NEW YORK (AP) — Outgoing U.S. poet laureate Ada Limón and her two immediate predecessors, Joy Harjo and Tracy K. Smith, are condemning President Donald Trump’s firing of Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, who had appointed each of them to their positions.
“Dr. Carla Hayden is the kindest, brightest, most generous Librarian of Congress we could have hoped for as a nation,” Limón, who last month completed a three-year run as poet laureate, said in a statement on Friday.
“She promoted books, libraries, and curiosity while dedicating herself to serving both sides of the aisle with genuine grace. I am heartbroken as the cruelty of this administration continues with seemingly no end in sight. She is the best of us and deserves the utmost respect. I hope people are paying attention. What we once feared is already happening.”
The library, an outgrowth of Thomas Jefferson’s personal book collection, holds a vast archive of the nation’s books and history.
Hayden, whose 10-year term was scheduled to end next year, was notified late Thursday that she had been fired, according to an email obtained by The Associated Press.
On Friday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Hayden “did not meet the needs of the American people.”
“There were quite concerning things at the Library of Congress in the pursuit of DEI, and putting inappropriate books in the library for children,” Leavitt told reporters during a briefing. “And we don’t believe she was serving the interest of the American taxpayer well, so she has been removed from her position, and the president is well within his rights to do that.”
Confirmed by the Senate in 2016, Hayden was the first woman and the first African American to be the librarian of Congress. U.S. poets laureate are employees of the Library of Congress, generally serve one to three years in the role and may not “take political positions in their official capacity while serving as laureate,” according to the library’s website.
Hayden had been expected to announce a new poet laureate over the summer.
Hayden, appointed by President Barack Obama, had been labeled by the conservative American Accountability Foundation as “woke” and “anti-Trump.” Her ouster continues the Trump administration’s wave of actions against Washington cultural institutions, from the Kennedy Center to the National Endowment for the Arts.
Harjo, the laureate from 2019 to 2022, called her firing “shocking news” and added that she “found her to be steadfast with good humor as she took excellent care of an institution established close to the founding of the country as a resource for all of its citizens.”
“Her reputation will stand through time,” Harjo wrote in an email to the AP.
Smith, who served from 2017 to 2019, told the AP in an email that Hayden had sought poets such as herself who “engage communities nationwide with the joys and the power of poetry in all its forms.”
“Her abrupt firing suggests a desire to tamp down the ceiling on our collective remembering and deprive the collective imagination of vital resources,” Smith wrote.
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Associated Press writer Chris Megerian in Washington contributed to this report.
