The fight over renaming the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to the Donald

J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts has led to a reckoning

about the meaning attached to presidential memorials and arguments about who we are.

From marble monuments to cultural institutions, what do presidential memorials and arguments about who we are, from marble monuments to cultural institutions,

what do presidential memorials tell us about not only our past, but our present? For President's Day,

we decided to dig into that. Hello and welcome to USA Today is The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor.

Today is Monday, February 16, 26.

I'm now joined by one of the nation's leading voices on memory and memorials. James I Young,

distinguished university professor emeritus of English and Judaic and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

James, thanks so much for joining me on the excerpt.

Oh, thank you for having me.

I want to dive into the turmoil surrounding the renaming of the Kennedy Center.

But first, it might help to get an understanding of how presidential memorials come to be.

Are we talking about something set by law, or is this a fluid process?

All of the above. It ends up being very fluid, but there really has been a tradition and

traditional protocols as well as laws. Most of the central memorials to former presidents and to

deceased presidents, which is also part of the tradition.

Very rare is the memorial to a living president, always deceased. But there are customs, such as

families wanting to create organizations to remember. The past loved one, like Ulysses S. Grant's widow, really initiated

Grant's tomb up in the upper Manhattan, the 12nd Street in Riverside Drive.

Other presidents have also recommended shapes and sizes for their memorials and what they might

be. I think one of the most touching memorials to

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