Trump fires woke Librarian of Congress

Regular readers know that I’m unhappy with a number of President Trump’s personnel decisions. However, as a regular user of the Library of Congress, I’m delighted with his just-announced decision to sack Carla Hayden, its Librarian. That Democrats are going ballistic over this move does nothing to detract from my delight

I explained my problem with Hayden in this post. It began with this:

Previous librarians have included distinguished scholars like James Billington and Daniel Boorstin. Archibald MacLeish, the renowned poet, also held the post.

The current Librarian of Congress is Carla Hayden. She is both the first female and the first black to be the Librarian.

On the plus side, she is a professional librarian who served as CEO of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore and as president of the American Library Association. On the negative side (at least from my perspective) she is not a scholar. She also seems to be something of a liberal activist, having publicly opposed the Patriot Act as harmful to libraries.

Then, getting to the heart of the matter, I wrote:

During Hayden’s early years in charge, I visited the Library on something like a weekly basis to read about important but obscure aspects and figures in American history (like Bill Otis’ great-great-grandfather.) In doing so, I would check to see what exhibits and lectures the Library was offering.

A large percentage of exhibits and lectures were focused on race and ethnicity. There was virtually nothing about what I’ll call mainstream U.S. history (“dead white males”) though, to be fair, there was an excellent exhibit on baseball, supplemented by a good panel of leading sportswriters.

I visit the Library less often these days. Perhaps it has become more balanced in choosing topics about which to inform the public. If so, I haven’t noticed.

I guess the Trump team hasn’t noticed, either.

Hayden’s term would have expired in about a year. But the Trump team wanted to send a message. The message is a good one: Don’t turn a venerable cultural and educational institution into platform for wokeism and one-sided treatment of American history.

I’ll conclude this post the way I concluded the earlier one about Hayden:

I hope the White House replaces her with a leading scholar who will restore ideological balance to the Library of Congress. I hope the person it selects does not over-correct by eliminating altogether exhibits and programs that cover unpleasant aspects of American history .