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His executive order faulted an exhibit which “promotes the view that race is not a biological reality but a social construct,” a widely held position in the scientific community.
March 31, 2025, 6:39 p.m. ET
When President Trump issued an executive order claiming that the Smithsonian Institution had “come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology,” he singled out a sculpture exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington.
The exhibition, called “The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture,” explores how, for more than 200 years, sculpture has both shaped and reflected attitudes about race in the United States.
The president’s order noted, among other things, that the show “promotes the view that race is not a biological reality but a social construct, stating ‘Race is a human invention.’”
In interviews, several scholars questioned why the executive order appeared to take issue with that view, which is now broadly held. Samuel J. Redman, a history professor at University of Massachusetts Amherst who has written about scientific racism, said that “the executive order is troubling and out of step with the current consensus.” He added that pseudoscientific attempts to create a hierarchy of races with white people at the top were seen “in places like Nazi Germany or within the eugenics movement.”
Asked for comment, the White House referred a reporter back to the executive order. Mr. Trump said in his inaugural address that he would stop efforts to “socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life.”
The quotation about race as a human invention appears to come from the wall text in the show, which notes that humans are “99.9 percent genetically the same” and introduces part of a statement on race and racism by the American Association of Biological Anthropologists.
