Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch To Retire Amid Harassment

(MENAFN- USA Art News) Dr. Lonnie G. Bunch III, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, plans to retire by the end of the year, following what the source describes as relentless harassment from the Trump administration. Bunch was appointed to the secretary position in 2019, having previously held various roles within the Smithsonian museums, including as the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Hyperallergic Senior Editor Valentina Di Liscia and Staff Writer Anna Lee reported that Bunch“has repeatedly clashed with and stood up against the Trump administration” regarding its“dogged pursuit of historical revisionism.” However, they also noted that Bunch stated in an interview with the Washington Post that“Trump's pressure did not play a role in his decision to step down.”

The article also draws a parallel to Kevin D. Roberts, who successfully defended his PhD dissertation,“Slaves and slavery in Louisiana: the evolution of Atlantic world identities, 1791-1831,” at the University of Texas at Austin in 2003. Roberts, a specialist in African-American history, later became the director of the ultra-conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation, in 2021. His dissertation argued that enslaved people resisted bondage by forming alternative social and cultural structures, contending that Black Americans“employed a variety of tools, cultural traditions, secret and overt resistance, and a distinctive ideology of politics 'from the ground up' to tweak, alter, and challenge” white supremacy. Bunch, like Roberts, specializes in African-American history, but the article emphasizes that Bunch has used his expertise to provide critically informed and scholarly rigorous information to the public.

Source: Hyperallergic

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