BY JOAN W. SCOTT
I was deeply disturbed to see this recent e-mailing from some 27 historians, 12 of whom are former presidents of the American Historical Association (AHA), urging members to vote for the slate proposed by the association’s Nominating Committee.
To Members of the LAWCHA listserve,
We write to ask those of you who are members of the American Historical Association, or wish to join to vote in the election now underway. This is a moment of truth for the American Historical Association. The Trump administration is dismantling or seizing political control of the institutions on which historians, educators, and scholars depend: the National Archives, the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and more. Grants are being revoked. Institutions like the NLRB, the EEOC, and the women’s Bureau of the Labor Department, are being gutted, archives purged, budgets slashed, and leaders fired.
The American Historical Association, under its current leadership, has valiantly defended all of us who research, study, write, and teach history. Led by James Grossman, the professional staff—and the historians who volunteer on the executive council—have fought book bans and bills limiting the teaching of “divisive” topics. They have found expert historians to testify before Congress and have resisted effortsto monitor the content of K12 history teaching. The AHA is now spearheading a lawsuit to reverse NEH cuts that could decimate the agency.
This is why we believe it is crucial that you vote in the elections for AHA offices starting June 1 – and to vote for those candidates proposed by the Nominating Committee. Each year, the Nominating Committee puts forward two candidates for each office. It selects a diverse mix of professors and history professionals who take seriously the AHA’s charge – people known to be judicious, responsible, and committed to the organization’s values. The candidates chosen by the Nominating Committee this year are all seasoned, eminent members ofthe profession who know the AHA well and will work hard for all its members.
We recommend you support Suzanne Marchand, who is running unopposed for president. Beyond that, for each office, we urge you to vote for one of the two candidates proposed by the Nominating Committee (i.e. one of the first two listed) – people who will defend history scholars and teachers from the current attacks.
- If you are an AHA member, please make sure to vote. Login to your account at the AHA website (historians.org), click on “My AHA,” and then on “Vote in the AHA Election Starting June 1.”
- If you are not currently a member but wish to join, you can do so here: https://www.historians.org/membership/
- Whether or not you are an AHA member, please share this appeal with historians andother AHA members and impress upon them the stakes of these elections.
The coming years will be challenging ones for the AHA. For all who care about the health of the organization and the integrity of the profession, it is essential that we choose leaders who will fight for the values and goals for which the AHA has become known.
Signed:
David A. Bell, Princeton University
Mark Brilliant, UC Berkeley
Robert Darnton, emeritus, Harvard University.*
Anthony Grafton, Princeton University*
David Greenberg, Rutgers University
Lynn Hunt, emerita, UCLA*
Robert Johnston, University of Illinois Chicago
Jacqueline Jones, emerita, University of Texas*
William Chester Jordan, emeritus, Princeton University
Peniel Joseph, University of Texas
Linda Kerber, emerita, University of Iowa*
Alice Kessler-Harris, emerita, Columbia University.
David Levering Lewis, emeritus, NYU
Mary Lindemann, University of Miami*
James McPherson, emeritus, Princeton University*
John McNeill, Georgetown University*
Edward Muir, Northwestern University*
Sharon Musher, Stockton University
Mary Beth Norton, emerita, Cornell University*
Nell Painter, emerita, Princeton University
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, The New School
Claire Potter, emerita, The New School
Sophia Rosenfeld, University of Pennsylvania
Vicki Ruiz, emerita UC Irvine*
James A. Sheehan, emeritus, Stanford University
Sarah Shurts, Bergen County Community College
Gabrielle Spiegel, emerita, Johns Hopkin University*
* Former president, the American Historical Association
Purporting to be a call to support the Association in its attempts to fend off attacks by the Trump administration, it was actually a stealth attack against an alternative slate that is calling upon members to “Democratize the AHA.” That group was organized in the wake of the refusal of the AHA Council to submit to the general membership a resolution specifically condemning scholasticide (the destruction of schools, libraries, archives, museums, and cultural centers) by Israel in Gaza that had passed overwhelmingly (by 82%) at the annual meeting in January. The decision to propose an alternative slate came in the wake of the Council’s decision and reflected the dissatisfaction of the group that had proposed the resolution with what they considered the repression of the views of a significant constituency of the membership. The general membership might well have voted against the resolution, but not to allow it to be voted on—even if a prerogative of the Council—seemed nonetheless to be a denial of the democratic processes that are supposed to guide the AHA.
A similar underhanded approach characterizes the recent email list-serve message from the AHA “elders.” Their attack was indirect, never mentioning the alternative slate; indeed pretending it did not exist and all that was at stake was AHA versus MAGA. But the meaning was unmistakable, impugning the motives and integrity of those respected colleagues on the alternative slate. As if to answer the challenge to “democratize” the AHA, the Nominating Committee, we are told, is already democratic, it “selects a diverse mix of professors and history professionals who take seriously the AHA’s charge—people known to be judicious, responsible, and committed to the organization’s values;” they are “people who will defend history scholars and teachers from the current attacks”—implying that the others are outsiders, who are not committed to the organization’s values and will not protect it from the current attacks.
There are surely a variety of motives behind this urgent appeal to AHA members to vote the official slate (and to join the organization if they now don’t belong—rallying the troops to stop the radicals). Among them is the argument that a disciplinary society should not take political stands that don’t directly relate to professional matters such as access to libraries and archives. But there are also those who opposed the resolution on its merits; they fear the democratizers will force their criticism of Israel on the Association. They do not countenance criticism of Israel either because they consider such criticism to be antisemitic or because they fear that the Trump administration’s quest to root out an imagined antisemitism will redound negatively to the AHA. If these had been put forth as arguments against the “democratizers” there might have been an honest debate possible; the challengers could have responded—the stakes would have been out in the open and clear. Instead we got a sneaky call to arms purporting to defend the AHA from the Right, when it fact it was the “Left” that most worried them. I am not alone in considering this behavior at odds with the democratic values that ought to inform AHA practice, especially at a moment when democracy itself is under attack. Those of us with long memories of the contests in the 1960s and 70s know that this disciplinary conservatism is not new, but there is a certain irony in the fact that, over and over again, the professional association of historians resists efforts by new generations to raise difficult questions and to bring about change.
Joan W. Scott is professor emerita in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.
Excellent argument, BUT the writer buried the purpose of the letter! I am very busy, even though it’s a “holiday,” and I almost missed the point. Before you comment, PLEASE REREAD if you haven’t read the entire piece. I’m an American Citizenship teacher, among other things.
As one of the signers (who is flattered to be dubbed an AHA elder, although a number of us are a good deal younger than me), I do need to correct a few of the assertions made by my friend, Professor Joan Scott.
The letter was not circulated by the AHA, nor was it written in consultation with any AHA officer or staffer, nor was anyone at the AHA aware that we were choosing to address the election. We are merely a group of concerned colleagues with a point of view.
The letter was also not posted to any list serve but rather circulated within our personal networks. There was a reason for that: the alternate slate are friends and colleagues we admire and value (one is an old friend of mine), and we had no desire to have a public debate that suggests otherwise or that fuels polarization. H-Pad is hosting a forum, and presumably, people will attend that if they wish to have a discussion about the merits of the alternate slate and what they wish it to accomplish.
More importantly, perhaps, the alternate candidates have a perfect right to run, and they satisfied the criteria in the bylaws. The legitimacy of their candidacies is not something we would want to dispute
So, in short, our motive is as the letter states: the AHA, in a time of executive transition, must also be ready to meet the broad range of daunting political challenges to academic freedom that have emerged since January 21, 2025. As people deeply familiar with the work of the organization, the signers believe that the Nominating Committee’s work is important evidence of which candidates on the ballot are best prepared to do the most urgent work of the organization: promoting and defending the historical profession, and fighting for our right to pursue our scholarship, write, and teach freely.
In that vein, it is worth pointing out that several candidates endorsed by the Nominating Committee are also endorsed by H-PAD: that is a fact that should speak to the purpose of our letter. One cannot, on the one hand, believe in the work of the Nominating Committee, and of the AHA; and on the other, impugn candidates produced by the Nominating Committee because they are endorsed by H-PAD, a political organization of scholars with a long and distinguished history. Readers can learn more about the organization here:
https://www.historiansforpeace.org
I want to underline that the call to action is the letter’s purpose: we urge members to vote. The more members who participate, the greater our internal democracy as an organization, regardless of who wins an election.
So, readers, please: if you are eligible, vote. AHA members can navigate to the ballot by following the links in our letter, which Professor Scott has helpfully included in her post.
Strange, as I received an email via an AHA account.
Nevertheless, shame in the AHA and letter signers for this shameful effort to undermine the elections.
That’s very hard to believe, Kristi. Sorry. None of the signers of this letter have an aha email account. If you private message me and tell mer who it was, I would believe you–but the AHA has a pretty strict policy against this. For example, we could not post it to the community bulletin board for that reason.
One correction: I see from Joan’s post was posted by someone to the LAWCHA list serve, but the decision of our group was not to post to list serves, but the accepted risk of electronic documents is that they will find homes elsewhere.
This should read: One correction: I see from Joan’s post that our letter was posted by someone to the LAWCHA list serve, but the decision of our group was not to post to list serves. The accepted risk of electronic documents is that they will find homes elsewhere.
The debate Joan W. Scott describes within the American Historical Association is a masterclass in missing the point. The passionate fight between the “democratizers” and the “elders” over whether to condemn “scholasticide” abroad is a tragic and revealing distraction from the catastrophe that’s been ongoing around the world in the academe for generations.
The irony is that the AHA is consumed by a debate about the destruction of educational life overseas while presiding over a slow-motion scholasticide at home. For decades, the American university system—the very institution these historians inhabit—has been systemically destroying the conditions for a healthy academic life. It has replaced stable careers with a permanent underclass of precarious adjuncts, burdened generations with crippling debt, transformed the pursuit of knowledge into a marketized competition for credentials, and remained vulnerable to governments that flex their funding. This is the scholasticide that should be the subject of their concern, according to their mission, and on a global scale, because the only model on the planet for higher education is the one historians assume.
But the failure is deeper. It is a stunning display of strategic blindness from a group of academics that should know better. Historians should understand that centralized, hierarchical institutions are fragile things, easily captured by the sort of inner and outer political forces they now fear. Authoritarian regimes have always found it easy to control academia precisely because it is institutionalized—they only need to seize the administrative “off switch” to silence an entire profession of faculty employees, as the enrollees are either run from or run over on the campuses.
The fight over who controls the AHA is a fight for the steering wheel of a paper vessel. Both sides of this internal squabble are guilty of the same fundamental failure: they accept the legitimacy of the inherited institutional employment-enrollment monopoly. The real problem is not what the AHA says, but what the AHA is—a component of a higher education heritage that is structurally weak, unjust, and ripe for capture from within or without. Until historians are willing to question that foundational assumption, their internal debates are little more than a distraction from their own managed decline—arranging deckchairs on the Titanic.
Have you ever asked yourself: Are universities and colleges the best way to service and steward the social pillar of higher education?
(Authored in principle by Dr. Shawn Warren. This text was produced by PSAI-Us, an Extended Intelligence Partner developed by Dr. Warren to analyze and articulate his Professional Society of Academics framework.)
Who better to steward higher education than the professional scholars involved in research and teaching? The politicians of the two domestic cartel political parties and the current Israeli government have asserted that they, not the scholars, should be able to dictate who should teach in American colleges and universities, what they should teach, who should administer these institutions, and what students should be permitted to study in them.
This letter, and Dr. Potter’s comments above, represent precisely the kind of smug condescension and contempt for both histories and historians of the Middle East that needs to change in the AHA.
It is absurd to suggest that the letter was anything other than a smear against the esteemed historians nominated by petition. In addition to the reasons Prof. Scott wonderfully laid out, I would add that the letter didn’t make the case FOR any specific candidate(s). Rather, it was an appeal to please, for the sake of the AHA, whatever you do, DON’T vote for the candidates nominated by petition! Instead, vote for someone — n’importe qui! — who actually cares about the association and will lead responsibly. The obvious implication being that the petition candidates don’t and won’t. Claiming otherwise, Dr. Potter, insults the intelligence of the entire AHA membership.
Sadly, historians of the Middle East are used to smears and dismissal, even from our colleagues. A common argument against the scholasticide resolution was that “the conflict” is just so complicated. Who could possibly know what’s happening in Gaza? Surely not the countless AHA members who teach Middle East history for a living… We were also told that the AHA oughtn’t wade into geopolitics — unless, of course, it is to take a position aligned with US foreign policy (e.g., Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, China’s repression of academics, etc.) — or divisive political issues — except for hot-button issues like race, gender, and sexuality in higher education… Opponents of the scholasticide resolution seem to think that their fellow historians are incapable of examining the AHA’s own archives!
But the most infuriating part of the letter is its call to elect “people who will defend history scholars and teachers from the current attacks.” Let’s be clear: a major reason hundreds of us support the candidates-by-petition is because the current council REFUSES to defend Middle East historians from attack! In just the past year, three AHA members (Dr. Raz Segal, Dr. Cemal Kafadar, and Dr. Rosie Bsheer) have lost positions for speaking out on Gaza as academic experts. In all three cases, the AHA Council said NOTHING, even as other scholarly societies decried the attacks on academic freedom. Many more of us work in fear of reprisal for our work as historians. The Council’s cowardly silence is as shameful as it is indefensible.
If the writers of this letter actually cared about historians under attack, they should use their collective voice to urge the Council to defend our members. I won’t hold my breath… But I will urge my colleagues to vote for HPAD’s endorsed candidates because I know they will actually defend all historians and histories, whether in the United States or in Palestine.
Claire Potter’s comment “The letter was also not posted to any list serve but rather circulated within our personal networks” is belied by the evidence. On June 9, David Bell posted it on H-France (hardly his personal network) with the following comment: “If you are a historian based in the USA, I hope you will vote in the on-going elections for the governing offices of the American Historical Association. And if you vote, I hope you will take into consideration the following letter, signed, inter alia, by twelve former presidents of the AHA. Thank you.” The letter was clearly intended to reach a wide public audience. Even if it was not an official AHA document, the names of 12 former presidents of the association lent it greater authority than a simple statement from ” a group of concerned colleagues.”
OK: I stand corrected about H-France: that wasn’t what I recall from our discussions, but of course, since you have already called me a liar, I am sure this makes no difference to you. But so what, Joan? You have made a series of nasty, unfounded charges against our group (which contains people who have a range of views on Gaza and Israel, as I wrote in my comment) that you have no evidence for–only your intuition and political convictions. Come on. Show me the money here: where is your evidence that we–or David Bell– intended to do anything other than ask people to consider an institutionalist point of view hen they cast their votes. And as for authority–would the letter have been more persuasive had it been signed by people who had never held leadership positions in the AHA and known nothing about how it functions? Of course, posting these unfounded allegations all over the place is not backed up by any authority you might have in the historical profession–right?
It’s fascinating to see the energy with which the progressive left takes up any cause against Israel as their own, and as one that should be considered the Only truth out there. Kudos to the author of this article, for shedding light on the true intentions of the petitioners. I am curious to see if any statement were issued from the current leadership or the other slate of people running in this election in the AHA; also, what the end results were…
[Historians for Peace and Democracy sent Joan Scott’s ACADEME essay out to our supporters. David Levering Lewis, one of the 27 signers of the letter supporting the official nominations, sent us the following, to forward to Joan Scott, and with his permission I am posting it here. Van Gosse]
Dear Professor Scott,
I was called away this morning just as I read your Historians for Peace & Democracy email. The previous day I answered the AHA Nomination Committee’s call to vote for our forthcoming officers. After doing so promptly I was puzzled that my submitted vote for several names identified as ‘petition nominations’ had caused my ballot to be denied. Later today it came to me that I had quite thoughtlessly agreed to have my name listed among those who—either from design or manipulation—meant to signal their support of the AHA Executive Council’s disturbing over-ride of the overwhelming majority vote of members attending the January AHA meeting in New York City. My culpable myopia in this matter was a grievous professional error, nor should I not have suspected immediately that my yesterday’s nugatory vote resulted, as you correctly state, from “a stealth attack against an alternative slate that is calling upon members to Democratize the AHA,” thereby honoring the “scholasticide” vote of this association’s clear majority.
Respectfully yours, David Levering Lewis
Van, I have no idea what this means, and it has nothing to do with our letter–why are you feeding conspiracy theories? If Lewis’s vote was not counted properly, he should call the AHA and find out why.
As an update, one if us is in touch with Professor Lewis to help him register his preferred vote, if that is possible–the other thing may be that he already voted and forgot, which is easy to do. But this has nothing to do with our letter. As I said earlier, our group is only affiliated with the AHA as members, and to suggest we or the organization is manipulating the vote count is bizarre and damaging.
Professor Gosse’s post is misleading: Votes are recorded immediately upon electronic submission. The member’s record will indicate whether they have voted, without identifying their specific selections.
AHA staff have confirmed with the member that his vote had previously been successfully submitted and counted. The error message to which Professor Gosse’s post refers is generated automatically when a member has already voted.
Any AHA member who encounters difficulty voting should contact the AHA directly for technical assistance.
Thanks for clarifying Sarah: a colleague is checking in on the member in question to make sure he is ok. And I would ask Professor Gosse and his allies to think twice before exposing a senior faculty person in the way they did, apparently for hte sole purpose of casting aspersions on the AHA and in other colleagues who have been fully transparent about their purpose in promoting Nominating Committee candidates which include people endorsed by HPAD.