Previously aired November 24, 2025.
As part of the 2025 Beaumont Endowed Lincoln Legacy Lecture Series at the University of Illinois Springfield, former U.S. Archivist Colleen Shogan delivered a timely message: democracy depends on memory.
Shogan connected today’s “age of disruption” to Abraham Lincoln’s insistence that truth and historical narrative matter. Lincoln challenged distortions of the Constitution in his own time, she noted, understanding that a republic cannot survive without a shared commitment to facts.
As the 11th Archivist of the United States—and the first woman confirmed by the Senate to lead the National Archives and Records Administration—Shogan oversaw the preservation of billions of federal records. From the Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the United States to Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, these documents, she argued, are not relics. They are the connective tissue of civic life.
Shogan warned that creeping politicization of cultural institutions—archives, libraries, museums—threatens their nonpartisan mission. When history is curated to serve ideology, public trust erodes. Transparency and independence, she said, are essential to accountability in a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.”
Looking to America’s 250th anniversary, Shogan called for a “civic education moonshot.” With low national proficiency in history and civics, she urged renewed focus on foundational principles, respectful disagreement, and active participation.
Quoting Benjamin Franklin’s famous challenge—“A republic, if you can keep it”—Shogan left the audience with a clear charge: protect the institutions that safeguard our shared memory, and recommit to the work of self-government.
Transcript pending.
