Liberal Media Rushes to Defend Smithsonian’s War on American History

On July 4, as the nation was celebrating 250 years of independence, the White House Domestic Policy Council released a shocking 160-page report on the left-wing ideological capture of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History (NMAH). But rather than report on the real story – NMAH’s astonishing attempt to rewrite American history to advance a political agenda – the liberal media has instead chosen to attack the report.

Federal taxpayers fund the Smithsonian to the tune of about $1.1 billion per year to do one job: create a storehouse of America’s history, art, and scientific treasures for the public to experience and enjoy. In the case of NMAH specifically, Smithsonian leadership argued before Congress in 1953 that the purpose of the museum would be “to place before millions who visit the Nation’s Capital each year a stimulating permanent exposition that commemorates our heritage of freedom and highlights the basic elements of our way of life.”

But as the report reveals, NMAH has completely abandoned that purpose. Instead, “Museum leadership has explicitly adopted an ideological framework that no longer treats the American story as a shared national inheritance to be taught or celebrated, but as a political instrument to divide, dispirit, and discourage our citizens.” By recasting American history as a story of racism and oppression and denigrating our founding heroes, the museum’s leadership is explicitly attempting to change the character and identity of the nation itself.

Here are just a few of the report’s findings:

• The museum contains zero exhibits on “America’s Founding era, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, other Founding Fathers, the Continental Congress, the Pilgrims, the Puritans, or major moments of the American Revolution, such as Washington’s crossing of the Delaware.”
• “Museum materials repeatedly suggest that Christianity functioned principally as an instrument of conquest, exclusion, or cultural erasure.”
• “Exhibits frame the Pilgrims mainly as colonial oppressors, Thanksgiving as a ‘National Day of Mourning,’ and the European settlement of the continent chiefly as a great ‘unsettling.’”
• Anthea Hartig, the museum’s director, is on record saying that she views history as “a prime tool of social justice” and that the museum should “problematize” the semiquincentennial celebration.
• NMAH favorably compared activists arguing for mass amnesty for illegal aliens to the civil rights activists of the 1960s and women’s suffrage activists.
• NMAH created a video highlighting protesters demanding to “abolish ICE.”
• NMAH implemented an anti-racist “toolkit” for staff to “transform” museums into anti-white institutions.
• NMAH placed sexually explicit and inappropriate material in front of children to push radical transgender ideology.

This is just a smattering of the long list of abuses contained in the report, all of which should be a national scandal. A taxpayer-funded entity charged with honestly telling America’s story is instead blatantly pushing anti-American, anti-white propaganda to smear the country’s greatest heroes and emphasize its flaws and shortcomings while intentionally downplaying or entirely ignoring all the good that the United States has done in the world.

But instead, liberal media journalists are aghast that anyone would dare criticize the “experts” at the Smithsonian.

Jennifer Schuessler, a culture reporter for The New York Times, deploys an army of embarrassing straw men in her attempt to undermine the White House report.

For instance, Schuessler claims that the White House report “faults an exhibition about Benjamin Franklin’s electricity research… for including a section focused on enslaved people.” But the report does no such thing. Instead, the report notes that the NMAH exhibit suggested, without any historical evidence whatsoever, that Franklin experimented on slaves with electric shocks.

Schuessler also implies that the report claims that “the founders intended the United States to be a Christian nation,” noting that this “is sharply challenged by most mainstream historians.” But once again, the report claims no such thing. Instead, the report criticizes how, at NMAH, “the constructive role of Christian belief and Christian institutions in shaping the Nation and its freedoms receives scant, if any, attention.”

Next, Schuessler makes a broad statement that the report “criticizes the museum’s depiction of immigration.” But again, turning to the report, readers find nothing of the sort. Instead, the report cites specific NMAH initiatives lionizing illegal immigration and illegal aliens, such as one educational webpage that advertises itself as “a digital space where you can meet undocumented organizers and learn firsthand what democracy looks like to them.” Another text box on that webpage invited visitors to “discover how issues impacting undocumented communities have deep roots in the nation’s history.”

In short, the report only takes issue with how NMAH portrays illegal aliens as heroes fighting for democracy in a transparent attempt to advocate for citizenship as part of a left-wing political agenda. Schuessler or anyone who claims otherwise is either lying or hasn’t actually read the report.

This brings us to another telling fact about Schuessler’s piece, which is that it includes almost no direct quotes from the report itself – because doing so would immediately undermine every argument she puts forward. Instead, Schuessler invents out of whole cloth her own version of the report that simply does not exist. But perhaps we should not be surprised at such imagination from someone who previously lauded the “fascinating history of nonbinary pronouns.”

Schuessler’s approach, at least, takes some creativity and effort. The same cannot be said for Marc Stein, whom I regret to report is the President of the Organization of American Historians. Time published an op-ed from Stein defending the Smithsonian and attacking the White House report in which the central argument boils down to, “nuh-uh, you guys are wrong!”

For instance:

“The report states, for example, that ‘museum leadership has explicitly adopted an ideological framework that no longer treats the American story as a shared national inheritance to be taught or celebrated, but as a political instrument to divide, dispirit, and discourage our citizens.’ That is not an accurate assessment of the Smithsonian, but it is a pretty good description of the new report.”

No follow-up, no evidence. We’re simply supposed to take Stein at his word that the White House is wrong, and he is right because he says so and he’s a historian.

Stein also accuses the report of mischaracterizing and misrepresenting the words of Anthea Hartig, the museum’s director. To prove his point, he quotes Hartig’s welcome speech to the semiquincentennial exhibit, in which she says, “We are proud to celebrate the birth of the United States and will continue to share the stories of all Americans as we look to the next 250 years.”

“This quotation rejects the notion that Hartig, or the Smithsonian more broadly, fails to properly celebrate American history,” Stein argues.

Really? Apparently, one half-hearted nod to being “proud” to celebrate America is supposed to make us ignore Hartig’s long history of statements like her belief that the museum profession should “problematize the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence,” or that the museum should work to “reframe the traditional celebratory narrative of U.S. history,” or that she wants to “get out of the ‘America First’ mentality” when telling history, or her belief that the United States “was founded on… the supremacy of white, landed men and the institution of chattel slavery.” The list goes on, and it is all outlined in the report.

But Stein saves the real kicker for the last line in his piece. His issue with NMAH isn’t that it’s too political, but that it’s not political enough: “If anything, I would like to see the museum do more, not less, to democratize and diversify its presentation of American history.”

Perhaps no statement better captures the sorry state of American academia. It is a sad day indeed when historians believe that it is their job to “democratize” and “diversify” history rather than just telling the unvarnished truth – the good, the bad, and the ugly. The most disappointing part is that Stein may not even realize how brainwashed and ideologically captured he has become, so much so that he can no longer distinguish neutral scholarship from political activism.

As the Wall Street Journal – one of the few outlets to honestly cover the report – notes, “The report isn’t a cheerleading document seeking to hide America’s warts. What it seeks is a history of the U.S. that doesn’t resemble the 1619 Project in its partisan bias.”

What the outrage over the report ultimately reveals is that the liberal establishment in this country is deeply committed to sowing anti-American resentment in the American people, and especially in children. This phenomenon is nothing new, but the White House report exposes it in full detail. There is an explicit, systematic effort underway to denigrate America’s founding heroes as racist slavers and install a new cast of heroes in the American psyche – illegal aliens, LGBT activists, and anyone who can be considered part of the left-wing coalition.

Vince Haley, the Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, which put the report together, said it best during an appearance on Fox News: “At the end of the day, what you wind up with is no American history at the American history museum.” Kudos to the White House for calling that out. And shame on the liberal media “journalists” who would rather protect those attacking our history than those defending it.

Shane Harris is the Editor-in-Chief of AMAC Newsline. You can follow him on X @shaneharris513.