Lonnie G. Bunch III, the first black head of the Smithsonian Institution, is stepping down after a tenure of some seven years. NPR had the news: “In 2019, Bunch was named secretary of the Smithsonian, becoming the first historian and the first African American to hold the position.” The Wall Street Journal also got the memo: “The first Black historian to lead the world’s largest museum and research complex says he’s retiring and will leave by year’s end.” NBC looked behind the headline. “Bunch, the first Black person and first historian to lead the institution, has said he would have retired a year ago but felt he had to stay to defend the institution from the White House attacks, the person said.”
Bunch strained every fiber to bring politics into the rhetoric and practice of the Smithsonian
I had something to say about those “attacks” – I prefer the word “criticisms” – in the Speccie as this little thrust and parry was unfolding. A key document is a letter to Bunch whose subject line reads: “Internal Review of Smithsonian Exhibitions and Materials.” Signed by Lindsey Halligan, Special Assistant to the President; Vince Haley, Director of the Domestic Policy Council; and Russell Vought, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, the letter announces a “comprehensive internal review” of the Smithsonian, its exhibitions and curatorial procedures.” “This initiative aims to ensure alignment with the President’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions.”
Bunch has denied that he decided to retire because of pressure from the Trump administration. But he did allow that the administration’s spotlight on the Smithsonian’s ideological coloration was “stressful.” After all, he told the New York Times: “When you’re Black in America, you’ve got to figure out how to get through, right?” Would that be different from being white or some other color “in America?”
In any event, few people would deny that Bunch figured out how to “get through” while being black “in America.” For the last several year, he has been pulling down nearly a million dollars per annum, pretty good innings for someone – no matter his quota of melanin – at a tax-exempt, largely publicly funded enterprise.
No one following the Trump administration’s efforts to restore “truth and sanity to American history” will be surprised by Lonnie Bunch’s departure. The first black head of the sprawling congeries of museums and educational initiatives that make up the Smithsonian Institution have long been marinated in the ideological stew we now call “woke”: that compact of anti-American, sexually exotic, grievance-filled animus that the initials “DEI” were concocted to support. Bunch himself said that DEI must be “integral to excellence in museum practice.” Have you noticed how popular acronyms deployed by the left tend to lengthen as time goes on? Thus LGB, for “lesbian, gay, and bisexual,” grew into first into “LGBT,” then “LGBTQ,” then into “LGBTQ+,” that plus sign taking the pressure off the typesetters for a moment. It is an interesting question why this practice of alphabetical inflation should be so common on the left but not the right. Whatever the answer, Bunch is on board with it. “DEAI” is integral to excellence in museum practice,” he said. “FULL STOP.” For the curious, that “A” means “accessibility.”
We get a hint about what Bunch means by excellence when we look at some of his other statements and initiatives. In an interview from 2019, Bunch admitted that he wanted the Smithsonian to make “diversity and inclusion so central that it’s no longer talked about.” That is half right. He wanted to make DEI central, but he did not want to stop talking about it. He basically wanted the Smithsonian to talk about nothing else. Remember the 1619 Project, that rancid a-historical New York Times-sponsored effort to besmirch the traditional understanding of America’s founding by arguing that the country was founded as a “slavocracy?” That’s exactly the sort of goad to self-loathing that the Smithsonian under Bunch’s baton fostered. “We call ourselves the Great Convener, Bunch said, “but we’re really a great legitimizer. And I want the Smithsonian to legitimize important issues, whether it’s 1619 or climate change.” Noted.
Last March, in a report titled “Saving America’s Story,” the White House noted that the “ideological capture” of the Smithsonian had “moved the museum’s mission away from straightforward historical education and scholarship toward an extreme political activism that seeks to transform our country.” For his part, Bunch has said that he sees himself as an apolitical actor notwithstanding his support for DEAI. “What the country needs,” he said, “are places that are nonpartisan and safe, where people can grapple with what’s going on around them.” What the connection may be between “nonpartisan places” and being able to “grapple with what’s going on around” you is something we may leave to one side.
Let me conclude with two points. On the one hand, Bunch claims that he is apolitical. On the other, he strained every fiber to bring politics into the rhetoric and practice of the Smithsonian. Perhaps that is an instance of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s contention that “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” In a deeper sense, though, I think Lonnie Bunch’s truck with contradiction is evidence of his susceptibility to one of the prime features of the left-liberal mindset: the conviction that politics is something the other fellow, the chap who disagrees with you, suffers from.
Lonnie Bunch, like so many on the left, believes that his opinions represent a virtue-saturated state of nature. He thinks he is apolitical because his political opinions – about race, “climate change,” diversity, etc. – are simply what every right-thinking, i.e., left-leaning person believes. It’s only those who dissent from that monolithic consensus who have have politics. It’s nice work if you can get it. Donald Trump is making it increasingly expensive to indulge in that divisive and intellectually irresponsible fantasy.
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