Since January 2025, the federal government has made radical changes to the US National Archives and Freedom of Information Act Offices, including firing the head of the National Archives, closing FOIA offices at the Center for Disease Control, the Federal Drug Administration, and the National Institute of Health, and destroying USAID documents. These actions strike at the core of historical research. Without archivists, functioning archives, and non-partisan policies for preservation and declassification, historians’ work will be fundamentally altered, as will the histories they will be able to write.

In this roundtable, leading experts with first-hand experience with FOIA requests, the National Archives, declassification, and government accountability will address the rapidly changing landscape for government documents. Lauren Harper is the Freedom of the Press Foundation’s first Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy, and she is a former member of the FOIA Federal Advisory Committee. Rachel Santarsiero works for the National Security, where she is the director of the Archive's Climate Change Transparency Project. Kyle Longley is a professor at Chapman university, and he is the Executive Director of the Society for Military History. He brings extensive experience working in US military archives. Trudy Peterson was the first woman to serve as Acting Archivist of the United States, 1993-1995, and she has extensive experience in US and international archives. Robert McMahon will chair and moderate the roundtable. He currently serves as the Chair of Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations’ Committee on Historical Documentation.

The roundtable will be an opportunity for these colleagues to share their recent experiences and perspectives, and it will provide ample time for audience members’ questions and participation.