Mary Grabar, Resident Fellow, The Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization (AHI), continues to be in demand because of the success of her book Debunking the 1619 Project: Exposing the Plan to Divide America (Regnery 2021). She was interviewed by Fox News and traveled to Georgia to deliver a lecture.
AHI’s Mary Grabar
Despite the many factual errors and its anti-historical polemical style, The 1619 Project has managed to find its way into school curricula at all levels. Fox News asked Dr. Grabar to explain why. The 1619 Project is, she pointed out, “essentially, ‘history told through the lens of critical race theory, … substitute[ing] objectivity with narrative storytelling.’”
In Georgia, Dr. Grabar spoke at the invitation of the Areopagus, an Atlanta area-based “Christian education teaching ministry,” founded by Dr. Jefrey Breshears, a former history professor. The event, held in Gwinnett County, near Atlanta, was attended by members of the community and was the first in-person event for Areopagus since 2020.
In her talk, she connected the degradation of history education today, as evidenced by the use of The 1619 Project, to the implementation of the Common Core State Standards under the Obama administration. The labeling of all reading material as “informational text” (Shakespeare, the Gettysburg Address, OSHA instructions, and a memo from the Federal Reserve) in English Language Arts classes, served to destroy the distinction between imaginative literature and history, fiction and nonfiction, thus leading the way to the acceptance of fanciful “narratives” such as The 1619 Project as suitable materials for classroom instruction. “In the process,” she said, “not only are literature and history corrupted but so is the very concept of truth.”
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