Oregon is using taxpayer money to host The New York Times’s ahistorical “1619 Project” author Nikole Hannah-Jones a second time at an event Thursday on “reframing the black experience in America’s history.” This time, the Oregon Department of Education is paying Hannah-Jones to speak to the state’s teachers and students.
The event will take place virtually and is described as designed “to engage with Oregon students and educators statewide, with specific emphasis on our shared national history and ‘Centering Black History and Black Futures in Oregon.'”
The state-funded event comes a few months after the taxpayer-funded University of Oregon paid Hannah-Jones $25,000 to lecture on ‘systemic racism.” A Freedom of Information Act request showed the Lavin Agency contracted with the school. The group bills itself as “the world’s largest intellectual talent agency, representing leading thinkers for speaking engagements, personal appearances, consulting, and endorsements.” Some of its other speakers are leftist activist Angela Davis, Khan Academy Chief Executive Officer Salman Khan, and climate writer Naomi Klein.
Oregon’s Department of Education did not respond to a request for comment asking how much Hannah-Jones is being paid. The other group who sponsored the prior event was the Oregon Alliance of Black School Teachers. The Portland Association of Teachers said in a statement a week ago Hannah-Jones’s speech “will focus on how the inclusion of 1619 historical events into our educational system will further Oregon’s efforts at breaking down systems of oppression.”
Kevin Hoar, the Oregon Republican Party Communications Director, told The Federalist the “1619 Project has been responsible for a lot of the racial divisions in America and in Oregon.”
“This project’s false historical narrative about systemic racism is now embedding itself in school curriculums and indoctrinating our kids to hate our country, each other, and themselves by seeing race as the primary defining issue in every aspect of life,” Hoar said. “Oregonians’ tax dollars should instead be spent doing a significantly better job teaching academic basics rather than paying people who promote these damaging ideas to advance their political agendas.”
