Our Memories Are Worth Fighting For

As my junior class visit to the National Museum of African American History and Culture last spring drew to a close, we headed downstairs toward the exit, somberly discussing the history we had just encountered as the escalator hummed softly beneath us. 

Parallel to us, a group of young men in matching school polos and bright red “Make America Great Again” hats glided upward, joking around with each other as they entered the first exhibit. At the time, their arrival seemed like little more than a frustrating reminder that my city was changing. Two weeks later, when the museum began removing several artifacts from display following a March 27 executive order directing federal cultural institutions to review “divisive, race-centered” content, I immediately thought back to that moment, suddenly seeing it as a warning I had missed. My classmates and I had unknowingly been among the last people able to learn the lessons the now-empty cases held. Ugly, uncomfortable histories that forced us to reckon with our national and personal identities were erased for precisely that reason.

In the months since, speech has been targeted more explicitly all across the country. In September, teachers in at least four states were fired due to social media posts in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s death after members of the administration encouraged citizens to report “unpatriotic” behavior online. That same month, the president suggested that negative coverage of him is illegal, and the White House has continually limited journalists’ access to information and officials. 

As a student journalist, I firmly believe that a free press is the bedrock upon which democracy lies. When people lack the means not only to hold power to account but first to understand how it is wielded, they cannot be true participants in the democratic process. However, I see an even greater danger in the erosion of these protections.

Marginalized groups have always been the first targets of censorship, and censorship is rarely where suppression ends. The erasure of a free press is the loss of one of the few tools that allows us to preserve collective memory and challenge dominant narratives.

Though reinforced by my personal experience, the value I place on a free press draws its strength from the legacy of Jewish women who came before me and wielded their voices against oppression. Rachel Sassoon Beer, the first female newspaper editor in England, embodied this conviction more than a century ago. During the Dreyfus Affair, she repeatedly published evidence that the case was built on a lie. Despite her status as both a woman in a male-dominated industry and a Jewish editor in an intensely antisemitic climate, Beer used her position as a journalist to fight for justice through years of disparagement and lawsuits. Eventually, her persistence paid off, and Dreyfus was freed. 

Decades later, Ruth Gruber continued this legacy, documenting the continued Jewish struggle after the Holocaust. She covered the plight of Soviet prisoners, the 1947 deportation of Holocaust survivors attempting to emigrate to Mandatory Palestine, and the rescue of Ethiopian Jews, shining light on those otherwise left unseen. 

The fight against censorship has a long history in Israel as well, as seen in Shulamit Aloni’s 1969 condemnation of the repression of stories about the “revival of nationalist and Zionist aspiration among the young Jewish public in Russia.” Aloni argued that silencing these people robbed Jews worldwide of essential information, understanding the value of free speech as a tool to support those who are vulnerable. That understanding was central to her career in Israeli politics, throughout which she was an outspoken advocate for Palestinian, LGBTQ+, and immigrant rights. In asserting their rights to make their voices heard, Beer, Gruber, and Aloni protected the rights of others to live with dignity and know their own history.

The defense of free expression carries its own tension. The First Amendment protects views I find abhorrent just as much as it does those I celebrate and uplift. It allows bigoted and hateful rhetoric to be spread and grants visibility to those who spread it. Recently, The New York Times published a podcast episode, originally titled "Did Women Ruin the Workplace?" in which an author argued that feminism and the push for gender equality had dramatically weakened professional institutions. This idea is deeply offensive and goes against the principles central to my feminist identity. But while handing these voices a platform is not the solution, neither is silencing them entirely. In today’s world, it is the role of rigorous, ethical journalism to interrogate and push back against harmful narratives.

It is no coincidence that the creeping increase of restrictions on and censorship of the press is accompanied by a regression of women’s rights and minority protections. When we limit which voices are heard, those that are most desperate are pushed to the side. The consequences spare no one. When marginalized stories are erased and accountability is tossed aside, society loses the history and perspectives we need to prevent injustice from resurfacing.

For Jewish feminists, the protection of a free press is an urgent and existential cause. Our traditions emphasize testimony and the written word as defenses against forgetting. The Talmud's layers of commentary and the insistence on interpretation are themselves acts of resistance to the idea that one version of truth can silence all others. Feminism demands the same. Both traditions depend on speech and on the freedom to document experience in one’s own terms. Without them, the stories that shape who we are and the lessons we carry will quickly vanish, first from museum cases and then from our memory.