Norwin grad named head of National Archives and Records Administration

A Norwin High School alumna will take over the National Archives and Records Administration at at time when the agency is embroiled in a controversy with former President Donald Trump.

Colleen Shogan, a 1993 graduate of Norwin, was confirmed as archivist Thursday in a 52-45 vote by the Senate. Only three Republicans voted for Shogan, who is the first woman to lead the independent agency on a permanent basis.

Shogan, who was nominated by President Biden in August, could not be reached for comment Thursday.

The opposition by Republicans was not unexpected because GOP members on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee blocked her from winning committee approval last year.

During a Senate hearing in February, Shogan was grilled by Republicans over her past social media posts.

In a televised town hall broadcast on CNN Wednesday night, Trump again mentioned the dispute with the National Archives regarding his removal of administration documents when he left office in 2021. The dispute led to the controversial raid of his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, where at least 11 boxes of classified documents were seized by FBI agents in August 2022.

The agency also retrieved government documents that Biden had in storage from before the time he became president and additional documents that former Vice President Mike Pence discovered in his possession.

Shogan, who was director of a center for White House history and was senior vice president of the White House Historical Association, assumes the leadership of the agency as it is digitizing its records. She previously worked for more than a decade at the Library of Congress, serving in senior roles as an assistant deputy librarian for collections. She also was a Senate policy staff member and taught at Georgetown and George Mason universities.

Shogan succeeds David Ferriero, who retired in April 2022.