The director of the National Museum of American History is facing renewed scrutiny after a resurfaced video shows her telling university students that she regards history as «a prime tool of social justice.» The remarks by Anthea Hartig, made during a February 2025 presentation to students at the University of California, Los Angeles, have re-ignited debate over how the Smithsonian Institution presents the American past.
In the clip, Hartig described the museum as taking «an equity-based, justice forward, community driven and necessarily humble approach to public history and to service.» She also said that the United States’ «long and violent racial history continues to be present in our reckoning.» She spoke about redress in the form of reparations, saying it should go beyond acknowledging wrongdoing, leverage responsibility and think about correction as the museum pursues «restorative justice through history.»
The video surfaced after a series of congressional hearings in July in which Hartig defended the Smithsonian’s record of objectivity and nonpartisanship. During testimony on Capitol Hill, she said the museum’s work is governed by Smithsonian standards of scholarship, accuracy, independence and nonpartisanship. «The museum does not take sides in America’s political debates,» she told lawmakers. «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.»
Her UCLA remarks appeared to strike a different tone. Hartig said that «history as a practice … is for me a prime tool of social justice.» She opened the talk with a land acknowledgement and displayed a slide featuring a picture of an American flag defaced with words that appeared to read «Defund the Police.» Her caption identified the image as a photograph from a Black Lives Matter protest in Washington in 2020. Another slide showed a protester holding a sign reading «America loving you is complicated.»
Hartig contrasted the museum’s origins with its current direction. She noted that the museum opened in 1964 during the Cold War, when it was meant to present the United States as the best and most technologically advanced country in the world. «We clearly have moved away from that,» she said. She pointed instead to what she called a «bold new vision» for the museum to become the «most accessible, inclusive, relevant, and sustainable public history institution in the country.» The vision says the museum hopes to serve an audience that reflects the full racial, class, gender, ethnic and geographic demographics of the United States.
Hartig also highlighted a Smithsonian-wide collecting effort around Black Lives Matter, which she said was meant to document, preserve and share objects connected to the movement since 2012. She displayed images of protest signs from outside the White House in the summer of 2020 and described them as «phenomenal, ephemeral statements» expressing «heartfelt and incredibly poignant» messages.
She also praised Tsuru for Solidarity, an organization described on its website as a nonviolent direct-action project of Japanese American social justice advocates and allies working to end immigrant detention sites. The group says it stands on «the moral authority of Japanese Americans who suffered the atrocities and legacy of U.S. concentration camps during WWII» and declares, «Stop Repeating History!»
Hartig discussed the museum’s language policies as well, saying it has pursued a «proactive multilingual strategy to support language justice.» She said that since the fall of 2019, all exhibitions, signage and digital projects have been at least bilingual in English and Spanish, with some projects available in additional languages.
During the presentation, Hartig acknowledged that the approach had drawn criticism. «We’re under attack for speaking complicated truths,» she said, urging students to «raise your voices and speak them together.» She added that history «is the key that unlocks the mysteries of humanity, of meaning, of place, of conquest, of love, power, authority and self,» and described museum staff as «tellers of stories and seekers of truths, hopefully embracers of nuance, ambassadors of empathy and defenders of inalienable rights.»
The Smithsonian has become a flashpoint in a broader political debate over how American history is presented in public institutions. The recent hearings focused on allegations of what critics described as «woke ideological capture» at the institution, and the Trump administration has publicly challenged some of its exhibits. The resurfaced video is likely to intensify that fight as lawmakers continue to spar over the museum’s direction.
Representatives for the National Museum of American History, the Smithsonian Institution, Black Lives Matter and Tsuru for Solidarity did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
