National Museum of American History Director Anthea Hartig stated in a February 2025 presentation that "history as a practice… is for me a prime tool of social justice." The remarks, made to students at the University of California, Los Angeles, resurfaced following congressional hearings on allegations of ideological bias at the Smithsonian.
During the July hearings on Capitol Hill, Hartig had defended the Smithsonian's commitment to objectivity and nonpartisanship, asserting that the museum "does not take sides in America's political debates." Instead, she said, the museum "preserve[s] and document[s] the evidence of American life in all of its breadth, so that the public can encounter the past and draw their own conclusions."
However, in the UCLA presentation, Hartig described an "equity-based, justice forward, community driven and necessarily humble approach to public history and to service." She also remarked on the "United States’ long and violent racial history" and suggested that "redress in the form of reparation… should leverage responsibility, it should think about the act of correction, as we pursue restorative justice."
Hartig's presentation included images from a Black Lives Matter protest in Washington, D.C., in 2020, such as a defaced American flag and signs with messages like "America loving you is complicated." She noted that the museum has "moved away from" its original Cold War-era mission of showcasing technological advancement.
The museum's new vision, according to Hartig, aims to be the "most accessible, inclusive, relevant, and sustainable public history institution in the country," serving an audience that reflects the nation's demographic diversity. This includes a "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."
Hartig also highlighted the museum's "proactive multilingual strategy to support language justice," with exhibitions and signage to be at least bilingual in English and Spanish, and in more languages for specific projects, starting in the fall of 2019. She encouraged students to "raise your voices and speak them together" in response to what she described as the museum being "under attack for speaking complicated truths."
Hartig concluded by stating 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 professionals as "tellers of stories and seekers of truths, hopefully embracers of nuance, ambassadors of empathy and defenders of inalienable rights."