After a “Western Civilization” course prompted me to switch my path from law school to a Ph.D., my professor—a University of Chicago legend named Karl Weintraub whose teaching motivated generations of us to camp out overnight for a spot in his class—wrote to me regarding his educational goals. I recently revisited his 1986 letter and found it relevant to today’s discussions about our national history. Mr. Weintraub’s insights on history education highlighted why all Americans have a vested interest in the fate of our National Historic Sites.

In the classroom, Mr. Weintraub described how he dedicated himself to sharing human narratives of longing, fear, and accomplishment: “Whether teaching undergraduates or graduates, I am frequently confronted with moments where I feel the urge to scream: ‘Oh my god, my dear student, why can you not see that this is a truly real matter, often a matter of existence itself, for the person, for the historical men and women you are studying—or should be studying!’” 

Mr. Weintraub was reminding me, a future professor, that analyzing the deceased is insufficient. While acknowledging the vast time gap between their era and ours, one must strive to view the world through their perspective. 

Historic sites can provide this experience for every American, yet these locations are currently in jeopardy. In National Parks across the nation, , often without explanation, exhibits that allow us to see through the eyes of people from a different world are being removed. In Philadelphia, local officials and organizations are . The outcome concerns every American. 

National Historic Sites serve as America’s open classrooms—spaces where individuals from every zip code stand on ground containing the stories of our ancestors. Here, we learn to envision ourselves in radically different, complex lives: a fighting at the . A California fisherman imprisoned at the . The ninety-year-old daughter of a doctor born into slavery, celebrating the opening of the .

Few college lecture halls can rival this. Visit the and you will walk where, for over a century, Americans with deeply conflicting and sometimes repugnant views have exercised their First Amendment rights. At the , you can stand in apartments where generations of immigrants helped construct New York’s economy, neighborhoods, and culture. 

Go to and you will traverse the living quarters of those enslaved in George Washington’s household just just before viewing the , eighty years after it was engraved with words from Leviticus: “Proclaim Liberty thro’ all the Land to all the Inhabitants thereof.” 

Dwight Pitcaithley, a former Chief Historian at the National Park Service, : “The contradiction between the nation’s founding ideals of freedom and the reality of slavery becomes tangible when one physically passes through slave quarters to enter a shrine dedicated to a major symbol of the abolition movement…. What better way to establish the correct historical context for the Liberty Bell than by discussing the institution of slavery?”

With the proper context, a visitor could, in a single day, imagine the world through the eyes of an abolitionist newspaper editor, a Revolutionary War general who became our first president, and an enslaved Virginian who claimed her freedom from that president.

Everyone merits the experience Pitcaithley described. No one can access it when government officials selectively erase the stories preserved by historic places. 

No one benefits when ongoing research is obstructed or difficult exhibits are taken down. Visitors to Independence Park were deprived when they were that enable us to imagine ourselves in the lives of those who lived and worked there. As U.S. District Judge Cynthia M. Rufe noted in her recent ruling ordering the National Park Service to reinstate them, removing these exhibits is tantamount to “.” The exhibit on the history of slavery at the President’s House in Philadelphia was . 

Viewing the world through the eyes of the deceased requires humility and courage. Humility, because no matter how much we know, there is always more to learn. And courage, because we will uncover unsettling truths about both the past and ourselves. 

I gained extensive knowledge in Mr. Weintraub’s Western civilization class. He spoke with memorable urgency when he wanted us to comprehend difficult realities. Athenians enjoyed democracy domestically while endorsing brutal conquests abroad. Fighting for a perfectly egalitarian France could lead one to commit undeniably cruel acts. Adhering strictly to pacifism could contribute to a massacre. An inspiring ideal of universal human freedom could arise on the backs of enslaved people. Two contradictory facts can both be true, and we are all prone to arrogance and self-serving rationalization. 

In Mr. Weintraub’s view, our strongest defense and our greatest hope lay in understanding our origins.                  

Human beings, Toni Morrison wrote in her essay collection , “are the moral inhabitants of the globe. To deny this, regardless of our feeble attempts to embody it, is to lie in prison.” If I interpret Morrison correctly, our moral status derives from a capability we rarely exercise—“to project, to become the other, to imagine her or him.”

National Historic Sites cultivate this capability on a scale few institutions can match. They provide us, time and again, with the chance to imagine ourselves in the lives of others. 

It is up to us, the American people, to ensure these significant places remain free to fulfill this function, both now and in the future.