Last week, the Trump administration ended the appointment of nine members of a committee which oversees the declassifying of government records related to US foreign relations and their publication in the Foreign Relations of the United States series. Mitchell Lerner writes that the move is an assault on both government accountability and basic historical truth and potentially a disaster not only for historians, but also for civil liberties and the democratic process.

There’s a particular moment in George Orwell’s 1949 novel, 1984 that resonates with the Trump administration’s recent decision to terminate all the members of the Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation. It happens after the protagonist, Winston Smith, has begun to question the purpose of his government job. Smith’s position at the Ministry of Truth required him to alter historical documents to justify the ruling party’s current policies, a task that exposed him to truths about the past and pushed him to question party diktats. Smith is arrested and tortured for his independent thought, and during one session, his tormentor, O’Brien, recounts a central party slogan: “Who controls the past controls the future, who controls the present controls the past.” The government would shape memories of the past in whatever way best suited its agenda. “We, the Party, control all records and we control all memories,” O’Brien concluded. “Then we control the past, do we not?”

What is the Historical Advisory Committee and why is it important?

Since its establishment in 1991, the Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation (better known as the Historical Advisory Committee, or HAC) of the US State Department has played a small but vital role in the process of declassifying government records, a task intended both to bring historical expertise into the declassification process and ensure that the government provides an accurate and objective account of the past. HAC, in short, plays a small but important part in holding 1984 at bay. At least, it did until last week, when the Trump administration fired the entire committee.

I don’t mean to overstate the importance of the HAC. Selected for their expertise by a spectrum of scholarly organizations, its nine members are congressionally mandated to advise the State Department’s Office of the Historian on the publication of records in the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series and to monitor and evaluate the department’s declassification efforts and procedures. For sheer drama, the dismantling of a small advisory committee that few Americans had ever heard of hardly compares to the seemingly endless collection of more egregious offenses perpetrated by the current administration on a regular basis. Still, the dismemberment of the HAC encapsulates the administration’s assault on both government accountability and basic historical truth, and Americans disregard it at their peril.

“Foreign Relations of the United States –” (CC BY-SA 2.0) by jen-the-librarian

Declassification and the historical record

On a most immediate level, the suspension of the HAC threatens the objectivity and perhaps even the existence of the FRUS series, a collection that began during the Civil War and has produced more than 450 volumes of important declassified materials dating back to the Lincoln Administration. While not without its flaws and controversies, FRUS stands as the most important source of declassified materials for scholars of American diplomacy, and one of the most critical elements of American government transparency and accountability. Most historians regard it as an indispensable tool, and its contributions to our understanding of American foreign policy would be hard to overstate.

There has, of course, always been tension between the historians’ desires for expeditious declassification and the government’s desire for secrecy. These tensions peaked in the 1980s, when State Department officials began to more forcefully resist calls for both timeliness and accuracy, sparking a wave of threats, finger-pointing, and even resignations. Congress finally intervened, in no small part because of the vital role FRUS played as a symbol of the nation’s commitment to open diplomacy and accountability. In 1990, Senator Claiborne Pell (D-RI) explained: “Questions have been raised about the integrity of our own historical record at the very time that in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and elsewhere we are witnessing a flood of disclosures and new documentation from governments long used to concealing and falsifying the record…. This is no time,” he warned, “for the United States to depart from the tradition of providing an accurate and complete historical record of the actions taken by our government in the field of foreign relations.” In 1991, Congress passed the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, affirming the FRUS series, and articulating clear standards and practices for declassification, and establishing the HAC to oversee the timely release of a “thorough, accurate, and reliable documentary record of major United States foreign policy decisions and significant United States diplomatic activity.” All of this is now imperiled, much to the dismay of the historical community.

Attacks on information

These practical consequences for the historical record, though, are dwarfed by what this action may portend for the nation’s future. The attack on the HAC stands as part of a larger assault on independent education in general and history education in particular. In his first term, Trump pledged to “restore patriotic education to our schools,” and created a commission to “facilitate, advise upon, and promote other activities to support public knowledge and patriotic education on the American Revolution and the American founding.” His second term has been even more aggressive, with frequent and extreme attacks on faculty and administrators; revocation of federal funding to schools that resisted his demands for reform and oversight; threats to colleges’ critical tax-exempt status; and the introduction of a process to dismantle the Department of Education completely. All of this, of course, coincides with similar attacks against other purveyors of accurate information, such as cuts to funding for public media outlets; attacks on freedom of the press, and attempts to control the judiciary.

Trump’s attacks, particularly on higher education, are often couched in the guise of tackling antisemitism or dismantling DEI programs but the true intent is obvious: to bring to heel one of the few remaining institutions that resist his control. It is a transparent effort to quash dissent by controlling the educational process. “Children will be taught to love America,” stated White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller just a few days ago. “Children will be taught to be patriots. Children will be taught civil values, for schools that want federal funding.”

Historical truth and empirical evidence are central components of the resistance to Trump’s quest for expanded power. Documenting the past isn’t just about preserving distant memories for classrooms and scholarly debates; it is about helping people to define the world around them in ways that empower individuals. Accurate history debunks propaganda, promotes critical thinking and analysis, and holds the powerful accountable for their decisions. When the government controls all historical records and uses it to shape public memory, Orwell warned, “it follows that the past is whatever the Party chooses to make it.” A fundamental job of the historian is to defend the past from such manipulation, and for three decades, the HAC was instrumental in doing just that. Its evisceration is a potential disaster not just for historians but for civil liberties and the democratic process.

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• Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USAPP – American Politics and Policy, nor the London School of Economics.