BY HISTORIANS FOR PEACE AND DEMOCRACY

This statement was issued by the steering committee of Historians for Peace and Democracy on January 31, 2025, and sent to its membership.

“Who controls the present controls the past,” wrote George Orwell in 1949. Authoritarian regimes have long tried to rewrite history to advance their political objectives. The Trump administration’s executive order of January 29, 2025, titled “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K–12 Schooling,” follows in this tradition.

The document accuses educators of “imprinting anti-American, subversive, harmful, and false ideologies on our Nation’s children.” One of its targets is “gender ideology extremism,” or the acknowledgment that transgender people exist. Another is “discriminatory equity ideology,” meaning a concern for values like equity and diversity. These “false ideologies” are allegedly accompanied by an “anti-American” telling of US history. In its place, the order directs public schools, on pain of defunding, to practice “patriotic education.” A patriotic history curriculum involves the following:

(i) an accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling characterization of America’s founding and foundational principles;

(ii) a clear examination of how the United States has admirably grown closer to its noble principles throughout its history;

(iii) the concept that commitment to America’s aspirations is beneficial and justified; and

(iv) the concept that celebration of America’s greatness and history is proper.

There is an obvious incongruity in accusing educators of indoctrination while mandating that they inculcate students with a fairy-tale version of US history. A curriculum cannot be “honest” if it is ideologically dedicated to “celebration of America’s greatness” and to conveying the “noble” and “inspiring” character of US rulers. Indoctrination as used in the document seems to mean not the dictionary definition of the term but any critical inquiry that does not adhere to “patriotic” predispositions. In this and other respects, the authors’ argumentation is of very low caliber.

We do, however, take this executive order seriously. As historians we know how labels like “subversive” and “anti-American” have been used to justify firing, imprisonment, deportation, torture, and murder by the US government and its allies around the world. In recent years the US education system has been dragged further in that direction. State and local governments have banned thousands of books, fired educators, and scared many others into self-censorship. This edict is the latest assault on critical thought, at a time when confronting our world’s multiple emergencies demands more of it, not less.

As historians we also know that, to the extent this country indeed reflects “noble principles,” it is thanks to the very groups now being targeted by the Trump administration: working people of all colors and national origins who have fought for freedom and dignity, critically-minded educators and students, women and LGBTQ activists, and the Indigenous peoples whose expulsion and murder is glorified in “patriotic” history books. In these same groups lies our hope for the future.

The Orwellian madness of our moment can only be countered through collective action and solidarity. We stand ready to support educators, labor unions, community organizations, and others who resist the descent into barbarism.

Historians for Peace and Democracy (H-PAD) stands up for peace and diplomacy internationally, and for democracy and human rights at home. Visit https://www.historiansforpeace.org/