The Unfinished American Experiment
March/April 2026An interview with former U.S. national archivist Colleen Shogan
Colleen Shogan holds the distinction of being the eleventh national archivist of the United States and the first woman to be nominated by a president and confirmed by the Senate for the role.
She also holds the distinction of publicly running afoul of two presidents—one Democrat and one Republican.
On January 17, 2025, with just days left in office, President Joe Biden declared that he was satisfied that the long-fought battle to pass the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution had been won five years earlier with its ratification by Virginia. It had cleared all necessary hurdles, said Biden, and could be officially published and certified by the National Archives as the twenty-eighth amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Shogan declined to do so.
The constitutional status of the ERA was an issue that Shogun had thoroughly familiarized herself with before accepting the nomination to be national archivist. She had studied the historical and legal documents involved, along with two previously issued opinions from the Department of Justice and was satisfied that the amendment had not been ratified within the legally valid deadline. Shogan, who personally favors the ERA, says that she had a constitutional duty not to certify the amendment. “When I took the oath of office as archivist of the United States I swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States,” she says. “I didn’t swear allegiance to a particular politician, a president, or a member of Congress.”
Her second experience with presidential disfavor came shortly afterward. On February 7, 2025, she was surprised by news reports that the White House director of personnel had posted on X, “At the direction of @realDonaldTrump the archivist of the United States has been dismissed tonight.” No reason was given, either at the time or subsequently, for removing Shogan from her post.
Shogan now has a new role—leading a national digital history project called In Pursuit. This unique initiative brings together contributions from three former presidents and three former first ladies, along with the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and a lineup of other national leaders and renowned historians, journalists, and authors. Its purpose is to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence with a series of short weekly essays—freely available to the public on Substack—reflecting on the history of the American republic. An essential goal of project, says Shogan, is to present history without partisanship.
“Many of the people we asked to write have definite opinions about what’s going on in the United States today and with our democracy,” says Shogan. “But we’ve asked them not to bring a partisan or ideological lens to these essays. We wanted them to write in a way that lets Americans decide for themselves about the lessons and the importance of that history.”
Bettina Krause, editor of Liberty magazine, recently talked with Shogan about the In Pursuit project, her experience as national archivist, and why history matters to good citizenship.*
Bettina Krause: I’m delighted to be talking with someone whose job it was to safeguard the physical copy of the Declaration of Independence. What was that experience like? And for those who may be unfamiliar with the role, what does the national archivist do?
Colleen Shogan: Just as the U.S. secretary of transportation runs the Department of Transportation, the national archivist runs the National Archives and Records Administration. But as you mentioned, that role comes with some unusual responsibilities. One of them, of course, is being the keeper of all the documents and all the records of the United States, of which there are more than 13.5 billion—and that’s just physical records. Included within these records are our founding documents: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.
As archivist I traveled around an awful lot because there’s more than 40 National Archives facilities across the United States. But when I was working in Washington, D.C., my office was right around the corner from the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. And there weren’t many days that I didn’t visit those documents. Sometimes I would do it in the morning before the public was allowed into the building. But oftentimes, on my way out of the building at lunchtime to get some fresh air, I would go and walk by the founding documents in the rotunda just to see the crowds and to see the people who were viewing the documents for the first time. And it was always thrilling to be able to see people’s reactions as they waited in line and then were able to have a glimpse of those records.
Krause: Why is historical literacy so important for us as a democratic republic?
Shogan: Our institutions, our public policies, our political culture, are all historically informed. We don’t just wake up one day and find, for example, that the health-care system in the United States is the way it is. There were many decisions along the way that caused the health-care system to be what it is. It’s the same with any other institution we can think of: the Republican Party, Congress, the federal court system. If we look at those institutions or policies and have questions about why they exist in the way that they do, we need to be historically informed.
But beyond that, within a democracy we hold our leaders accountable, and so there are always questions about transparency, accountability, and legitimacy. And the only way we can answer those questions is to access records; to have the ability to answer those questions from a historic perspective.
Krause: I recently read Jeffrey Rosen’s excellent book, The Pursuit of Happiness, in which he points out how America’s Founders were absolutely steeped in classical knowledge, enlightenment philosophy, and political history. How do you think our Founders would view civics education in America today?
Shogan: The vast number of Americans have had some sort of civics education in their middle or high school years. But we know from statistics, unfortunately, that civic knowledge is not what it really should be; only about 22 percent of eighth graders are proficient in civics. And we also know from surveys that a majority of American adults would fail a basic civics test.
So America’s Founders might be a bit concerned about that! But they would certainly be impressed by the access to information we have today, and our ability to communicate and organize ideas in ways they couldn’t have even begun to imagine. They believed that democracy requires civic virtue, and that this virtue requires a degree of knowledge, responsibility, and activity. By activity, I mean not being a passive citizen. Instead, the Founders believed that a virtuous citizen is one who routinely informs themselves about what’s going on, and who feels a sense of agency in their government—whether it’s the local, state, or national government.
Krause: There’s an irony here. You mentioned the unprecedented access we have now to historical information and primary sources. Yet in reality it’s largely being filtered through our individual social media algorithm and our own ideological bubble. How is current media changing our understanding of American history?
Shogan: There’s a good and a bad side to our new media environment. Actually I was one of the first to start writing, many years ago when I was at the Congressional Research Service, about the impact that social media would have on representation and democracy. Back then I had a lot of optimism because I thought, Wow, there’s going to be more access to information, more communication. It’s going to enable citizen activity in a way that has never been possible before. But then, of course, as you mention, competing ideologies and polarization are also driven by social media.
The good side is that you can learn more than you could ever before. As a teenager I liked American history, but I was limited by what I could watch on television, what I could read, what I learned in school, what was at the library. If I were a high school student today, I could literally learn anything I could ever want. I could see the founding documents online. I wouldn’t have to get my parents to take me to Washington, D.C.
I would really encourage people to access their history through trusted sites; maybe sometimes through the lens of social media, but through trusted social media that’s informing you rather than telling you what to think.
Krause: It seems that American history has become more contested, especially history around the origins of our republic and the original meaning of the Constitution. Can we ever teach history objectively?
Shogan: We’ve always told history through ideological lenses. Look at our interpretation of the Civil War. There was the “lost cause” interpretation of the Civil War, driven by a certain outcome people wanted—the propagation of Jim Crow and segregation. So this is not new in the United States. But the speed at which these views are transmitted has certainly changed through social media.
Krause: It does seem that history today is being used by some as a tool. Perhaps this is in part fueled by the Supreme Court’s recent focus on “history and tradition” and original public meaning in its jurisprudence. It seems that the stakes are higher around controlling the historical narrative.
Shogan: I used to say, when I was the archivist, that yes, there are powerful voices that can provide their own interpretations of history, and those voices will have sway. There’s no doubt about it, whether it’s people in positions of political power or it’s people who have powerful podcasts or social media followings.
But go back to the Founders and what they envisioned. What they wanted is for citizens to investigate for themselves. I’m a big fan of the marketplace of ideas under the First Amendment, so I’m not saying that any interpretation necessarily needs to be squelched or not offered. But let people evaluate those ideas, investigate for themselves by accessing records in the National Archives or other pieces of historical material from the Smithsonian or the Library of Congress. Let them evaluate for themselves whether a particular interpretation sounds more plausible than another interpretation. But I want to caution: that’s a lot of work! It’s not easy. But this is what democratic citizenship is all about.
Krause: In this year marking the 250th anniversary of the founding of the American republic, is it still possible for us to share a common history, something that we can all rally around and celebrate?
Shogan: The history project that I’m currently leading, In Pursuit, is an opportunity to try to do just that. We’re gathering short essays about American history—about our presidents and first ladies—and we’re doing it without ideology and without partisanship. Our goal is to have as many Americans as possible learn from our shared history and learn from some of the people who have shaped it.
It’s largely a digital history project—we’re going share the essays in digital format, at least initially. It’s a series of short essays written by very prominent Americans, and we’ve asked them each to write less than 1,300 words about a president or first lady, and to uncover at least one lesson that we can learn from that person’s leadership.
Krause: And you have a dream team of contributors, right?
Shogan: Yes, we have three former presidents who are writing essays: President Bush writing on George Washington, Barack Obama on Abraham Lincoln, and Bill Clinton on Teddy Roosevelt. Then we have three former first ladies: Laura Bush writing on Lady Bird Johnson, Michelle Obama on Jackie Kennedy, and then Hillary Clinton on Eleanor Roosevelt. Supreme Court chief justice John Roberts has written an essay on, as you might imagine, William Howard Taft, the only person to serve as president and chief justice. Former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice has written on President George H. W. Bush. We have some terrific historians—David Blight writing on Franklin Pierce, Drew Faust on James Buchanan, Annette Gordon-Reed on Andrew Johnson, Michael Beschloss on Lyndon Johnson, Mark Updegrove on George W. Bush. And there are also some prominent journalists who are writing some important essays: David Brooks on Ronald Reagan, for example, and Susan Page on Barbara Bush.
These essays are short enough to read in one sitting. The idea is that you can read one if you have 20 minutes during your lunch hour, or at the end of the day when the kids are in bed.
What I found as archivist, and as I’ve talked with people, is that Americans are genuinely interested in American history. They want to learn more. You don’t have to be a historian or a political scientist or a constitutional scholar. But not everybody can take the time to read a 500- or 700-page Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of one of these individuals. However, everyone can find five or 10 minutes a week.
In Pursuit was designed for historically curious Americans. It’s a way to provide history in a way that is accessible and not filtered through an ideological lens.
Krause: As a historian, what do you hope for this year in which we commemorate the Declaration of Independence?
Shogan: I hope, for Americans, that 2026 can be a bit of a reset button. We should celebrate the 250th anniversary of the American experiment. It’s come an incredible way from where we started in 1776 and in the fulfillment of the promises made in the Declaration of Independence. But we’ve still got a way to go. We need to start evaluating. Where are we in this experiment of American democracy? How far have we come? And where do we need to go?
The American experiment will never be done. As long as the United States is the United States and we function as a sovereign nation, we will never be done. Our history is not a snapshot, right? History is a moving picture. It’s a film. We’re moving through it. It’s not just something that is static; it is dynamic, and that’s what makes it so exciting.
The release of the weekly In Pursuit essays began on Presidents’ Day this year and can be accessed for free on Substack at https://inpursuit.substack.com. They are also available online, along with a wealth of associated resources, at https://www.inpursuit.org.
*This interview was edited for length and clarity.