Lonnie Bunch
United States
Secretary of the Smithsonian
government
Lonnie Griffith Bunch III is an American educator and historian. Bunch is the fourteenth secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, the first African American and first historian to serve as head of the Smithsonian. He has spent most of his career as a history museum curator and administrator.
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Sep 9, 2026
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Bunch stepped down as Smithsonian secretary after months of pressure from the Trump administration over how US history is presented in museums.
His resignation alarms Renaissance supporters, who see it as part of a broader attack on scientific and historical truth-driven by American right-wing politics.