When Trump parachuted into the Kennedy Center
The Center was renamed ‘The Donald J Trump and the John F Kennedy Memorial Center For The Performing Arts’ by its Board of Trustees handpicked by him.
ON December 18, 2025, the Kennedy Center — a revered and iconic cultural institution in Washington, DC — was renamed ‘The Donald J Trump and the John F Kennedy Memorial Center For The Performing Arts’ by its Board of Trustees, followed by the installation of a new exterior signage and changes in digital branding.
Earlier, in February, soon after assuming office, President Trump had replaced the existing board with handpicked members, who elected him Chair. The new board changed the bylaws to exclude ex-officio members appointed by Congress from a vote or quorum, clearing the way for Trump's full control.
While the White House has celebrated the new name, many voices — official and unofficial — have questioned the legality of the decision. Since Congress had passed a federal law in 1964, specifically designating the arts institution as a memorial to President Kennedy, legal activist groups have challenged this decision in court, stating that only Congress has the authority to rename the Center.
Kennedy family members have also expressed outrage, viewing Trump's plans for the renamed Center as antithetical to the former President's humanistic cultural vision, as his niece stated recently: "[President Kennedy] was a man who was interested in the arts, in culture, interested in education."
Furthermore, a spate of programme cancellations has followed the Kennedy Center's renaming, indicating the artists' opposition to MAGA ideals. For instance, an all-star Jazz group, which cancelled its New Year's Eve performances, stated that "jazz was born from struggle, from a relentless insistence on freedom: freedom of thought, of expression and of the full human voice."
And a New York dance company that pulled out said it was "financially devastating, but morally exhilarating." More cancellations are happening, including Hamilton, the famed musical, while the board threatens to sue the producers.
Other US institutions, often promoting intellectual and creative freedom, have also been targeted by the Trump administration. For instance, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) have been mostly defunded.
The exhibits at various Smithsonian museums are also being revaluated by the Trump administration under the pretext that they depict "American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive."
Historians see this as a move to sanitise American history to a single narrative and to erase the voices of formerly disenfranchised peoples. Several major universities have also been pressured to submit to broad government surveillance or lose federal funding. Harvard University resisted this threat while remaining committed to "open inquiry and freedom of speech", followed by several others, such as UPenn and UChicago.
Overall, despite cuts in both sciences and humanities, as well as some compromises, a basic commitment to intellectual and creative freedom is largely holding in US academia. In addition, some media organisations, legal professionals, religious leaders and ordinary citizens are also pushing back on Trump’s agenda. Given these unrelenting struggles against authoritarian policies, what lessons can we learn, as we mark the new year, 2026?
In our divisive times, populist regimes worldwide seek to usurp and revamp cultural institutions for their nationalist agendas, typically based on religious, ethnic, racial and cultural purity. Thus, citizens are called to self-identify with a purified, homogenous nation, via myths of "national greatness" while excluding groups or individuals, marked as outsiders or "others".
Many citizens embrace these narrow national identities, often losing the ability to encompass historical complexity, or to envision alternative and plural worlds. Trump's new programming vision for the Kennedy Center seems to follow this script: he calls for "a Golden Age in Arts and Culture", implying that the spirit of "Make America Great Again" is not far from a xenophobic white Christian nationalism.
Trump's pushback against liberalism echoes populist trends worldwide. In India too, the call to “make India great again” — namely to Hinduise it by recuperating an imagined ancient splendour, antithetical to modernity — permeates public discourse. For instance, explicit on the RSS website is the idea of a pure Hindu nation: "The Hindu culture is the life-blood of Hindustan. If Hindustan is to be protected, we should first nourish the Hindu culture."
Once citizens are offered an organic image of Hinduism as a "life-blood" that nourishes the body of the nation (Hindustan), then they can more strongly self-identify with the Hindu nation and feel excluded if they are Muslim, Christian, etc. Given its widespread legitimacy, this ideology now increasingly informs educational planning and policies at different levels.
This move is a clear departure from the Nehruvian approach to education, in which no single ideology intruded on curricular arrangements for several decades after Independence.
One response to this exclusionary vision in India has been to defend and protect the rights of minorities. Another different, though equally powerful, riposte to a monolithic Hindutva is to expose its reductive and simplistic representation of Hinduism itself.
This rigorous intervention has in recent years been offered by several eminent Indian historians, perhaps most visibly by Romila Thapar, though often in conversations with her other professional colleagues.
What we can draw from these contemporary discussions — in print, in media and in live lectures — are complex historical facts and related questions that undermine Hindutva as a hegemonic ideology of nationalism.
Thus, facts emanating from these conversations about Indian history raise provocative questions: How can a society as diverse as India be reduced to a single, uniform and static heritage? What will happen to Hinduism's inherent pluralism, its coexistence with diverse sects, mythologies, animist elements and its overall relative syncretism?
We must also stop to think of the extraordinary influence of Hindu cultures across South-East Asia. Instead of accepting Indian nationalism as qualified by a single religious identity, we must recognise that Hinduism itself encompasses varied cultures. In this vision, we can realise the true dynamism of India's ancient civilisation.
For all aspirational Indians today, especially the younger generation, let us re-engage with history as a discipline —return to our past with curious yet critical minds. How will history judge our divisive times?
