1619 Project founder Nikole Hannah-Jones recently penned a column in The New York Times where he revealed that she purposefully gave her daughter a poor education in order to align with her left-wing beliefs. Defending herself on PBS’s Amanpour and Company on Thursday, Hannah-Jones insisted her decision was “for the collective and common good.”
Interviewer Michel Martin recalled the horror story that was the school Hannah-Jones decided to send her daughter to, “You write about this devastating moment when she was in the fourth grade, you get her math work back and you discover that almost every answer is wrong. And then the teacher, part of the reason it's wrong is the teacher hadn't been checking it.”
1619 Project founder Nikole Hannah-Joens defends giving her daughter a bad education on purpose, "Now, I also hoped, you know, having been in my household and understood our values that maybe she might understand why we made the choices, but she didn't. She was 12 years old. And… pic.twitter.com/cJQ26PUbUa
— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) October 2, 2026
It got worse from there, “And then you and your husband considered pulling her out then, but instead you fought for help for the whole class. This kind of pattern replicated itself throughout. Some of the administrators were unresponsive. Some of the teachers were incompetent. There were classes that she was in where the teacher was—the teacher's own attendance is sporadic.”
Eventually, her daughter discovered the scheme, “So, it's just this one thing after another and your daughter at one point starts looking up the scores and how the school is viewed and what the statistics are. And she says, ‘you put me in a bad school.’ And would you just describe if you wouldn't mind what that was like for you?
Hannah-Jones replied that “It was a reckoning. I knew it was going to come. I mean, that's—I—again, like if anybody is clear-eyed about what we were going to be facing, it's someone who has been in these schools for 20 years and has documented them. So, I always knew that my daughter was going to one day ask us about our choices.”
As for her daughter’s reaction, she added:
Now, I also hoped, you know, having been in my household and understood our values that maybe she might understand why we made the choices, but she didn't. She was 12 years old. And 12-year-olds center themselves, as they should, and she strongly disagreed. She felt she deserved a better education than she received and she didn't understand how we could have resources and not give her that. And so, of course, the piece is very honestly grappling with that truth that we made choices that we felt were for the collective and common good. We tried to live our values and that my daughter bore a cost for that and that she confronted us about bearing a cost for that.
Elsewhere on PBS, Hannah-Jones made it clear that she stands by the decision, “People have mischaracterized the piece as me saying I regret that we did it. I don’t.”
Nikole Hannah-Jones:
“People have mischaracterized the piece as me saying I regret that we did it. I don’t.” https://t.co/cQUmDrNfU1— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) October 1, 2026
Instead of looking at the failed school as a lesson in the harm of unaccountable teachers’ unions or the need for school choice, Hannah-Jones blames racism and suggests doing away with New York City’s selective admissions for middle schoolers and redrawing attendance zones. Living your values can be a good thing, but if you are presented with clear evidence your values are wrong, you should change them.
Here is a transcript for the October 1 show:
PBS Amanpour and Company
10/1/2026
MICHEL MARTIN: You write about this devastating moment when she was in the fourth grade, you get her math work back and you discover that almost every answer is wrong. And then the teacher, part of the reason it's wrong is the teacher hadn't been checking it.
And then you and your husband considered pulling her out then, but instead you fought for help for the whole class. This kind of pattern replicated itself throughout. Some of the administrators were unresponsive. Some of the teachers were incompetent. There were classes that she was in where the teacher was—the teacher's own attendance is sporadic.
So, it's just this one thing after another and your daughter at one point starts looking up the scores and how the school is viewed and what the statistics are. And she says, "you put me in a bad school." And would you just describe if you wouldn't mind what that was like for you?
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES: It was a reckoning. I knew it was going to come. I mean, that's—I—again, like if anybody is clear-eyed about what we were going to be facing, it's someone who has been in these schools for 20 years and has documented them. So, I always knew that my daughter was going to one day ask us about our choices.
Now, I also hoped, you know, having been in my household and understood our values that maybe she might understand why we made the choices, but she didn't. She was 12 years old. And 12-year-olds center themselves, as they should, and she strongly disagreed. She felt she deserved a better education than she received and she didn't understand how we could have resources and not give her that. And so, of course, the piece is very honestly grappling with that truth that we made choices that we felt were for the collective and common good. We tried to live our values and that my daughter bore a cost for that and that she confronted us about bearing a cost for that.
