Another Episode in Epistemic Secession

The Library of Congress and Trump 2.0

Photo by sarina gr on Unsplash

“How shall freedom be defended? By arms when it is attacked by arms, by truth when it is attacked by lies, by faith when it is attacked by authoritarian dogma. Always, in the final act, by determination and faith.”
― Archibald MacLeish, Poet, Writer, and Librarian of Congress

The first 100 days of the second Trump administration are clarifying. Another moment of clarification occurred early on Thursday evening, May 8, 2025.

Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden received a two-line email from a White House functionary informing her that her services were no longer needed.¹ After almost ten years in the post, and a distinguished career in the field, Hayden—as with many others—found herself caught up in the ideological project of the Trump administration to banish all ideas, projects, initiatives, and individuals associated with anything remotely labelled “DEI.” In Hayden’s case, it is surely a clarifying moment for the library community and for those invested in its continuity as profession dedicated to intellectual and academic freedom, diversity of thought, civic health, and anything that can be called “the common good”. That moment of clarity, in the brief time that has passed since that Thursday evening, needs some unpacking.

That anyone who has heard Carla Hayden speak could imagine that she is a fanatical ideologue in favor of “DEI”—or of any “thick” ideology-- strains credulity. That she would promote inappropriate ideas as the leader of the Library of Congress is a deluded, tribal-signaling confabulation held by some conservative groups who aim to cleanse the nation’s major public institutions of ideas they consider inappropriate. Among Librarians of Congress in the past several decades, Hayden has been the champion of the institution’s ability to promote historical, civic, and cultural knowledge for all racial/ethnic and age groups, especially through educational uses of social media, digitization of collections, and outreach to all citizens. Assuredly, she was interested, as she should have been, in creating more collections and programs to reach the widest possible range of ethnic and nationality groups from across the range of American experience. It is not possible to be a library “of the people” without that dimension of inclusivity and pluralism.

Her previous career in the large urban public libraries of Chicago and Baltimore equipped her especially well to see libraries not only as Klinenberg’s Palaces for the People, but as core epistemic institutions for communities to flourish in a democratic society. She brought that vision to the Library of Congress and elevated its mission to one of serving the larger public, while retaining its mission of promoting deep collections and expert assistance for Congress itself—its original purpose—and for scholars worldwide. Most of all, Hayden was a tireless champion of the broader public’s coming to understand its multi-faceted past, its many cultures, through the many “treasures” (her word) held by the institution she led.

In her Swearing-in Ceremony as 14^th Librarian of Congress in 2016, Hayden articulated her vision for the future:

“This Library of Congress, a historic reference source for Congress, an established place for scholars, can also be a place where we grow scholars, where we inspire young authors, where we connect with those individuals outside the limits of Washington and help them make history themselves.”

Her expansive vision in making the Library of Congress more democratic and open was a through line of her work—which she saw as a calling to something better in our society, the capacity to read, discuss, grow, and learn with and from others, all of which are assuredly markers of discourse in a liberal democracy when it is at its best.

Outrage about her dismissal quickly grew in recent days from Carla Hayden’s admirers—among whom I count myself--but the larger pattern here is an assault on epistemic institutions. In this instance, of course, the action came against the head of the nation’s premier research library. There is likely “nothing personal” against Hayden in President Trump’s action, except the ongoing intention to sideline, silence, and punish those who dare to represent the best in their fields through imaginative, enthusiastic, and more truly diverse leadership. The vast overreach involved in the new “epistemic secession”—related to tribal epistemology-- into a “remaking” of nation’s universities, cultural institutions, and even its primary library of record, is the driving destructiveness that causes leaders like Carla Hayden to be dismissed.

The ostensible reasons given for Hayden’s dismissal—offered to the press corps by a woefully uninformed White House Press Secretary—were that she represented “inappropriate ideas” of “DEI” in her leadership work, and that she was collecting “inappropriate” books for children within the Library of Congress. Somehow the Press Secretary was, and is, not educated well enough to understand that the Library of Congress is a library of record, required by statute to acquire all books published in the United States and placed within its repository, because of the Copyright Office there—which establishes copyright for books and other intellectual creations.

That some books acquired deal with “gender identity”, “critical race theory,” and other controversial ideas should not surprise anyone modestly well informed about the mission of the Library of Congress. That this leading research library would circulate such books to children or members of the general public is yet another foolish canard perpetrated in the name of protecting members of the public from “divisive concepts.” Another example of “epistemic secession” quickly followed within 24 hours, with the Secretary of Defense and President Trump himself issuing an order to remove all books in the military service academy libraries relating to “DEI” and “divisive concepts”—an astonishing lack of trust, surely, in the young people who have joined the armed forces, and their ability to think, learn, and engage in critical inquiry as mature adults.

Assaulting Epistemic Institutions

We now are seeing waves of “epistemic secession” through Executive Orders and early or late-evening firings. The catchall rationale now for many of them is the “DEI” taint. The reasonable corrections needed by this administration relating to racial and gender essentialism in epistemic institutions--through working with universities to remove litmus tests, inappropriate hiring practices, and demands for conformity toward “woke” or progressive dogmas—has been converted into a drive for ideological purity to purge wrongthink. That “purity drive” demands unquestioning obedience to the other end of the sociopolitical spectrum. The overzealousness is now clarifying in its own way, of creating a new reality distortion zone of “acceptable” and conformist views about the nation’s complicated past and its fraught present.

Intelligent discussions of what is appropriate within “DEI” are now totally missing in the actions of the administration, because “DEI” is weaponized as a bludgeon to punish those who have questions about the worldview the administration wants to impose within leading universities and cultural institutions. Hence the drive for “epistemic secession” to establish the alternative reality—and sanitized history-- that the administration favors.

Our great cultural institutions like the Library Congress should help us remember our country’s multitudes of viewpoints, worldviews, ethnicities, professions, movements, and creative genius among all of them, and help us to re-create a shared reality from generation to generation. That shared reality, anchored in our cultural institutions, transcends narrow political agendas of the moment. It is a bulwark against “epistemic secession” and confabulated pseudo-realities promoted in social media and the noisy tribalism that divides rather than calls us to something better.

The dismissal of Carla Hayden signals to the library profession—and to a larger public – a demand for political and ideological conformity. This demand placed upon epistemic institutions such as libraries is further evidence of a new authoritarianism occurring in multiple institutions. The authoritarianism of the progressive Left has been in evidence too much in the library field in recent years; now the summons comes for those who believe in intellectual and academic freedom, and the core mission of libraries, to affirm pluralism against the assaults from the populist-authoritarian Right now in political power.

In the meantime, Carla Hayden’s example of leadership calls for gratitude and thanks. She has shown what is possible at the pinnacle of our leading research library, an institution of which all Americans can be proud, and point to as one of our best examples of knowledge created through activated curation and imaginative engagement with a country urgently in need of renewed citizenship and an allegiance to truth-seeking pluralism.

Words from another era, and from another former Librarian of Congress, poet, and writer Archibald MacLeish, sum up Carla Hayden’s influence in building an “enduring affirmation” of what is great within our country:

“The library, almost alone of the great monuments of civilization, stands taller now than it ever did before. The city... decays. The nation loses its grandeur... The university is not always certain what it is. But the library remains: a silent and enduring affirmation that the great Reports still speak, and not alone but somehow all together...”

1. As of this writing, two major library associations have issued statements about the precipitous dismissal of Carla Hayden as Librarian of Congress: the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), and the American Library Association (ALA). Following the dismissal of Carla Hayden, the Trump administration also dismissed the Director of Copyright Services Shira Perlmutter shortly after her office submitted a report on A.I. and Fair Use Guidelines, related to the use of copyrighted materials in “training texts” in LLM (large language models).