Dear Professors: Teaching Archiving in Times of Continued Uncertainty and Unrest

This opinion piece is written in response to Ricky Punzalan’s “Dear Students: Becoming an Archivist in Times of Uncertainty and Unrest” and in the wake of Trump’s second nomination as the US president in 2024. This piece pushes against the idea that students should inherently be able to know the necessary skills needed to be an ethical and supportive archivist and calls on professors in LIS programs to actively teach these skills to their students. This letter reflects the author’s own experiences in MLIS and PhD programs and conversations with peers, both students and practitioners, as the structures of archives are changed to better align with decolonial and anti-colonial sentiments of young rising archivists.