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Lonnie Bunch's announcement that he will leave the Smithsonian at the end of the year cannot be treated as a routine leadership change.
Even if we take him at his word that the decision was his own, it arrives in a political climate that has grown steadily more hostile to independent cultural institutions. The question is not simply why Bunch is leaving, but what kind of institutional environment he is leaving behind and what that environment now demands of the rest of us.
For the American Library Association, this reckoning should have begun long before Bunch's retirement. It should have begun in May 2025, when Carla Hayden was abruptly removed as Librarian of Congress nearly a year before her term expired. ALA's president condemned the dismissal, yes, but the profession never mounted the kind of sustained, national defense that the moment required.
Hayden's removal was not a bureaucratic misfortune; it was a direct challenge to the political independence of the nation's premier library. It signaled that an administration willing to interfere with the Library of Congress would not hesitate to interfere elsewhere.
That was the turning point. ALA treated it as an episode.And the pattern that followed has been allowed to unfold almost uncontested. The pressure campaign against the Smithsonian-over exhibitions, historical interpretation, leadership, and funding-did not come out of nowhere. The attempted removal of Kim Sajet from the National Portrait Gallery made clear that political authorities were willing to challenge the Smithsonian's own authority over its leadership. Since then, the attacks have increasingly focused on how American history is presented: slavery, racism, inequality, and the experiences of people long pushed to the margins of the national narrative.
Lonnie Bunch has stood at the center of that struggle. As a historian, as the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and as the first African American Secretary of the Smithsonian, he embodied a more inclusive and more honest account of the American past. His leadership existed precisly where political pressure has been most intense. It surely marks another moment in a larger erosion of institutional independence.
This is why Hayden and Bunch must be understood together. Hayden's removal showed how quickly political power could compromise a national cultural institution. Bunch's departure shows how far that process has advanced. Hayden was the warning shot. Bunch is the next stage.
Cultural democracy depends on institutions that can preserve knowledge and interpret history without bending to the immediate demands of political actors. Libraries, archives, museums, universities,,,these are democratic institutions because they give citizens access to evidence, argument, and complexity. Their value collapses when professional judgment must be filtered through political preference. And once political pressure becomes normal, institutions do not need to be formally taken over to lose their independence. They can be hollowed out through appointments, funding threats, public attacks, investigations, demands for ideological conformity, and the slow internalization of fear.
This is why ALA's passivity is so dangerous. The organization has responded to each incident as if it were a standalone controversy requiring a standalone statement. That approach misses the point. The issue is not whether a particular librarian or museum director has been treated fairly. The issue is whether the institutions themselves can still carry out their missions without anticipating political retaliation.
Defending institutional independence is not a partisan act. It is a professional obligation. Intellectual freedom, access to knowledge, preservation of the historical record, these principles mean nothing if they are invoked only when convenient. The real test comes when historical interpretation or public access to materials runs directly against the preferences of those in power.
And the stakes are not confined to Washington. If the federal government can remove the Librarian of Congress, pressure the Smithsonian, threaten its funding, and create an atmosphere of constant political scrutiny, every library in the country should understand the message. What happens at the national level becomes a model for state and local interference, something librarians are already confronting in battles over collections, exhibitions,educational programs, and discussions of race,gender, sexuality,and American history.
Cultural democracy such as exists in the US won't die in a single dramatic moment. It erodes through normlization,through institutions learning to anticipate political displeasure and quietly adjusting their decisions to avoid it. Independence may remain on paper long after it has disappeared in practice.
Lonnie Bunch's departure should be a wake‑up call. ALA already had its warning with our Carla Hayden. It failed to act then. It cannot afford to fail again.
ALA must recognize the pattern and treat the defense of cultural democracy as a central responsibility, not an occasional statement. That means sustained public engagement, coalition‑building across cultural and educational institutions, and a clear explanation to the public that this is not an internal professional dispute. It is a question about who controls the nation's access to knowledge and its understanding of its own history.
The danger is not hypothetical. It is unfolding. ALA must decide whether it will meet the moment or allow the poltical space for cultural democracy to shrink until the profession is left defending nothing but the memory of what once existed.
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Mark Rosenzweig
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