On the Electoral Tactics of the American Historical Association

By Joan W. Scott professor emerita in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

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.

U.S. Capitol building, Washington, D.C., Carol M. Highsmith. Library of Congress. Public Domain.

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. 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.