President Joe Biden revoked a recent report from the Trump administration that aimed to promote “patriotic education” in schools, but that historians mocked and rejected as political propaganda.
In an executive order signed Wednesday on his first day in office, Biden dissolved Donald Trump’s 1776 Presidential Commission and withdrew a report he published Monday. Trump set up the group in September to gather support from white voters and in response to the New York Times’ “Project 1619,” which highlights the lasting consequences of slavery in the United States.
In its report, which Trump hoped would be used in classrooms across the nation, the commission glorifies the country’s founders, downplays America’s role in slavery, condemns the rise of progressive politics, and argues that the civil rights movement affected the “high ideals” ”Defended by the founding fathers.
The group, which did not include U.S. professional historians, complained of “false and fashionable ideologies” describing the country’s history as “oppression and victimism.” Instead, he called for renewed efforts to foster “a brave and honest love for our country.”
Historians have widely analyzed the report, saying it offers a false and outdated version of American history that ignores decades of research.
“It’s an insult to the whole education company. Education is supposed to help young people learn to think critically, ”said David Blight, a Civil War historian at Yale University. “This report is a piece of right-wing propaganda.”
Trump officials announced the report as “a definitive chronicle of the American foundation,” but scholars say it ignores the most basic rules of the scholarship. It does not offer citations, for example, or a list of its source materials.
It also includes several passages copied directly from others written by panel members, as found by a teacher after running the report using software used to detect plagiarism.
Matthew Spalding, executive director of the panel and vice president of Hillsdale College Conservative, denied any wrongdoing, saying the panel members “contributed our own work and wrote, under our own names, to the report. of 1776, which was an advisory report to the President. “
Spalding and other commission leaders did not immediately respond to other criticisms leveled against the report.
In documents announcing Biden’s executive order, administration officials said the group was “trying to erase the history of American racial injustice.”
The American Historical Association condemned the document, saying it glorifies the founders while ignoring the stories and contributions of enslaved people, indigenous communities, and women. In a statement also signed by 13 other academic groups, the organization says the report seeks “government indoctrination of American students.”
The most intense criticism of the report was directed at his presentation of slavery and race. The report attempts to undermine allegations of hypocrisy against founding fathers who owned slaves even when they advocated equality. It also attempts to soften America’s role in slavery and explain it as a product of the time.
“Many Americans work under the illusion that slavery was somehow an American-only evil,” the group wrote in the 20-page report. “The unfortunate fact is that the institution of slavery has been more the norm than the exception throughout human history.”
Blight, at Yale, compared it to “a sixth- or seventh-grade approach to history – to make kids feel good.” He added: “But it’s worse than that, because it comes out of a political propaganda agenda.”
The authors argue that the civil rights movement was distorted to advance programs that promoted inequality and “group privilege.” He complains, for example, of affirmative action and other forms of “preferential treatment.”
Ibram X. Kendi, a scholar and historian of racism at Boston University, called the report “the last big lie of a Trump administration of big lies.”
“If we have habitually been given preferential treatment, why do black people remain at the lower end and agonizing over almost all racial disparities?” Kendi said on Twitter. “Whenever they answer that question, they express racist ideas of black inferiority while claiming they are not racist.”
Other scholars emphasized what was left out. The report does not include anything from Native American history and its only reference to Native Americans is a racial insanity cited in the Declaration of Independence.
In a passage mocked by historians, the authors make a comparison between the progressive movement in America and the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.
James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association, said the report seeks to discredit contemporary public policies rooted in the American progressive reform movement. He worries that even after Biden dissolved the commission, his report could end up in some classrooms.
“Historians need to be on the lookout for curricular conversations at local and state level,” Grossman said. “The nonsense in this report will be used to legitimize similar nonsense.”
At a public meeting of the commission this month, some members held out hope that Biden would keep the commission alive. But others said they had to pass the report on to state and local education officials.
“State governors and legislators, school board members, and parents and higher education commissioners, even students, will really depend on them to take on this job and get this job done,” said Doug Hoelscher, Trump’s White House aide.
After removing the report from a White House website, some of its authors went on to make it available on conservative websites. In an opinion piece published by the Heritage Foundation, one of the commissioners, Mike González, said the members “intend to continue to meet and fulfill the positions of our two-year term.”
The report ultimately calls for a change in teaching in American schools and universities, which the group calls “fires of anti-Americanism.” He denounces any teaching that generates contempt for American ideals, blaming this kind of “destructive scholarship” for the divisions of the nation and for “much of the violence in our cities.”
“To restore our society,” the report says, “academics must return to their vocation to relentlessly pursue the truth and pursue an honest academy that seeks to understand the world and America’s place in it. “.