“The Past is Never Dead”: U.S. Perspectives on History, Memory, and Current Challenges
Mar 28, 2025 | 2pm ET | 7pm CET
Online Panel Discussion | Panelists: Lonnie G. Bunch III (Smithsonian Institution), Margaret Huang (Southern Poverty Law Center), Jim R. Grossman (American Historical Association), Desirée Cormier Smith (former Special Representative for Racial Equity and Justice for the United States State Department). Moderator: Andreas Etges (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)
As the American novelist William Faulkner famously wrote in 1951: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Just like Germany, the United States has tried to come to terms with a difficult past – a legacy of slavery and segregation, inequality, discrimination, and violence. There are many controversies about how to teach, narrate, and remember history, about what has been remembered, forgotten, or distorted and what impact that still has today. In the past few decades, new museums and memorial sites have been opened that offer a much more critical and inclusive history, while many Confederate monuments have been taken down and places have been renamed. Nevertheless many Confederate monuments still have not been taken down and places still have not been renamed. And there has been a backlash against building a critical memory and transitioning from denial to collective responsibility. With the new Trump administration, some institutions are even under attack.
The event is part of a comparative project titled “Building a Critical Memory: Transitioning from Denial to Collective Responsibility in Germany and the United States.” A group of about 50 scholars and teachers, curators and educators from museums and memorial sites, other public historians, people working in foundations and NGOs as well as journalists from both countries is currently on a joint tour in Germany and will – later this year – be in the United States.
Organized by Bavarian American Academy, Amerika-Institut/LMU Munich, Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism, Leibnitz Center for Contemporary History Potsdam, Southern Poverty Law Center, and the German Historical Institute Washington
About the Speakers
Lonnie G. Bunch III is the 14th Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. He assumed his position on June 16, 2019. As Secretary, he oversees 21 museums, 21 libraries, the National Zoo, numerous research centers, and several education units and centers. Bunch was the founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Margaret Huang is President and CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in Montgomery, Alabama. The SPLC tracks and exposes hate groups, fights white supremacy, advocates for racial justice, hosts a Civil Rights Memorial with an interpretive center, and has created databases on Confederate symbols.
Jim R. Grossman has been executive director of the American Historical Association for 15 years and has made the organization a major public advocate and defender of history and historians in the public. He was previously vice president for research and education at the Newberry Library, and has taught at the University of Chicago and the University of California, San Diego.
Desirée Cormier Smith was the first Special Representative for Racial Equity and Justice for the United States State Department. Her job was to advance the human rights of members of marginalized racial, ethnic, and Indigenous communities, including people of African descent, and build global partnerships to combat systemic racism, discrimination, and xenophobia globally. She left the State Department on January 20, 2025.