The dean of Hillsdale College’s Van Andel Graduate School of Government testified before the House Oversight Committee July 21 about the Smithsonian’s leftist bias. Matthew Spalding spoke to the committee about the importance of preserving accurate history in the hearing titled “Rewriting American History: Examining The Smithsonian’s Efforts To Reshape The Past.”

Calling the National Museum of American History (NMAH) one of the country’s “greatest treasures,” Spalding criticized the people in charge of the museum for pushing a leftist agenda in testimony titled “Who Killed America’s Story”?

“The National Museum of American History is no longer the nation’s museum of American history,” Spalding said.

Spalding referenced the White House’s “Saving America’s Story” report, which detailed the ideological capture of the Smithsonian Institution in more than 150 pages. The report contains photographic proof describing NMAH’s failure to present an accurate version of American history to attendees.

One of the report’s key findings was that the museum featured exhibits that focused more on the perceived problems in American history. “American Democracy: A Great Leap of Faith,” one of the exhibits the report criticizes, says that Americans “inherited a belief in social hierarchy and institutions that perpetuated inequality.”

The exhibit also framed America’s national identity as an “ongoing debate” between Americans that still persists to this day. “[I]f there were to be common beliefs and a national narrative that expressed the values of the nation, what should be included?” the exhibit asks, according to the report.

In Spalding’s testimony, he said the Smithsonian should instill a healthy love for America through its historical exhibits:

A healthy attachment to this country is neither blind to its flaws nor fanatical in believing that America is the source of all good. Nevertheless, each generation should be equipped with a knowledge of America’s principles and history, a reverence for their liberties, and a reflective love of their country. That patriotism must be strong enough and unsentimental enough to coexist with criticism, dissent, disappointment, and opposition. But it is love all the same.

Spalding told The Federalist that the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents ought to take this issue seriously. He noted that although Congress pays around two-thirds of the Smithsonian’s budget, the board has enormous leverage to create change.

“How you teach these ideas at a public institution is crucial for how you form citizens,” Spalding told The Federalist. “It teaches self-loathing, and that’s a problem.”

However, Spalding said, there is a way to teach accurate American history without teaching self-loathing. The ideologically motivated “history” pushed by the Smithsonian is not history at all, Spalding told The Federalist. “History has been driven out by a postmodern idea about systemic oppression, and as a result, they’ve kind of dropped the whole story.”

Skye Graham is an intern at The Federalist. She is a senior History major at Hillsdale College and serves as the assistant features editor for the Hillsdale Collegian.