Former Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden sat down with Robert Costa on CBS Sunday Morning this weekend to discuss a variety of subjects, most notably her May 8 firing by President Trump.
Appointed by President Obama, Hayden was the 14th Librarian of Congress since 1802—and the first woman and first Black person to hold the job. She received her dismissal from the position via email, which she thought might have been fake. “I was never notified beforehand and after,” she told Costa. “No one has talked to me directly at all from the White House.”
Hayden said that she doesn’t think the firing was personal, but it reveals a larger effort by the Trump administration to restrict Americans’ access to information.
“It’s part of a larger-seeming effort to diminish opportunities for the general public to have free access to information and inspiration,” Hayden said. “We like to say as librarians, ‘Free people read freely.’ And so, there’s been an effort recently to quelch that.”
The conversation also delved into Hayden’s personal story and relationship with books, as well as librarianship today and the fragile state of American democracy.
“Democracy is under attack,” Hayden said. “Democracies are not to be taken for granted. And the institutions that support democracy should not be taken for granted. And so, that’s what the concern is about libraries and museums. It’s part of a fabric. Think of it as an infrastructure that holds up – the libraries have been called one of the pillars of democracy, that you have these institutions in every community that allow anyone to come in and access knowledge.”
Watch the conversation in full below.
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Photo: CBS Sunday Morning
