“And whoever will not receive you nor hear your words, when you depart from that house or city, shake off the dust from your feet.”
—Matthew 10:14
I probably should play it safe, stay with educational topics, and leave romantic-relationship advice to those who are far more capable and knowledgeable about the subject. But I do believe this much about romantic relationships is true: When someone emphatically and clearly chooses someone else over you, let it go—and move on. It took me a while to learn that “moving-on” lesson: sometimes the best move is simply to move on.
So, Dr. Bunch, take your intellectual gifts, vast store of wisdom and knowledge, leadership skills, and historical expertise, and share those gifts somewhere else; somewhere where you are appreciated and can receive the honor you deserve.
Museums are powerful learning vehicles that strengthen the informal educational system and, in turn, wonderfully complement the formal PreK–12 education system.
The political conflict surrounding Bunch’s departure is real. The Trump administration has sharply criticized the Smithsonian’s presentation of American history, accusing the Institution of emphasizing oppression and promoting what it considers an anti-American historical narrative. The administration has also threatened federal support and pressed for changes in how the Smithsonian presents the nation’s history. Dr. Bunch, meanwhile, has defended the importance of presenting an accurate, inclusive, and complex American story.
And I can’t help seeing all of this through an educational lens.
History, after all, is supposed to teach us something. When citizens encounter political movements that draw upon exclusionary nationalism or authoritarian ideas, one of the most important educational questions they can ask is: What happened the last time a nation traveled down a similar road? That is why serious historiographical studies matters. History should not merely make us feel good about ourselves; it should help us recognize dangers, understand consequences, and avoid repeating catastrophic mistakes.
That brings me back to Dr. Bunch and the Smithsonian.
Perhaps the most important contribution of Bunch’s leadership has been his insistence that America is strong enough to confront the complexity of its own history. He spent nearly four decades at the Smithsonian, became its first African American Secretary and first historian to hold that position, and, most significantly, transformed the National Museum of African American History and Culture from an idea—with essentially no collection, building, or substantial institutional infrastructure—into one of the nation’s major historical institutions.
That kind of historical truth-telling is not an argument against America. It is an argument that America can become better by understanding America more honestly.
A museum should never become a monument to comforting falsehoods. Nor should it become an instrument for excluding some Americans from the national story while artificially exalting others.
At its best, a national museum system should invite us into deep, sometimes uncomfortable, but ultimately constructive reflection about who we have been, who we are, and who we still have the capacity to become.
That means recognizing both the profound beauty of the American experiment and the ugly historical wounds that remain part of our national inheritance. It means acknowledging extraordinary achievements while also confronting slavery, racial discrimination, dispossession, exclusion, and other injustices that shaped the nation. And it means recognizing the contributions of people who, despite suffering those injustices, nevertheless helped build America into the economically, culturally, scientifically, and politically consequential nation it became.
That is not a denunciation of America.
That is historical honesty and societal maturity.
And perhaps that was the larger significance of Lonnie Bunch’s work: presenting America not as a finished masterpiece without blemishes, nor as a hopelessly irredeemable nation, but as a still-evolving national project—possessing both ugly warts that must be confronted and profound beauty that deserves recognition.
Museums can help a nation engage in that kind of honest reflection. And honest reflection can lead to corrective national action.
Because there is something deeply ungrateful about enjoying the greatness of a nation while refusing to acknowledge all of the people—especially those historically excluded from its promises—whose labor, sacrifice, creativity, courage, intellect, and perseverance helped make that greatness possible.
Or, to put it in the theological language I grew up understanding:
God don’t like ugly.
And ungratefulness is ugly.
