A legal expert is calling for a leadership overhaul at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History (NMAH), arguing the museum has embraced a negative, "self-loathing" portrayal of the nation’s past."I think this is part of a broader effort by radicals on the left to redefine the history of the United States and reframe it in an oppressor-versus-oppressed narrative," Cully Stimson, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation and former assistant U.S.attorney for Washington, D.C., told Fox News Digital."Instead of looking at American history chronologically with all the triumphs and tragedies, including slavery, and then the things that our country did to eradicate the vestiges of slavery, and then passing the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments and the Civil Rights Acts and getting rid of various other laws that were discriminatory in practice or in spirit.
They take a very pro-reparations, ‘we’re a bad country,’ oppressor-versus-oppressed narrative."The comments come after a July 2026 White House report accused the Smithsonian of advancing DEI and left-wing agendas, prompting a pair of heated congressional hearings that put National Museum of American History Director Anthea Hartig under the national spotlight.DESCENDANT OF SLAVES SHAMES SMITHSONIAN’S WOKE ‘INDOCTRINATION’ AGAINST THE ‘GREATEST NATION ON EARTH’Legal expert Cully Stimson spoke to Fox News Digital about Smithsonian leadership and what he called "bile" in its American history exhibits.(Fox News Digital ; Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)Lawmakers accused museum leaders of allowing political activism to seep into exhibits and influence how history is presented, while Hartig maintained that the museum is nonpartisan and "does not take sides in America’s political debates."Stimson said the hearings are exposing "bile that they’re trying to pass off as history," saying "sunlight’s a good disinfectant.""If the head of the Smithsonian had any shame whatsoever, she would have r...