Jeff Ostler (@jostler.bsky.social)

OAH | Statement in Response to Secretary Order 3431 and Censorship of History in the National Park ServiceOAH | Statement in Response to Secretary Order 3431 and Censorship of History in the National Park Service Secretary Order 3431, issued by the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, represents a clear and troubling intrusion into the integrity of historical presentation within the National Park Service (NPS). This order poses a threat to the interpretation of American history at NPS sites. The directive demands that the NPS revise educational materials, exhibits, and programs to avoid what it calls “ideological bias”—language that in practice seeks to sanitize complex histories and erase histories of race, environment, gender and sexuality, immigration, indigeneity, labor, and religion. The directive further undermines the NPS’s longstanding mission to present inclusive, evidence-based, and publicly accessible history. https://www.oah.org/2025/06/18/statement-in-response-to-secretary-order-3431-and-censorship-of-history-in-the-national-park-service/