The Smithsonian Institution was created with a noble purpose: the “increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.” That phrase, drawn from James Smithson’s bequest and embedded in the 1846 act establishing the Smithsonian, does not describe a museum system meant to indoctrinate Americans against their own civilization. It describes an institution charged with preserving knowledge and elevating the public mind.
The controversy over the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History raises a direct question: has the institution remained faithful to that trust? The recent White House report, “Saving America’s Story,” argues that the museum has drifted from balanced history toward an ideological portrait of the United States as fundamentally oppressive. That is not a minor curatorial dispute. It is a breach of the Smithsonian’s founding purpose and of the public trust.
President Trump has now ordered temporary signs outside the National Museum of American History warning visitors that, in his administration’s view, the museum presents inaccurate information about American history. The order directs federal officials to place the signs along National Park Service-maintained walkways, point visitors to the White House report, and identify other resources the administration considers more accurate. The move underscores that the Smithsonian dispute has moved beyond criticism of exhibits and into a direct federal effort to challenge the museum’s public framing of America’s story.
James Smithson, a British scientist who never visited the United States, left his estate to America to establish an institution in Washington devoted to knowledge. Congress accepted that trust and enacted the 1846 law creating the Smithsonian Institution. The Act’s language matters. It defines the Smithsonian not as a partisan project but as a national and civilizational trust.
There is also the question of donor intent. Smithson did not leave his fortune to the United States so his legacy could be used to weaken the country that honored his gift. His will entrusted America with learning, not self-destruction. If the Smithsonian teaches Americans that their civilization is chiefly a stain, it does more than distort history. It disregards the moral purpose of the gift itself.
That mission belongs to the best traditions of the West: truth, reason, law, liberty, scientific inquiry, and the education of citizens rather than their manipulation. America added something exceptional: a republic built on the proposition that rights come before government and that free people can govern themselves. A museum of American history must tell the truth about the nation’s errors. But it must also explain the principles, reforms, sacrifices, and institutions that made self-correction possible.
The White House report contends that the National Museum of American History has adopted a framework of grievance, oppression, and division. The museum has elevated ideological activism over shared inheritance, national achievement, and civic gratitude. The Smithsonian may claim nonpartisanship, but the central issue remains whether its exhibits still serve truth or instead serve a political worldview.
The issue is not whether the Smithsonian should discuss slavery, segregation, war, injustice, or conflict. It must. Patriotic history is not sanitized history. The issue is whether those subjects are presented in a truthful and complete account of America. A worthy museum should explain both the evils America confronted and the constitutional, religious, cultural, military, entrepreneurial, and civic forces that enabled Americans to confront them. To teach only condemnation is not knowledge. It is civilizational suicide.
A patriotic perspective is not blind nationalism. It is loyalty to a country whose founding principles are morally serious and historically exceptional. The Declaration, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, federalism, religious liberty, private property, free speech, and equal citizenship created the framework for reform. Abolitionists, suffragists, civil rights leaders, veterans, inventors, immigrants, and entrepreneurs all appealed to America’s own ideals.
The Smithsonian should not present American history as a permanent indictment. The real story is not that America was born uniquely evil or remains defined by oppression. The real story is that a republic founded on universal principles, in the best traditions of Classical thought and Judeo-Christian values, has managed to live by them better than any other nation.
That story includes historical injustices. But it also includes emancipation, constitutional amendments, civil rights victories, scientific achievement, industrial creativity, military sacrifice, cultural influence, and the defense of freedom against totalitarian enemies. Most importantly, it includes the principled acknowledgment, from the beginning, that every human being possesses inherent worth and is equal before God and the law. A museum that hides those achievements withholds the knowledge Smithson’s gift was meant to diffuse.
The solution is not cosmetic reform. It is new leadership, consistent with the Act’s public trust and governing purpose. The Smithsonian needs leaders who understand that it is a national institution, not a platform for elite political fashions. Its exhibits must be reviewed for ideological bias. Its curators must be accountable to evidence. Its public history must honor America’s achievements as well as confront its failures.
The deeper reform must reach American education itself. Schools and museums should be freed from the anti-Western, Marxist, and critical-theory worldview that reduces the nation to oppressor and oppressed. That worldview is false. It divides citizens, weakens national confidence, and serves the interests of America’s enemies. It attacks “the last best hope on Earth” by teaching Americans to despise the civilization that made their liberty possible.
The Smithsonian can be saved if it returns to its founding promise. Smithson’s will and Congress’s 1846 act did not create an institution for cynicism, resentment, or anti-American mythmaking. They created one for the increase and diffusion of knowledge. Knowledge requires honesty, proportion, gratitude, and courage. It requires telling Americans the truth about their country’s errors without denying its greatness.
The Smithsonian’s task is clear. Recover the story of the best example of human governance and freedom yet achieved: a republic rooted in liberty, reason, faith, law, and self-government. Change the leadership. Reform the education. Restore the memory of an exceptional civilization worth defending. And once again, “increase and diffuse … knowledge among men.”
Nora D. Clinton is a Research Scholar & Project Manager at the Legal Insurrection Foundation. She was born and raised in Sofia, Bulgaria. She holds a PhD in Classics and has published extensively on ancient documents on stone. In 2020, she authored the popular memoir Quarantine Reflections Across Two Worlds. Nora is a co-founder of two partner charities dedicated to academic cooperation and American values. She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and son.
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