censorship – The Hilltop Monitor

Donald Trump and the Smithsonian: who gets to rewrite history

Alee Dickey — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 16:58:58 +0000

Photo by J. Amill Santiago on Unsplash.

History is written by the winners

In March 2025, President Trump signed an executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” This directive targeted the Smithsonian Institution, demanding that the Smithsonian Vice President remove “improper ideology” (Sec. 2a) from its museums, exhibits and educational materials. It also instructed the Department of the Interior to restore any monuments or content removed since 2020, claiming that these memorials have been removed or changed “to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology” (Sec. 4ai).

Trump justified the order by claiming that “Over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth. This revisionist movement seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.” (Sec. 1)

By summer, the White House had escalated its interference. Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch met with Trump following mounting pressure from the administration to sanitize exhibits. The White House even released a “woke list” of Smithsonian exhibits deemed problematically ideological, including those involving race, gender identity, slavery, immigration, and social justice.

In addition, Trump has publicly lambasted the Smithsonian’s portrayal of American history, complaining on social media that “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.” He also took direct action to erase unflattering parts of his presidency from the museum’s record. Under pressure from his administration, the Smithsonian removed references to his two impeachments from a presidential exhibit—effectively rewriting a chapter of history. The Smithsonian has since restored the plaque, but with significant changes. The description of his second impeachment has been changed to remove claims that he repeatedly made “false statements” about losing the 2020 election, along with a quote from the impeachment article saying his speech “encouraged — and foreseeably resulted in — lawless action at the Capitol.”

Critics and historians have compared these moves to authoritarian censorship. Trump’s effort to recast public memory in a narrower, cheerier light by minimizing slavery, race and systemic injustice, cuts at the heart of historical truth. His framing of history as a tool for “unity” pretends that national pride can only thrive if its dark moments are swept under the rug.

This is concerning. When politicians try to dictate what belongs in our textbooks or museums, they are not just debating facts; they are deciding whose voices matter, whose suffering counts and whose victories get remembered. Trump’s push for a “patriotic” version of the American past is part of a broader effort to sanitize our nation’s story. It may sound like a call for “unity” or “progress,” but in reality, it is propaganda: an attempt to reshape the national narrative so that the “winners,” overwhelmingly white, male and privileged, look not just powerful, but benevolent.

This problem is not new. History has always been written by those who hold power. In the United States, that has meant presenting slavery as a sad but secondary footnote rather than the engine of the economy, erasing the genocide of Native Americans behind the language of “westward expansion” and downplaying the violence faced by those who fought for civil rights. For generations, textbooks, monuments, and films presented the Confederacy not as a rebellion to preserve slavery, but as a noble struggle for “states’ rights.” This deliberate rewriting of history wasn’t an accident. The story that emerges is one where America steadily marches toward freedom, led by wise men who occasionally stumbled but ultimately always knew best. That is not history — it is mythmaking.

When politicians argue that we must minimize these uncomfortable truths in the name of “unity,” they are not protecting the country; they are protecting themselves. A country cannot move forward if it refuses to confront the full weight of its past. If we instead explore history honestly, learning that “winning” often comes at the expense of others’ dignity, land and lives, then we are better equipped to build a future that does not repeat those patterns.

That is why the fight over history is never just about the past. It is about who gets to define America’s identity today and who will be allowed to shape its future. Leaders who call for “patriotic” education are not asking us to love our country more; they are asking us to love their version of it: a version that erases the people their power has oppressed.

The Hilltop Monitor’s relationship with freedom of the press and censorship

Brett Stone — Fri, 21 Apr 2017 16:57:24 +0000

This article is the first in a two-part series that will look into student organizations’ autonomy at William Jewell College, and by extension, other private colleges around the country. We will begin by unpacking an issue that affects “The Hilltop Monitor” especially, and that is censorship.

In our recent April Fools’ issue, the Monitor poked fun at the notion that we are censored by the administration. In our “Essence of Jewell” parody, I speak as the Editor-in-Chief of the Monitor. I begin by saying that I enjoy being on the Monitor’s staff, as it is a great platform for creativity and artistic development. But as I start to say that I wish there was less oversight over what we publish, there is a knock at the door, and I come back into the room to retract my statement. In the next scene, the hand of some ominous off-camera figure points to a document in front of me, instructing me what to cross out in black marker.

This is, of course, a dramatization of the degree to which the administration and the Office of Student Life control what the Monitor publishes. All of the stories that the Monitor has published this year have come from the editorial staff, and it has been the editorial staff that decides whether or not we publish a story (and this is usually determined by quality, not content).

However, there is a precedent of Student Life ordering us to not publish content, so it would not be true to say that there is no oversight, no censorship. In our 2016 April Fools’ issue, student life ordered us not to publish two satirical articles, one that joked that Jewell students travelled to Colorado for Spring Break to buy marijuana and bring it back, and one that poked fun at “meninists,” which refers to a group that advocates for male rights.

The Student Handbook accounts for this censorship. The status of student publications at Jewell can be found on pages 27 and 28 of the handbook. The relevant passage that, albeit indirectly, addresses censorship follows:

“It is expected that student publications adhere to the rules of professional journalism, avoiding libel, pornography and invasion of privacy. Editorials, news features or advertising columns shall not encourage the breaking of any William Jewell College policy or local, state and/or federal laws. Dissent and criticism, while an acceptable dimension of the educational experience, are to be phrased with courtesy and respect and are to be presented in a responsible manner. Additionally, freedom of expression is not interpreted to include the public use of obscene language or profane expression.”

The acceptability of a Monitor article is a matter of interpretation as outlined in the Student Handbook. If an administrator believes that a satirical article about students bringing marijuana back from Colorado is “encouraging the breaking of” laws, or that an article poking fun at meninists is not “phrased with courtesy and respect,” then they maintain the authority to prohibit that content from being published. This is important to note because the editorial staff does not always have the final say over what is published. Rather, it is the administrator’s interpretation of Student Handbook policy that matters in the end.

The Monitor advisor, Sara Bailey, the Director of Student Engagement in the Office of Student Life, screens all of our articles before they are published, including this one. If there are any concerns about the acceptability of an article, such as our April Fools’ stories last year, they are sent up the ladder.

Normally, this does not affect the Monitor’s operations. In fact, during my time as Editor-in-Chief, no article has been denied publication. For all intents and purposes, the editorial staff maintains control over what is published. Yet, it should be recognized that there is an authority, the Office of Student Life, which has the ability to overturn editorial decision.

This degree of oversight, such as an advisor screening content for acceptability, is unusual for most student publications, but not for private institutions. Public universities, such as the University of Kansas, are protected by freedom of press rights under the Constitution. Last year, KU’s student-run newspaper launched a lawsuit against the school’s administrators. The lawsuit was dismissed, but this degree of autonomy is absolutely not accorded to the student publications of private institutions, such as “The Hilltop Monitor.”

Private institutions maintain the right to determine the grounds on which student publications are governed. Publications at public universities are compelled to abide by local, state and federal law, whereas private institutions have the ability to determine their values and regulations themselves. Federal law protects the independence of private institutions, as it gives people the ability to band together under shared values and interests.

So, by choosing to attend a private college, Jewell students then choose to adhere to the College’s policies. What matters for the Monitor, then, is not the constitutional right of freedom of the press, but what the College considers as acceptable per its values. It should be noted that the Monitor’s editorial staff does not endorse this position, only stating that this is the reality.

This can be a rather dubious distinction when it comes to what the Monitor can and cannot publish, and ultimately it relies on administrative interpretation of the Student Handbook at any given time. But this is an authority that we, as a publication, acknowledge as legitimate.

The power of the administration to determine student policy is, in a word, absolute. And this absolution is enabled by our enrollment.

This does not mean that students’ opinions are obsolete, or that the Monitor should not be critical of the administration or Student Life. Stay tuned for part two.