City Council opposition to Federal efforts to defund or censor museums

O- FIRST IN COUNCIL April 14, 2025 City of Cambridge MAYOR SIMMONS VICE MAYOR MCGOVERN WHEREAS: Museums are among the most essential cultural institutions in our society, serving as places of learning, reflection, and community connection — preserving history, celebrating creativity, encouraging curiosity, and fostering civic knowledge; and WHEREAS: The City of Cambridge is home to a rich and diverse landscape of museums that serve residents, students, and visitors alike — including, but not limited to, the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture, the MIT Museum, the Harvard Art Museums, and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology — all of which play a vital role in making history, science, art, and culture accessible to people from all backgrounds; and WHEREAS: Museums play a crucial role in collecting, cultivating, and curating our collective stories — preserving the artifacts, narratives, and lived experiences of communities past and present, and providing spaces where people can come together to engage with the complexity of our shared history; and WHEREAS: This work is particularly vital in animating local emerging institutions, like the Cambridge Museum of History and Culture, which is working to lift up the voices, histories, and contributions of Cambridge residents, particularly those whose stories have too often been overlooked or marginalized, and which seeks to create an inclusive space that reflects the full richness of our community; and WHEREAS: The Trump Administration has recently issued Executive Orders that attempts to rewrite American history through the lens of censorship, division, and falsehood, proposing to restrict federal funding for museums and cultural institutions that present honest, evidence-based, and inclusive accounts of American history and culture, and seeking to impose politically motivated limitations on what may be taught, exhibited, or explored in these spaces; and WHEREAS: The City Council rejects in the strongest possible terms the deeply troubling and unprecedented efforts to gut funding for institutions like the Smithsonian, impose ideological litmus tests on historical narratives, and suppress discussions of race, gender, power, and equality—actions that politicize and sanitize American history, undermine academic freedom, and threaten the fundamental mission of our nation’s museums to present the full, complex, and sometimes painful truths of our shared past; now therefore be it ORDERED: That the City Council go on record expressing its unwavering support for the museums and cultural institutions of Cambridge, the Commonwealth, and the nation— recognizing them as vital to civic life, education, and community building—and in denouncing, in the strongest possible terms, the Trump Administration’s Executive Orders and any related efforts to censor, defund, or politically manipulate these institutions; and be it further

ORDERED: That the City Council go on record in urging our State House delegation and the Massachusetts Congressional Delegation to actively oppose these reprehensible policies, to work to ensure that federal funding for museums is not only protected but expanded, and to defend the principle that history must be told fully, truthfully, and free from political interference; and be it further ORDERED: That the City Clerk be and hereby is requested to forward suitably engrossed copies of this resolution to Governor Maura Healey, the members of the Cambridge State House delegation, and the Massachusetts Congressional Delegation on behalf of the entire City Council.