After an explosive series of congressional hearings on alleged woke "ideological capture" at the Smithsonian, a resurfaced video of a presentation by National Museum of American History Director Anthea Hartig shows her calling "history as a practice" a "prime tool of social justice."In a series of July hearings on Capitol Hill, Hartig defended the Smithsonian’s record of objectivity and nonpartisanship.However, in a resurfaced presentation to University of California, Los Angeles students in February 2025, Hartig described "a number of ways in which your National Museum of American History is taking an equity-based, justice forward, community driven and necessarily humble approach to public history and to service."Later in her presentation, Hartig asserted that the "United States’ long and violent racial history continues to be present in our reckoning, if you will."She said that "redress in the form of reparation, of course, goes beyond acknowledgement of wrongdoing; it should leverage responsibility, it should think about the act of correction, as we pursue restorative justice and, for us [on the call], restorative justice through history."TRUMP V.
SMITHSONIAN: A TIMELINE OF HOW THE WHITE HOUSE FIGHT OVER 'WOKE' HISTORY UNFOLDEDFrom left, Anthea Hartig, director of the Smithsonian Institute's National Museum of American History, Mike Gonzalez, Angeles T.Arredondo E Pluribus Unum Senior Fellow, The Heritage Foundation, and Matthew Spalding, professor in constitutional government and dean of Hillsdale College's Van Andel Graduate School of Government, testify during the House Oversight and Government Reform Delivering on Government Efficiency Subcommittee hearing titled "Rewriting American History: Examining the Smithsonian's Efforts to Reshape the Past," in Rayburn building on Tuesday, July 21, 2026.
(Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)During her testimony on Capitol Hill last month, Hartig stated: "Our work is governed by the Smithsonian standar...