U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis on Monday helped throw another log on the raging fire of how to teach the nation's racial history.
State officials have been fighting for months over proposed standards for social studies classes in North Carolina public schools. In higher education, a delay in offering tenure to a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist whose reporting has focused on how slavery and racism have shaped the U.S. has cast a harsh spotlight on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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Tillis and other Republican senators introduced the Saving American History Act, which would to prohibit the use of federal funds to teach the 1619 Project by K-12 schools or school districts.
"I have significant concerns with the Department of Education’s recent effort to reorient the bipartisan American history and civics education programs away from their intended purposes towards a politicized and divisive agenda,” Tillis said in a statement. “Americans do not want their tax dollars going towards promoting radical ideologies meant to divide us instead of being used to promote the principles that unite our nation.
"Our students deserve a rigorous understanding of civics and American history to understand both our successes and failures as a nation," he continued. "I do not support diverting taxpayer resources towards promoting ideological and misleading depictions of our nation’s history, and I am proud to work on this important legislation with my colleagues to address this issue."
The New York Times and reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones produced the 1619 Project, named for the year that enslaved people first arrived in the American colonies. In addition to the Pulitzer, Hannah-Jones won a Peabody Award and a so-called "genius grant" from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for her work.
A UNC-Chapel Hill alumna, Hannah-Jones was hired in April as the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism at the university's Hussman School of Journalism and Media. Although Knight Chair positions typically carry tenure, she was offered a five-year contract instead, at a salary of $180,000 a year.
The move prompted an outcry from UNC-Chapel Hill faculty, students and alumni, as well as journalists of color nationwide. Hannah-Jones has threatened a federal discrimination lawsuit against the university.
On Monday, she sarcastically commended the proposed federal legislation on Twitter.
"Our children must learn that we are the greatest and freest country in the history of the world, and we will demonstrate this by barring educators from teaching things we do not like, and in the name of liberty, mandating government control of what ideas can be exchanged," she tweeted.
State lawmakers also have called for prohibiting schools from promoting the idea that any race or sex is inherently superior and from teaching that anyone should feel guilt, discomfort or responsibility for "actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex." Lawmakers also have called for a one-year delay in implementing new social studies standards in North Carolina.
Opponents called the standards too negative and said they would lead students to disengage from civic activity as adults, while supporters said students need to have more diverse perspectives on historical issues. The state Department of Public Instruction then suggested changing references to “systemic racism,” “gender identity” and “systemic discrimination” to “racism,” "identity” and “discrimination.”