Category: English

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Simon Levett, PhD candidate, public international law, University of Technology Sydney

Journalist Mariam Dagga was just 33 when she was brutally killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza on August 25.

As a freelance photographer and videographer, she had captured the suffering in Gaza through indelible images of malnourished children and grief-stricken families. In her will, she told her colleagues not to cry and her 13-year-old son to make her proud.

Dagga was killed alongside four other journalists – and 16 others – in an attack on a hospital that has drawn widespread condemnation and outrage.

This attack followed the killings of six Al Jazeera journalists by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) in a tent housing journalists in Gaza City earlier in August. The dead included Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anas al-Sharif.

Israel’s nearly two-year war in Gaza is among the deadliest in modern times. The Committee to Protect Journalists, which has tracked journalist deaths globally since 1992, has counted a staggering 189 Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza since the war began. Many worked as freelancers for major news organisations since Israel has banned foreign correspondents from entering Gaza.

In addition, the organisation has confirmed the killings of two Israeli journalists, along with six journalists killed in Israel’s strikes on Lebanon.

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‘It was very traumatising for me’

I went to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in Israel and Ramallah in the West Bank in 2019 to conduct part of my PhD research on the available protections for journalists in conflict zones.

During that time, I interviewed journalists from major international outlets such as The New York Times, The Guardian, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, CNN, BBC and others, in addition to local Palestinian freelance journalists and fixers. I also interviewed a Palestinian journalist working for Al Jazeera (English), with whom I remained in contact until recently.

I did not visit Gaza due to safety concerns. However, many of the journalists had reported from there and were familiar with the conditions, which were dangerous even before the war.

Osama Hassan, a local journalist, told me about working in the West Bank:

There are no rules, there’s no safety. Sometimes, when settlers attack a village, for example, we go to cover, but Israeli soldiers don’t respect you, they don’t respect anything called Palestinian […] even if you are a journalist.

Nuha Musleh, a fixer in Jerusalem, described an incident that occurred after a stone was thrown towards IDF soldiers:

[…] they started shooting right and left – sound bombs, rubber bullets, one of which landed in my leg. I was taken to hospital. The correspondent also got injured. The Israeli cameraman also got injured. So all of us got injured, four of us.

It was very traumatising for me. I never thought that a sound bomb could be that harmful. I was in hospital for a good week. Lots of stitches.

Better protections for local journalists and fixers

My research found there is very little support for local journalists and fixers in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in terms of physical protection, and no support in terms of their mental health.

International law mandates that journalists are protected as civilians in conflict zones under the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocols. However, these laws have not historically extended protections specific to the needs of journalists.

Media organisations, media rights groups and governments have been unequivocal in their demands that Israel take greater precautions to protect journalists in Gaza and investigate strikes like the one that killed Mariam Dagga.

Sadly, there is seemingly little media organisations can do to help their freelance contributors in Gaza beyond issuing statements noting concern for their safety, lobbying Israel to allow evacuations, and demanding access for foreign reporters to enter the strip.

International correspondents typically have training on reporting from war zones, in addition to safety equipment, insurance and risk assessment procedures. However, local journalists and fixers in Gaza do not generally have access to the same protections, despite bearing the brunt of the effects of war, which includes mass starvation.

Despite the enormous difficulties, I believe media organisations must strive to meet their employment law obligations, to the best of their ability, when it comes to local journalists and fixers. This is part of their duty of care.

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Read more:
Israel must allow independent investigations of Palestinian journalist killings – and let international media into Gaza

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For example, research shows fixers have long been the “most exploited and persecuted people” contributing to the production of international news. They are often thrust into precarious situations without hazardous environment training or medical insurance. And many times, they are paid very little for their work.

Local journalists and fixers in Gaza must be paid properly by the media organisations hiring them. This should take into consideration not just the woeful conditions they are forced to work and live in, but the immense impact of their jobs on their mental health.

As the global news director for Agence France-Presse said recently, paying local contributors is very difficult – they often bear huge transaction costs to access their money. “We try to compensate by paying more to cover that,” he said.

But he did not address whether the agency would change its security protocols and training for conflict zones, given journalists themselves are being targeted in Gaza in their work.

These local journalists are literally putting their lives on the line to show the world what’s happening in Gaza. They need greater protections.

As Ammar Awad, a local photographer in the West Bank, told me:

The photographer does not care about himself. He cares about the pictures, how he can shoot good pictures, to film something good. But he needs to be in a good place that is safe for him.

Simon Levett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Local journalists and fixers are dying at unprecedented rates in Gaza. Can anyone protect them? – https://theconversation.com/local-journalists-and-fixers-are-dying-at-unprecedented-rates-in-gaza-can-anyone-protect-them-263923

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Lin Tian, Research Fellow, Data Science Institute, University of Technology Sydney

When you ask ChatGPT or other AI assistants to help create misinformation, they typically refuse, with responses like “I cannot assist with creating false information.” But our tests show these safety measures are surprisingly shallow – often just a few words deep – making them alarmingly easy to circumvent.

We have been investigating how AI language models can be manipulated to generate coordinated disinformation campaigns across social media platforms. What we found should concern anyone worried about the integrity of online information.

The shallow safety problem

We were inspired by a recent study from researchers at Princeton and Google. They showed current AI safety measures primarily work by controlling just the first few words of a response. If a model starts with “I cannot” or “I apologise”, it typically continues refusing throughout its answer.

Our experiments – not yet published in a peer-reviewed journal – confirmed this vulnerability. When we directly asked a commercial language model to create disinformation about Australian political parties, it correctly refused.

However, we also tried the exact same request as a “simulation” where the AI was told it was a “helpful social media marketer” developing “general strategy and best practices”. In this case, it enthusiastically complied.

The AI produced a comprehensive disinformation campaign falsely portraying Labor’s superannuation policies as a “quasi inheritance tax”. It came complete with platform-specific posts, hashtag strategies, and visual content suggestions designed to manipulate public opinion.

The main problem is that the model can generate harmful content but isn’t truly aware of what is harmful, or why it should refuse. Large language models are simply trained to start responses with “I cannot” when certain topics are requested.

Think of a security guard checking minimal identification when allowing customers into a nightclub. If they don’t understand who and why someone is not allowed inside, then a simple disguise would be enough to let anyone get in.

Real-world implications

To demonstrate this vulnerability, we tested several popular AI models with prompts designed to generate disinformation.

The results were troubling: models that steadfastly refused direct requests for harmful content readily complied when the request was wrapped in seemingly innocent framing scenarios. This practice is called “model jailbreaking”.

The ease with which these safety measures can be bypassed has serious implications. Bad actors could use these techniques to generate large-scale disinformation campaigns at minimal cost. They could create platform-specific content that appears authentic to users, overwhelm fact-checkers with sheer volume, and target specific communities with tailored false narratives.

The process can largely be automated. What once required significant human resources and coordination could now be accomplished by a single individual with basic prompting skills.

The technical details

The American study found AI safety alignment typically affects only the first 3–7 words of a response. (Technically this is 5–10 tokens – the chunks AI models break text into for processing.)

This “shallow safety alignment” occurs because training data rarely includes examples of models refusing after starting to comply. It is easier to control these initial tokens than to maintain safety throughout entire responses.

Moving toward deeper safety

The US researchers propose several solutions, including training models with “safety recovery examples”. These would teach models to stop and refuse even after beginning to produce harmful content.

They also suggest constraining how much the AI can deviate from safe responses during fine-tuning for specific tasks. However, these are just first steps.

As AI systems become more powerful, we will need robust, multi-layered safety measures operating throughout response generation. Regular testing for new techniques to bypass safety measures is essential.

Also essential is transparency from AI companies about safety weaknesses. We also need public awareness that current safety measures are far from foolproof.

AI developers are actively working on solutions such as constitutional AI training. This process aims to instil models with deeper principles about harm, rather than just surface-level refusal patterns.

However, implementing these fixes requires significant computational resources and model retraining. Any comprehensive solutions will take time to deploy across the AI ecosystem.

The bigger picture

The shallow nature of current AI safeguards isn’t just a technical curiosity. It’s a vulnerability that could reshape how misinformation spreads online.

AI tools are spreading through into our information ecosystem, from news generation to social media content creation. We must ensure their safety measures are more than just skin deep.

The growing body of research on this issue also highlights a broader challenge in AI development. There is a big gap between what models appear to be capable of and what they actually understand.

While these systems can produce remarkably human-like text, they lack contextual understanding and moral reasoning. These would allow them to consistently identify and refuse harmful requests regardless of how they’re phrased.

For now, users and organisations deploying AI systems should be aware that simple prompt engineering can potentially bypass many current safety measures. This knowledge should inform policies around AI use and underscore the need for human oversight in sensitive applications.

As the technology continues to evolve, the race between safety measures and methods to circumvent them will accelerate. Robust, deep safety measures are important not just for technicians – but for all of society.

Lin Tian receives funding from the Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator (ASCA) and the Defence Innovation Network.

Marian-Andrei Rizoiu receives funding from the Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator (ASCA), the Australian Department of Home Affairs, Commonwealth of Australia as represented by the Defence Science and Technology Group of the Department of Defence, and the Defence Innovation Network.

– ref. How we tricked AI chatbots into creating misinformation, despite ‘safety’ measures – https://theconversation.com/how-we-tricked-ai-chatbots-into-creating-misinformation-despite-safety-measures-264184

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Kolaia Raisele, PhD Candidate in Anthropology, La Trobe University

In recent years, Pacific island nations have earned global credibility as champions of climate action. Pacific leaders view sea level rise as an existential threat.

But this united front is now under strain as some Pacific nations pursue a controversial new industry – deep-sea mining. Nauru, the Cook Islands, Kiribati and Tonga have gone the furthest to make it a reality, attracted by new income streams. But nations such as Fiji, Palau and Vanuatu have called for a moratorium on deep-sea mining in international waters.

Public opinion across the Pacific is often divided, pitting possible economic gains against the potential risks of an industry whose environmental impact remain uncertain but potentially significant. As this tension intensifies, it may split the Pacific and risk the region’s moral authority on climate.

What are the concerns over deep-sea mining?

Deep-sea mining targets three types of mineral deposits – polymetallic nodules strewn across deep underwater plains, cobalt-rich crusts on seamounts, and the ore deposits around hydrothermal vents.

To extract them, mining companies can use unmanned collectors to pump ore to the surface and return the wastewater. This creates plumes of sediment which can smother marine life. Methods of minimising damage to species from mining on land are largely unworkable at depth.

Deep-sea ecosystems are poorly understood, but we know they are slow to recover. Researchers have found areas mined as a test more than 40 years ago still show physical damage and immobile corals and sponges remain scarce.

Why is there so much interest in deep-sea mining?

Deep-sea mining hasn’t begun anywhere in earnest, because the International Seabed Authority has yet to finalise rules governing extraction. This authority oversees the 54% of the world’s oceans beyond territorial waters.

But plans for deep-sea mining operations can still be submitted and considered without these rules in place.

Analysts have estimated seabed minerals could be worth a staggering A$30 trillion. Some of the richest deposits lie in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in international waters between Hawaii and Mexico, thousands of kilometres away from Pacific nations. Under international law, companies cannot mine in international waters on their own. They need to be officially sponsored by a national government, which has to keep effective control over its operations.

One reason deep-sea mining companies see Pacific states as such useful partners is that these countries can access
reserved areas of international seabed set aside for developing countries, as well as potential resources in the very large territorial waters around many island states.

Backers in Nauru, Tonga, the Cook Islands and Kiribati argue rising demand for manganese, cobalt, copper and nickel could deliver significant economic returns and diversify economies.

Nauru

Nauru’s enormous deposits of guano – compressed seabird excrement long sought as fertiliser – once made the country wealthy. But the guano is largely gone and the small nation has limited other resources.

Nauru sponsors Nauru Ocean Resources, a wholly owned subsidiary of seabed mining company The Metals Company. In 2011, the company received an International Seabed Authority contract permitting exploration of polymetallic nodules in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, more than 8,000km from Nauru.

Nauru has since “proudly taken a leading role” in developing international legal frameworks in mining nodules in the international seabed.

In June, Nauru signalled Nauru Ocean Resources would apply for an exploitation license.

Tonga

Tonga’s government is similarly backing deep-sea mining by partnering with The Metals Company to explore mining in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone.

In August 2025, Tonga signed an updated agreement with Tonga Offshore Mining, a subsidiary of The Metals Company. The agreement was originally signed in 2021 amid large-scale criticism over the lack of public consultation.

The mining company has promised new benefits, ranging from financial benefits, scholarships and community programs. Even so, the revised deal has encountered opposition from civil society, young people and legal experts. Prominent Tongans remain unconvinced, citing environmental, legal and transparency risks.

Economic pressure is part of the picture. Tonga owes an estimated A$180 million to China’s Exim Bank – roughly a quarter of its annual GDP.

Cook Islands

The 15 Cook Islands are widely scattered, giving the government exclusive rights to almost two million square kilometres of ocean. The government has issued exploration licences inside its Exclusive Economic Zone to three companies – Cook Islands Consortium, CIIC Seabed Resources Limited, and Moana Minerals. The Cook Islands government has established a domestic regulatory framework and is building research capacity.

Kiribati

Kiribati’s atolls and island are even more dispersed. The nation’s exclusive economic zone covers about 3.4 million km². The state-owned Marawa Research and Exploration company holds a 15-year exploration contract with the seabed authority. Kiribati has opened talks with China to explore potential collaboration.

The Pacific split

While revenues could potentially be sizeable for the Pacific, costs, technologies and environmental liabilities are highly uncertain.

The experience of Papua New Guinea is a cautionary tale. In 2019, the PNG deep-sea mining venture Solwara-1 went into administration following intense community pushback. The fallout cost the government an estimated $184 million. The PNG government now opposes deep-sea mining in its territorial waters.

While deep-sea mining now has clear backers, other nations are far more wary.

In 2022, Palau launched an alliance calling for a moratorium on mining in international waters. Early signatories included Fiji, American Samoa and the Federated States of Micronesia. Since then, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and the Marshall Islands have joined, as well as dozens of other countries. PNG has not yet joined.

Opposition from these Pacific states is based on the precautionary principle, which favours caution when knowledge is limited and damage is possible.

Pacific youth are among the most prominent opponents of deep-sea mining. The regional Pacific Blue Line coalition uniting civil society, faith groups, women’s organisations and youth networks has consistently called for a complete ban in the region. Young people have spoke out publicly in nations such as Tonga, where youth advocates criticised limited consultation and rallied against the plans, as well as the Cook Islands, where young people have demanded transparency.

Reputation under a cloud?

Pacific leaders have built a worldwide reputation for their principled climate diplomacy, from championing the 1.5°C goal to the major new advisory opinion on climate change issued by the world’s top court in response to a case instigated by students from the University of the South Pacific.

If some Pacific leaders open the door fully to deep-sea mining, it risks undermining the region’s united front on environmental issues and threatens its credibility.

The way this plays out will shape how the world hears the Pacific on climate and the oceans in the years ahead.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The Pacific’s united front on climate action is splintering over deep-sea mining – https://theconversation.com/the-pacifics-united-front-on-climate-action-is-splintering-over-deep-sea-mining-263199

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Olivera Simic, Professor in Law, Griffith University

Some say the law / ought not to bend. // That it should be a neutral, / certain thing. // But there are reasons / judgement and interpretation / are bequeathed / to human / – humane – / hearts, and heads.

– Excerpt from The Hope of a Thousand Small Lights, Maxine Beneba Clarke

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On January 23 2025, the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) chief prosecutor applied for arrest warrants for the Taliban’s supreme leader and Afghanistan’s chief justice, charging them with the persecution of women, a crime against humanity. It was a long overdue decision.

These arrest warrants, said Amnesty International, gave

hope, inside and outside the country to Afghan women, girls, as well as those persecuted on the basis of gender identity or expression.

And hope in justice is important.

The ICC is a Hague-based court with the power to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Today, it explicitly recognises sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilisation and gender-based persecution as distinct crimes.

But the recognition of gender-based abuses as distinct crimes under international law is relatively recent. The ICC has been widely criticised for its slow and lengthy processes, with an abysmal rate of convictions.

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Review: Feminist Judgments: Reimagining the International Criminal Court – edited by Kcasey McLoughlin, Rosemary Grey, Louise Chappell & Suzanne Varrall (Cambridge University Press)

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In its 23-year history of operation, only 11 ICC cases have resulted in convictions. Just two of those, relating to crimes in Congo and Uganda, included successful convictions for sexual and gender-based crimes.

What would it take for more of these cases to result in successful prosecutions of gender-based crimes? What would be required to bring “gender-sensitive judging” into practice? And might it be possible to imagine a world where laws are written with a specific focus on benefiting women and people of diverse genders?

These are some of the questions the feminist judgment “movement” seeks to answer. In this movement, scholars and practitioners rewrite judgments in decided cases from a feminist perspective.

A new book, Feminist Judgments: Reimagining the International Criminal Court, brings together nearly 50 authors, of all genders, from the Global North and Global South. In this collection, edited by Australian legal scholars Kcasey McLoughlin, Rosemary Grey, Louise Chappell and Suzanne Varrall, academics, advocates, and legal practitioners “re-envision a range of judgements” delivered at the ICC.

Similar projects conducted around the world have rewritten feminist judgments from courts in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Scotland, New Zealand, Canada, United States, Australia and India. But this is the first book to examine decisions made by ICC judges; decisions that carry “far-reaching consequences”.

The ICC holds prosecutorial authority in over 120 countries. The court’s rulings also, as the editors write, serve “as persuasive precedents in other international, regional, and national criminal courts”.

Alternative judgments

Contributors address nine ICC situations in Afghanistan, Myanmar/Bangladesh, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Mali, Sudan and Uganda. Because ICC cases are so large, each rewritten decision focuses on a single issue of law, fact or procedure addressed in the original decision.

For example, Suzanne Varrall and Sarah Williams rewrite the acquittal of former Congolese vice president and militia leader Jean Pierre Bemba Gombo by the ICC Appeals Chamber. Bemba’s was the ICC’s first case to include charges and a conviction for sexual violence. It was overturned on appeal in 2018.

The authors argue the court should factor in sexual and gender-based violence when interpreting and applying the doctrine of command responsibility, or a commander’s responsibility to prevent violations of international humanitarian law by their troops.

Most sexual and gender-based violence in conflict affects women and girls. But in applying a gender-sensitive approach, Varrall and Williams remind us, judges would also challenge traditional views of gender roles such as the idea that all men are combatants. Civilian men and boys can also be victims.

Currently, 50% of judges at the ICC are women but having women judges does not automatically mean they hold feminist perspectives, or possess a specific gender expertise. The ICC Prosecutor’s Office has published a comprehensive gender policy and appointed gender advisors as a part of a commitment to support gender justice and improve its track record in prosecuting gender-based crimes.

One of the major themes emerging from this collection is the need for judges to make decisions informed by the lived experiences of those affected by international crimes. Survivors’ experiences are not only to be heard, but listened to “with particular care”, as eminent international jurist Navi Pillay reminds us in her foreword.

Pillay, a former judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the ICC, was the judge in the 1998 Akayesu case, the world’s first case confirming sexual violence can be an act of genocide.

The case brought against a former village mayor in Rwanda, Jean-Paul Akayesu, achieved some justice for an estimated 250,000-500,000 women and girls raped in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. While listening to the testimony of witness “JJ” in the case, Pillay became convinced that the traditional “body penetration” definition of rape was not appropriate in the context of mass rapes during war.

In such contexts, rape is never “just penetration” of the body itself. It becomes a calculated act of cruelty, a combination of humiliation, degradation, public nudity and the unbearable pain of having one’s children witness the abuse of their mother. Rape in the context of mass atrocity morphs into a destruction of the spirit and of the will to live, leaving a lifelong scar.

Feminist judgments can have an impact. A minority opinion, for instance, may one day become the prevailing orthodoxy.
Feminist judgments are an exercise in consciousness-raising, primarily designed to educate and transform legal discourse.

This collection goes beyond traditional legal analysis by incorporating photography and poetry, including Beneba Clarke’s The Hope of a Thousand Small Lights. It recognises justice can have many different meanings; that it can be symbolic too, and still profoundly meaningful to victims.

Political constraints

Rewritten judgments in this collection offer clear guidance for ICC courts on how to advance gender-sensitive jurisprudence in cases of atrocity. But the ICC faces political constraints, including attacks on its authority from the Trump administration.

In November 2024, the court issued warrants of arrest for the now deceased Hamas leader, Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, allegedly responsible for the October 2023 attacks in Israel. These charges, withdrawn after his death, included sexual violence crimes committed in Israel on October 7.

The court also charged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant in relation to war crimes in Gaza, including starvation and targeting civilians, and crimes against humanity.

This month, the US State Department announced new sanctions on four ICC officials, including two judges and two prosecutors, claiming they were instrumental in efforts to prosecute Americans and Israelis. The US is not a member of the ICC. The court has denounced these sanctions as a “flagrant attack against the independence of an impartial judicial institution”.

If the ICC is perceived as lacking impartiality, this will limit its ability to address the gendered and intersectional dimensions of atrocity worldwide.

War and gender

War exacerbates previously existing gender inequalities. Around 110 instances of armed conflict are underway around the world; Africa and the Middle East are the most affected regions.

Many of these conflicts are intractable, dragging on for decades. With technology in warfare rapidly evolving, the growing application of AI and machine learning in weapons has gendered impacts. Attacks by explosive weapons in residential areas, for instance, disproportionately affect women and girls, since they often have primary responsibility for buying household goods or food at markets. Wars are also becoming less likely to be resolved politically.

The collective behind Feminist Judgments: Reimagining the International Criminal Court acknowledge that, even with its best efforts, the ICC can only achieve a limited and selective accountability. They encourage victims to pursue justice in other ways, not necessarily retributive. Perhaps those ways could be restorative or symbolic. Initiatives in arts, storytelling and memorialisation can bring some closure to survivors, while strengthening the social fabric of the nation.

With no meaningful recourse for women to Afghan courts and only limited access to courts of other states, the ICC remains the only viable judicial venue in which to prosecute the Taliban leaders for gender persecution.

However, the chances of seeing these leaders appear before the ICC are slim. They depend on arresting the defendants, who have publicly denounced the ICC warrants for their arrest. And the ICC has never conducted a trial in absentia. The court’s governing framework, known as the Rome Statute, states: “the accused shall be present during the trial”.

Almost 50% of individuals accused by the ICC are not brought to justice.

The court hopes charges confirmed in their absence could perhaps bring some redress to victims. Despite the absence of the accused, victims would still have an opportunity to finally speak out before a court – and the evidence would be examined, presented and documented for future reference.

Olivera Simic does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. How can the International Criminal Court achieve justice for women? – https://theconversation.com/how-can-the-international-criminal-court-achieve-justice-for-women-263797

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Kylie Message, Professor of Public Humanities and Director of the ANU Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University

United States President Donald Trump first signalled his intention to target the Smithsonian Institution in March, when he signed an executive order titled Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.

This executive order – one of several targeting the cultural sector – vowed to remove “improper, divisive or anti-American ideology”.

It was quickly followed by an article from the White House titled President Trump is Right about the Smithsonian, with more than 20 examples of how the Smithsonian had embraced so-called “woke” ideology.

To put this all in context, the Smithsonian is the world’s largest museum, education and research complex. It was founded in 1846 as an entity independent from the US government. Today, most of its funding comes through federal appropriations. Its governing board includes the US vice president and supreme court chief justice.

It is custodian for more than 157 million items, 21 museums, 21 libraries, 14 education and research centres, a zoo, and several historical and architectural landmarks.

Trump has long been a participant in the culture wars, including when he denounced “cancel culture” at a 2020 fourth of July event at Mt Rushmore. However, there is something different about his current interest in the Smithsonian. And that’s because next year is the US “semiquincentennial”: the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Looking through history, it’s clear Trump’s attacks on the Smithsonian can’t be separated from the semiquincentennial. We’re also reminded of how the Smithsonian has both thwarted and endured political interference in the past.

2026: a politically important year

Trump’s heightened interest in the Smithsonian was explained in a recent letter from the White House to Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch III:

As we prepare to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our Nation’s founding, it is more important than ever that our national museums reflect the unity, progress, and enduring values that define the American story.

In parallel, a presidential action was released in celebration of the major anniversary.

This action established Task Force 250, which would be chaired by the president and housed in the Department of Defence. The task force’s key priorities include the development of a “national garden of American heroes” (proposed in Trump’s first term), and the protection of monuments from vandalism.

While the presidential action identifies no specific role for the Smithsonian, taken together the statements lead to questions about political influence over the Smithsonian’s operations.

Decades of political grievance

Many of the Smithsonian exhibits that attracted historical censorship and controversy are now themselves approaching significant anniversaries.

One example is the 1972 exhibition, The Right to Vote, held at the Museum of History and Technology (now the National Museum of American History) to celebrate the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

The exhibition had been scheduled as a venue for President Richard Nixon’s inauguration ball. But upon inspection, Nixon’s team decided it was too controversial and had it walled off for their events.

Further political grievances were aimed at the 1991 National Museum of American Art exhibition The West as America: Reinterpreting Images of the Frontier, 1820-1920. It encouraged visitors to understand how historical paintings represent a mythical view of the past that has been used to justify the West’s expansion and development.

The exhibition led to immediate outrage from former Librarian of Congress Daniel Boorstin. Boorstin wrote in the visitor’s book that it was: “A perverse, historically inaccurate destructive exhibit! No credit to the Smithsonian!”

Other politicians became energised by Boorstin’s view that the exhibition was a disrespectful attempt to dismantle and shame the history and legacy of the American frontier.

The exhibition became the subject of heated debate in the Senate Committee on Appropriations hearings from 1990 to 1992. At issue was how American nationalism should be represented in museums. A group of senators, led by Ted Stevens, threatened to reduce the Smithsonian’s funding if it failed to present “accountability” for its use of federal funds.

The Smithsonian’s then-secretary Robert McCormick Adams insisted it was precisely because the Smithsonian was dependent on tax resources that it had a responsibility to “exemplify the nation’s pluralism”.

In reporting the brouhaha, New York Times columnist Michael Kimmelman used language that wouldn’t be out of place today. He said the controversy “raises questions about government involvement in the arts […] Is it now the job of Congress to police its constituents’ thinking about the art in those museums?”

Cancelled by Congress

Another instance of political interference came in the mid 1990s, in relation to a Smithsonian exhibition representing the 50th anniversary of America’s atomic bombing of Japan in WWII.

The National Air and Space Museum designed a display that included the restored B-29 bomber, a plane called the Enola Gay, that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.

The exhibition was supposed to open in 1995. However, people who consulted on its early plans criticised it for supposedly presenting a politically correct and revisionist interpretation of the events. They claimed it overplayed the horrors of the bombings, and portrayed Japanese victims without sufficient context surrounding the preceding Japanese aggression.

Members of Congress soon became aware of the concerns, adding their own threats of hearings and budget reductions. They called for the curator’s resignation, and contributed to the exhibition’s eventual cancellation.

History repeats

Trump’s attacks on the Smithsonian are part of a long political playbook in which culture has been targeted for representing an inclusive view of the American union.

The Smithsonian has weathered political attacks on its exhibitions in the past. However, there is now more attention to its institutional remit than ever before.

The recent threats from Trump, and lessons from history, highlight the importance of protecting the Smithsonian as an independent authority that withstands political interference at all costs.

Kylie Message has received funding from the Smithsonian Institution and from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Trump isn’t the first US politician to pick a fight with the Smithsonian. But this time could be different – https://theconversation.com/trump-isnt-the-first-us-politician-to-pick-a-fight-with-the-smithsonian-but-this-time-could-be-different-264022