""Don't forget, though, it's the academics who have revealed oodles about our past and who seek in their various ways to preserve it for our future".

Hmmm, rather topical. Sometimes then and now the academic mindset is apt to err too far towards learning at the expense of preservation. And then, in the wise words of a sage, there's "no learning to be taught, save that history's lesson Is never to be learned".
The problem arises, plain and simple, when the decision is the hands of too few. And if they happen also to be intellectually arrogant, well...