The director of the National Museum of American History is facing renewed scrutiny after a resurfaced video showed her describing "history as a practice" as "for me a prime tool of social justice," despite recent sworn testimony emphasizing the Smithsonians neutrality and nonpartisanship.
The contrast between Anthea Hartigs congressional testimony and her earlier remarks has reignited concerns among conservatives about what they see as the ideological drift of Americas premier cultural institutions, according to Fox News. At July hearings on Capitol Hill examining alleged woke "ideological capture" at the Smithsonian, Hartig insisted that "Our work is governed by the Smithsonian standards of scholarship, accuracy, independence and nonpartisanship."
She further assured lawmakers that "the museum does not take sides in America's political debates," adding, "We preserve and document the evidence of American life in all of its breadth, so that the public can encounter the past and draw their own conclusions."
Yet in a February 2025 presentation to students at the University of California, Los Angeles, Hartig struck a markedly different tone, outlining "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." In that same talk, she made clear that, in her view, "history as a practice is for me a prime tool of social justice," language that aligns more closely with activist academia than with the traditional museum mission of objective preservation.
Hartig opened her UCLA remarks with a land acknowledgment and a slide featuring an American flag defaced with what appeared to be the phrase "Defund the Police," which she said came from a Black Lives Matter protest in Washington, D.C., in 2020. Another image she showcased depicted a demonstrator holding a sign that read, "America loving you is complicated," signaling a curatorial lens that foregrounds grievance and protest rather than national achievement and unity.
Reflecting on the museums origins, Hartig told students that when it opened in 1964 it embodied "this kind of Cold War, you know, Were going to be the best and most technologically advanced country in the nation, and were going to show everyone how we did that We clearly have moved away from that." She contrasted that earlier patriotic and achievement-focused vision with what she called the institutions "bold new vision" to become the "most accessible, inclusive, relevant, and sustainable public history institution in the country."
That new vision, Hartig said, is designed so the museum can "serve an audience that reflects the full racial, class, gender, ethnic, and geographic demographics of the United States." While expanding access is a goal few would dispute, critics argue that under the banner of "equity" and "inclusion," museums are increasingly embracing ideological frameworks that recast American history primarily as a story of oppression, rather than a complex but ultimately exceptional experiment in liberty.
Central to Hartigs approach is an explicit focus on race and activism, as she told students that the "United States long and violent racial history continues to be present in our reckoning, if you will." She went further, asserting 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."
To operationalize this agenda, Hartig said the museum "joined a very collaborative Smithsonian-wide collecting effort around Black Lives Matter to document and preserve and share objects focused on Black Lives Matter to show the history of the movement starting in 2012." She displayed a photograph of protest signs outside the White House from the summer of 2020 and praised "these phenomenal, ephemeral statements, signs expressing that kind of very heartfelt and incredibly poignant [message]."
Hartig also spotlighted an anti-ICE activist network, "Tsuru for Solidarity," calling it a "truly remarkable group" and commending its partnership with the Black Lives Matter movement. According to its own website, Tsuru for Solidarity is a "nonviolent, direct action project of Japanese American social justice advocates and allies working to end detention sites and support directly impacted immigrant and refugee communities that are being targeted by racist, inhumane immigration policies," and it proclaims, "We stand on the moral authority of Japanese Americans who suffered the atrocities and legacy of U.S. concentration camps during WWII and we say, Stop Repeating History!"
Beyond protest-focused collecting, Hartig described a broader institutional shift toward what she termed "language justice." She said the museum is pursuing a "proactive multilingual strategy to support language justice," explaining that "the idea, of course, [is] that everyone has the right to communicate in the language in which they feel most comfortable to be understood and to understand."
As part of that strategy, Hartig noted that since the fall of 2019, "all exhibitions and signage and digital projects will be at least bilingual in English and Spanish and a number of them in more languages depending on the project and communities of origin." Supporters frame this as a way to welcome diverse audiences, while skeptics question whether such policies, when paired with an overtly activist narrative, risk sidelining the shared civic culture and common language that have historically bound Americans together.
Hartig portrayed her critics as hostile to uncomfortable truths, telling students, "Were under attack for speaking complicated truths" and urging them to "raise your voices and speak them together." She cast the discipline she oversees in almost quasi-spiritual terms, saying, "It continues to grow resolute in my mind, [history] is the key that unlocks the mysteries of humanity, of meaning, of place, of conquest, of love, power, authority and self."
"We are tellers of stories and seekers of truths, hopefully embracers of nuance, ambassadors of empathy and defenders of inalienable rights," Hartig added, language that many Americans would welcome if it were not so frequently paired with a one-sided progressive framing of the nations past. The tension between her public assurances of neutrality before Congress and her private embrace of "restorative justice" and "social justice" through history underscores a broader debate over whether taxpayer-funded institutions should serve as neutral stewards of the American story or as engines of ideological transformation.
As lawmakers continue to probe the Smithsonians direction, the resurfaced video raises unresolved questions about how far activist concepts such as "equity," "language justice," and reparations have penetrated the museums day-to-day work. Fox News Digital reported that it reached out to the National Museum of American History, the Smithsonian Institution, Black Lives Matter and Tsuru for Solidarity for comment, underscoring that the public still awaits clear answers on whether the nations flagship history museum remains committed to presenting America in all its complexityor is increasingly committed to advancing a particular political narrative.
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