WaPo | Five historians recently wrote to the New York Times Magazine, asking the architects of its comprehensive 1619 Project,
which tells the founding narrative of America through the lens of
slavery, to issue several corrections. They argued that assertions in
the 1619 package about
the motivations that sparked the Revolutionary War and President
Abraham Lincoln’s views on black equality were misleading.
“We
ask that The Times, according to its own high standards of accuracy and
truth, issue prominent corrections of all the errors and distortions
presented in The 1619 Project,” wrote the five professors, from Princeton University, Texas State University, Brown University and the City University of New York.
In a lengthy response published online
over the weekend, New York Times Magazine editor Jake Silverstein
addressed each concern from the professors but stood firmly behind the
reporting and declined to correct it.
“Though we respect the work of the signatories, appreciate that they are
motivated by scholarly concern and applaud the efforts they have made
in their own writings to illuminate the nation’s past, we disagree with
their claim that our project contains significant factual errors and is
driven by ideology rather than historical understanding,” Silverstein
wrote. “While we welcome criticism, we don’t believe that the request
for corrections to The 1619 Project is warranted.”
