 100% four. That I don't think there should be any reduction in that work in STEM but unfortunately, I think what we've done is by emphasizing STEM education, we've de emphasized some social studies and civics and history in our classrooms. And that is a real problem, because we are educating not only kids to understand, to make sense of the world that they live in right now, but we are educating future citizens that are going to be voters, right, you know, once they turn 18, and the people that are going to run our communities and be our leaders at all kinds of different levels. So we have to do, I think, a better job in that and I've really asked our team, we're going to really focus on basics. We're going to focus on three branches of government. What are the principles in the Constitution? Why was the Constitution designed the way that it was? What are the strengths and weaknesses of that approach? And of course, make that accessible to all different grade levels. We also have an opportunity in this country, because we're going to be celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States in 2026 of course, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. And we have already created at the National Archives, and are going to start to roll out in 2025 some new educational resources about the Declaration of Independence and trying to urge classrooms to read the declaration carefully and understand those principles of that really are our core principles of American government, those principles being contained in the declaration, and then, of course, our governing institutions being created In the Constitution, that we really have to read these documents side by side to have a full understanding of the American experience, and that's what we're going to we're going to focus on and we're going to partner with organizations and really try to provide the most dynamic information we Can for classroom teachers so that they can incorporate those resources into their teaching. We have a great resource called Docs Teach, which is using primary resources from the National Archives, using records to be able to learn about American history. And we already do a great job with that program, and we're going to try to expand it and expand its reach.

Jenna Spinelle
Yeah. So you know, as as our country has unfortunately become more polarized, it's, it's seems it's more difficult to kind of chart the middle path. I know we certainly feel that here. I wonder if, if you feel that kind of pulling apart and the pressure that that might come with it,

Colleen Shogan
There's a lot of pressure today. You know, running a non partisan institution these days, it's, you know, it's not for the faint of heart, that's for sure. But the good news is for me, at least when I was nominated, I had to learn a lot of things about the National Archives. I mean, I had never worked at the National Archives before. I'd worked at the Library of Congress for many years, but that once again, you know, an archive is not the same thing as a library, and I had not worked at the National Archives before, so I knew I had a lot of things to learn about how the National Archives worked and all its different components and all of its different duties. One thing that I was not worried about, that I was 100% sure that I could do was that I could run the National Archives as a non partisan leader, and really emphasize the fact that we would not be allowing political ideology to dictate our decisions or the work that we did, because I had been trained really Well in this way, working at CRS, the Congressional Research Service for eight years, which works for both Republicans and Democrats. You know, is non partisan in its approach, bipartisan in how it does its its work. I walked into so many congressional offices, Republican offices, democratic offices. You know, when I worked at CRS, it became very second nature to me to be able to do that. And then my work at the Library of Congress and the White House Historical Association, because when I went to the White House Historical Association, President Trump was in the White House. We worked with President Trump and Mrs. Trump very closely for that time. And then, of course, President Biden came into office after the election, and similarly, worked with the Biden team, so I had a lot of experience in working in organizations in and outside government that had this non partisan mission that was really at the core of its operations. And I'm very confident the National Archives we as long as I am at the helm, for sure, we will be taking that approach in the the work that we do, and certainly doing it in a in as appropriate when we're talking to supporters and Congress. We do that in a bipartisan fashion. 

Jenna Spinelle
Yeah, yeah. And I think that sense comes across when you visit the presidential libraries as well. I had the chance to visit the Carter Center in Atlanta about this time last year, and I wonder how much of a say the presidents and their teams have in the creation of those spaces. I realize some of them might have already passed away by the time your office got involved. But for the more recent the more recent presidents. How does that process work?

Colleen Shogan
When you travel around to visit all the presidential libraries, I've been to all of them, except the Carter Library. I'm going to be going in January of 2025, but when you travel around and visit the presidential libraries like I have you realize very quickly, they're all unique institutions. Now we have rules and laws that govern all these institutions, so in some degree that there's a degree of similarity. But presidential libraries are built. Not everybody knows this, but presidential libraries are built by from presidents or their their teams, their family, raising money and then, usually donating that money to a non profit, a foundation, which then builds or constructs the building, you know, where there's the archive and the museum, and then those buildings come to are donated to The National Archives to then run, hopefully, in in perpetuity. So but the partnership between Nara, the National Archives, and that presidential Foundation, which goes on to continue even after the library is built, is constructed and deeded to the National Archives, that relationship continues, and we're partners on a lot of things, partners on educational opportunities, partners, on public programming, on exhibits that are at these various libraries and museums. But when the National Archives is involved, and we're going to be doing, for example, a new exhibit. We're going to do new exhibits at for the LBJ Library, we're going to do a new exhibit at the Hoover Library. That approach would be similar to whether the President is still alive or if the President is deceased, and we're maybe working just with the foundation or the family descendants are often very involved with presidential foundations. The approach would be very similar, because we always have a scholarly panel that's assembled that we agree upon from both the National Archives and the foundation that reviews materials that makes suggestions. Of course, the National Archives, if that is our building, we will make final decisions concerning the content of exhibits or programming or other educational functions that are going forward. But you know, we're committed to letting the records of an administration speak for themselves. And what I would say is the archivist United States, what my job is, is to get as many of those records available, whether presidential records or federal records, to put them out there for then Americans or citizens when they come to visit one of our locations for them to review the records, if it's an exhibit or if they're coming to actually do research. And then I let them decide what they think, because the you know, not everybody that looks at one exhibit is going to conclude the same thing. And the job we have to provide context, of course, we have to tell you what you're looking at, what why this is historically significant, so that you have you can make sense of what photograph or what document you're looking at, for example, if you're in an exhibit. But we really need to let you as someone who's coming as a visitor or researcher, or someone who's interested in public history. We really want to push you to decide what you think about that particular episode in American history, that particular presidency, or whatever.

Jenna Spinelle
Speaking of things coming up, you mentioned the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, which there's a word for that you mentioned this morning.

Colleen Shogan
What's the semi quincentennial? Okay,

Jenna Spinelle
I will endeavor how to spell that and put it in the show notes as well. You mentioned that the educational resources that your team is working on to roll out for that anniversary. Are there other things that you're planning for 2026

Colleen Shogan
Yes, we're very excited about it. We're going to have a new visitor experience at the National Archives in Washington, DC, with a new discovery center and learning center for kids that's going to be more interactive than our previous learning center, and that's going to open in about a year's time, with a new permanent exhibit as well about the history of our nation's records and the history of the United States that we're very excited about. So there will be a certain amount of work that were done for the in person experience. And we want as many people as possible to come visit us, visit the documents, see us in Washington, DC. But we also know that not everybody is like here at Penn State. You could come to Washington, DC very easily. But you know other places, it's kind of a it's a far higher. And we know that people are limited in their ability to travel. So one of the really exciting initiatives that we're going to start working on very soon is where we house our nation's founding documents, the declaration, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Number one, we're going to be changing the rotunda. We are adding two documents to the rotunda. The Rotunda has not changed since the Truman administration. It has changed a little bit to make the documents more accessible and updating the technology that houses the documents so that there's not degradation in the cases. But we are going to be adding two documents to the rotunda. We are also we're going to be adding the Emancipation Proclamation, which will be going on permanent display, and we'll be adding the 19th Amendment, of course, which enabled women to vote. So these are two important documents that I think are represent a better telling of American history, a more accurate, complete history of the United States, and also show that there is movement towards the fulfillment of the truths and the promises that are made in the Declaration, which is, of course, the focal point of America, 250 the declaration. So I think those are going to be really terrific additions. I think we're going to have a lot of people who want to come and see those documents on display, along with, of course, the declaration, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, so that's going to be a little bit different visitor experience in our Rotunda. And in addition to adding it physically there, we are creating a really easily accessible, digital twin of the rotunda. We are working with a professional company that does public history and digital public history, and they're going to work with us. It's not just going to be a camera recreation or 3d photography. We are going to create an interactive experience that you will be able to have online to visit the rotunda of the United States. If you cannot come to the National Archives in person, you will be able to get up close with the documents. You'll be able to examine the documents actually in a way that you can't when you're there in person, because they're in cases, and you can't do that. And we plan to get that resource, this digital twin of the rotunda, into as many classrooms across the United States as possible. It will be accessible for kids when they're on their think pads in classrooms, they'll be able to look at it won't be so high res that it will be impossible to download or difficult to use. And of course, we're going to provide educational resources that will go along with that experience. So we're very excited about that, because we think we will be bringing some of the nation's most important documents and that experience to millions of kids that otherwise wouldn't have that experience in 2026 

Jenna Spinelle
Yeah, yeah, that that sounds great. Certainly looking forward to seeing that when it comes online. One last question for you. I did see on the National Archives website that you have something called a Citizen Archivist program, knowing what I know about the people who listen to the show, I think there might be more than a few who are interested in that kind of thing. Can you share more about what it is and what being a Citizen Archivist entails?

Colleen Shogan
The Citizen Archivist program was created well before I was Archivist of the United States, so I am in no way taking credit for it, but it continues on, and it's been a very popular program. It is a way for people who are interested in history that want to help the National Archives to actually come online. You never have to leave your home. All you need to have is a computer, and you can actually transcribe documents or records that we have at the National Archives, and then they are able, they are able to be checked, but then you can also check those records and verified, and then those documents become searchable, right? So is a really great way that we can improve the information and the data, the metadata in our online catalog. If you don't like working with documents per se, or that's not your thing. You can also tag photographs. We're asking people for to do that. And we have all kinds of different projects that are ongoing. So depending on what type of records you might interest you, what era of American history would interest you, you can come online. We also have difficulty levels. Easy could start out easier, and then you work your way up to the medium and more difficult documents to transcribe. And we have transcribed millions, and you know, citizens have transcribed millions of pages of records since the beginning of Citizen Archivist. So if you have any interest in that, it doesn't matter where you are in the United States, you can participate. You take some online training, then you're certified, and you're able to transcribe records whenever you have the time to be able to do so. So I really encourage your listeners, if you'd like to participate and help make our records more accessible to Americans, please join us as as a part of Citizen Archivist.

Jenna Spinelle
Yes, wonderful. Colleen Shogan, thanks for your time today. 

Michael Berkman
Jenna, thanks. That was an interesting interview, and I found it interesting to learn a bit about her career track from being a political scientist and participating in the congressional Fellows Program, which has produced scores of political scientists and staffers who have made a real influence in both the study of Congress and the operations of Congress. So she's just another of a set of highly successful alumni from that program. I thought the story in The Wall Street Journal that Jenna referenced was really quite interesting, because it identified exactly the kinds of conflicts that we were talking about a little bit before the interview that can come up in trying to tell a story about the about this country, to tell a certain narrative of this Country, and having to weigh well, how negative or positive is this story supposed to be? And so my understanding from that article is that, for example, a picture of Martin Luther King was removed, but a picture of Nixon and Elvis were put in, and a picture of Reagan with Cal Rifkin was put in, but that they weren't allowed or were prevented. Some that she wouldn't allow, uh, pictures of Japanese internment camps, for example, which was a dark episode in the United States, and one that if you're trying to paint a kind of rosy picture of the country, you're you're not going to want to feature. Instead, they're kind of putting in things that struck me as kind of benign and sort of cultural, but not political. I don't know, what do you think, Chris, when Nixon and Elvis? Remember Nixon and Elvis?

Chris Beem
Well, not really, but really, but I've seen the picture and, you know, I mean, you know, I think you're, I can't, I can't come up with any counter argument, let alone one that I think is, is good, yeah. I mean, you know, there is a, you know, starting with reaction to the 1619, project and others critical race theory. The argument is that these present a an understanding of American history that is unfair, that you know at its worst, it burdens the you know, delegitimates white people, and that it is not a good way to educate young Americans, and so we need to focus more on the positives, on the on all the successes of America, and not to to focus so much on these past events, which, you know, if we really are honest about it, they're past. They're over. We don't need to pay much attention to them.

Michael Berkman
Yeah, your reference to kids in schools is important, because a lot of what the archives appear to do that I'm pulling out of this interview and things that I'm reading is to work with schools and to help to make available materials for, say, civics education and that type of thing, and what kind of role civics education might play. And this really speaks, doesn't it, to the to the kind of challenges we face in trying to figure out how to how to teach young people about the American experience and what they might need to know to participate in the American democracy.

Chris Beem
Well, we what it speaks to is that this is yet another manifestation of the fundamental polarization within the country right that that there is one side that says, There is there are truths here that are, as you say, dark, but they're part of our history, and we need to be aware of them as as as part of our effort to educate children into being full and responsible citizens, and the other who says no, what we need is to advance this idea of of American Greatness, American success, and these stories just make it harder to do that and make and undermine the effort to create a common narrative. And, yeah, I mean, Shogun is in a very difficult position, because there's, I don't know where the reconciliation is well, in that in that story,

Michael Berkman
I'm concerned less with the stories that they might tell with the flow of information that they control and need to make available to everybody else. I mean, to me, that's like the more critical part of what they're doing. And I think that's why what happened with the Trump is. Trump and the stolen documents, and why? Part of why that's so important. I mean, those documents belong to the American people, right? And they need to be made available to the American people. And she gets this. She talks about digitization of every of the information that they've got, which, of course, makes it more widely available. And then I think we get a diversity of stories. We get all kinds of ways of thinking about the American experience, and the particular story that they're telling maybe becomes less important.

Chris Beem
The idea that it was bad and then we solved it, and now it's all fine, is consistent with the narrative that is presented by many Republicans, and it's the narrative that they want to be presented to children in school. And if you if that is where you come down, then that that explains the kind of choices you're going to make. But you know, I guess all I would say is, you know, there, whenever you're making choices and you're picking between billions of documents, you're creating a narrative, whether, whether you're doing it explicitly or articulately or not, and and That's an incredible responsibility. But you know, doing that in the most benign way, but doing it in the kind of context in which we find ourselves now, becomes very difficult, and I don't envy, you know, the Archivist for being trying to navigate these waters, but, but clearly, there are people at the archive who feel like the narrative that she is moving toward is not sufficiently representative of American history and doesn't serve the body politic as well as it could. There's an irony here that this is the first kind of foray for us into this new world of Trump being the president again and but I do think it speaks to a lot of issues that are going to come up and that we're going to be dealing with for the next four years. So ironies abound. But anyway, thanks to Jenna for the interview, thanks to Shogun for coming

Michael Berkman
From the McCourtney Institute for Democracy. I'm Michael Berkman.

Chris Beem
I'm Chris Beem. Thanks for listening.

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