25.02.26
Editorial Note
One year ago, Israel Academia Monitor (IAM) published a post titled “The American Historical Association Vetoed Resolution Against Israel,” reporting that the General Assembly of the American Historical Association (AHA) debated a proposal called “Resolution to Oppose Scholasticide in Gaza,” which was subsequently vetoed by the AHA Council on the grounds that it fell outside the Association’s mission as defined in its Constitution.
Last month, the AHA Council again refused to approve two resolutions against Israel proposed in January 2026 during the annual meeting, titled “Resolution in Solidarity with Gaza” and “Resolution Opposing Attacks on Core Principles of Education” which specifically opposes the use of anti-racism/antisemitism allegations to “suppress dissent” regarding the war in Gaza – because they fall outside the scope of the AHA chartered mission.
The AHA Constitution is defined as “the promotion of historical studies through the encouragement of research, teaching, and publication; the collection and preservation of historical documents and artifacts; the dissemination of historical records and information; the broadening of historical knowledge among the general public; and the pursuit of kindred activities in the interest of history.”
The two latest resolutions were added to the AHA 2026 business meeting agenda by members’ vote on January 10, 2026. Both resolutions were approved by members in attendance at the meeting and were referred to the AHA Council for consideration. According to the Council, “the AHA Council voted not to approve the two resolutions… As worded, the two resolutions fall outside the scope of the American Historical Association’s chartered mission. Approving them on behalf of the entire Association would present institutional risk and have long-term implications for the discipline and the organization.”
The AHA stated it “previously condemned any intentional destruction of academic and educational facilities and historical sites, including in Gaza.” In addition, AHA is providing “assistance to Palestinian historians and has been undertaking extensive work in defense of history and history education.” As part of the AHA’s mission to “defend, sustain, and enhance the work of historians in the United States and abroad,” the Council established in 2025 the Ad Hoc Committee to Aid Palestinian Historians. “This committee provides guidance for the Association’s efforts and complements the AHA’s longstanding partnership with Scholars at Risk and the work of other committees, including the Committee on International Historical Activities.”
An activist group, Historians for Peace and Democracy (H-PAD) (formerly, Historians Against the War), is behind the anti-Israel resolutions. The mission of H-PAD, under the banner of “Organizing for Justice and Honest History,” is to “stand up for peace and diplomacy internationally, and for democracy and human rights at home. We mobilize activists on campuses and in communities across the United States of America, create educational resources for students, teachers and parents, and network with other organizations working for peace and democracy at home and abroad.”
The activists have quite a long history. In 2014, Haaretz published an article on BDS, when Van Gosse, a retired historian who serves as H-PAD’s co-chair, was mentioned as the co-organizer of an AHA roundtable discussion “critical of Israeli policy.”
In another update, the AHA stated that “the AHA Council appreciates the work of Historians for Peace and Democracy and recognizes the diversity of perspectives, concerns, and commitments among AHA members.” Adding, “The AHA Council deplores any intentional destruction of Palestinian educational institutions, libraries, universities, and archives in Gaza.”
Last week, a queer and trans historian under the name “Dana M.,” published an article in Jadaliyya, an Arab Studies Institute journal mostly funded by George Soros, titled “The American Historical Association Veto Should Terrify Queer People.” She begins with describing the AHA annual conference last year, which “voted overwhelmingly (423 to 88) to condemn scholasticide in Gaza.” She then states, “Just over a week later, the AHA Council, a partially democratically elected leadership committee, vetoed the resolution.” She lamented that “Among their stated reasons was a fear of right-wing backlash and potentially losing government contracts.” She described how “Scholars of authoritarianism have long warned of ‘anticipatory obedience’ in cementing the power of fascism.”
She claimed that “If the American Historical Association’s act of obeying in advance is any indication of the state of our institutions going into the second – and much scarier – Trump era, queer and trans scholars (and people in general) should be terrified. Palestine is a litmus test. If the AHA council refuses to recognize a genocide that has played out live on the internet, that has been condemned in the court of global opinion (and in global courts), and which their membership overwhelmingly opposes, how can we, queer and trans scholars, expect them to show even an ounce of backbone in opposing American fascists’ increasingly genocidal rhetoric and plans to ‘eradicate’ us from public life.”
She ended her post by stating, “A smart, liberal, democratic, member-run organization would be working overtime to seek alternative sources of funding and support… To my fellow queer and trans historians: institutions will not protect us. It is up to us to defend our past and secure our future. There is no pride in genocide and the struggle for Palestinian liberation is ours as well. Join Historians for Palestine and Historians for Peace and Democracy. Organize and fight back. To the AHA Council: as scholars and moral beings you are clearly incapable facing our historical moment. Fund Palestinian history. Let members vote. Resign.”
Dana M’s manifesto is both hypocritical and highly misleading. She must be aware that Hamas’s treatment of queer and trans people is severely repressive. Same-sex relations are criminalized under the law. Hamas ideology is explicitly hostile to homosexuality and gender nonconformity, framing them as religiously forbidden and socially corrupting. There are no legal protections for gay or transgender people—no recognition, anti-discrimination laws, or safe avenues for complaint. LGBTQ people generally live completely underground, conceal their identities, or attempt to flee. Over time, many sought asylum abroad or refuge in Israel due to the fear of persecution.
Instead of espousing falsifications about Israel, the pro-Palestinian activist group – which bears the misleading name “Historians for Peace and Democracy” – would be well advised to expose the brutality endured by the LGBTQ community and other human rights abuses by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.
REFERENCES:
Response to Proposed Resolutions: Taking Action to Support Historians
The AHA has a broad responsibility to advocate for the historical discipline and to enable our members and affiliates to carry out their own priorities. We are united across our different missions in our shared commitment to furthering historical work. At a time of unprecedented global threats to historical scholarship, the AHA Council is prioritizing direct action to support the discipline and its institutions as a whole.
The Council received two resolutions for consideration at the 2026 annual business meeting: the “Resolution in Solidarity with Gaza” and the “Resolution Opposing Attacks on Core Principles of Education.” The Council has heard powerful expressions from members about threats to academic freedom and the needs of Palestinian historians and appreciates the work of affiliated societies to address these concerns. In response, the Council has taken direct actions on topics addressed in both proposed resolutions. Under its authority to set the business meeting agenda, and after careful review in light of the obligations and realities the AHA faces in its role as a professional advocate for the entirety of the discipline, the Council will not place the proposed resolutions on the agenda.
In our legal obligations as fiduciaries of the AHA, the Council has a responsibility to act in the long-term best interests of the Association, which represents the whole community of historians and their work. This obligation includes the duty of carrying out the AHA’s mission, safeguarding its charter, and sustaining the work of the Association.
As previously announced, and as part of the AHA’s mission to defend, sustain, and enhance the work of historians in the United States and abroad, the Council unanimously supported the establishment of the Ad Hoc Committee to Aid Palestinian Historians. This committee will provide guidance for the Association’s efforts and complements the AHA’s longstanding partnership with Scholars at Risk and the work of other committees, including the Committee on International Historical Activities.
In light of continuing threats to the historical discipline, academic freedom, and freedom of speech, the AHA established the Ad Hoc Committee on Academic Freedom. This committee convenes historians from many institutional backgrounds and other scholars and practitioners with relevant expertise to aid the Association in its longstanding work with affiliated societies and other scholarly associations to advocate collectively for academic freedom.
The Council gratefully acknowledges the work of AHA members serving on committees and working groups and participating in the new Community Action and Resource Exchange network. If you are interested in supporting these or other initiatives now or in the future, please contact us at info@historians.org.
January 11 Update on Business Meeting ResolutionsCollapse
Two resolutions were added to the American Historical Association’s 2026 business meeting agenda by members’ vote on January 10, “Resolution in Solidarity with Gaza” and “Resolution Opposing Attacks on Core Principles of Education.” Both resolutions were approved by members in attendance at the meeting and referred to the AHA Council for consideration.
On January 11, the AHA Council voted not to approve the two resolutions that came before the business meeting on January 10. As worded, the two resolutions fall outside the scope of the American Historical Association’s chartered mission. Approving them on behalf of the entire Association would present institutional risk and have long-term implications for the discipline and the organization. The Council is preparing a more detailed explanation for its membership. The Association has previously condemned any intentional destruction of academic and educational facilities and historical sites, including in Gaza. The organization is also taking steps to provide assistance to Palestinian historians and has been undertaking extensive work in defense of history and history education.
FAQs on the 2026 Proposed ResolutionsCollapse
The questions below reflect concerns raised by members across the Association about the AHA Council’s decisions regarding proposed resolutions related to Gaza. These are difficult and deeply felt issues, and the Council recognizes that people within the discipline hold strong and sometimes divergent views.
The Council offers these responses in the spirit of transparency and good-faith engagement, with respect for the concerns expressed by many members and for the Council’s responsibility to steward the Association in accordance with its mission, charter, and governance obligations. The purpose of this FAQ is to clarify the Council’s reasoning and the actions the AHA has taken, not to foreclose debate or scholarly disagreement.
Why did the AHA Council decide not to place the proposed resolutions on the business meeting agenda?
In deciding whether to include these resolutions on the agenda, the question before the Council was not whether the situation in Gaza warrants moral concern. It plainly does, which is reflected in our prior statement condemning any intentional destruction of educational institutions in Gaza, in our defense of scholars’ rights to free expression and peaceful protest, as well as in our recent creation of a new committee—unanimously approved by the Council—to provide guidance on the Association’s efforts to aid Palestinian historians and students.
The question instead was whether the Association should use its general business meeting to adopt binding institutional positions on active geopolitical conflicts in ways that would set enduring precedent for the Association—particularly on matters where our membership holds deeply divergent views—and whether the resolutions fell within the Association’s stated mission.
After careful reflection on our mission, governance responsibilities, institutional risk, and the long-term implications for the discipline, the Council concluded that taking on this role would fundamentally alter the nature of the Association and its capacity to serve historians across perspectives and geographies. Especially at a time when the fundamental practice of history and the humanities face existential threats within our own institutions and public sphere, the Council determined that this resolution fell outside what it determined to be the appropriate scope of the Association’s congressionally chartered mission.
In what ways did the proposals fall outside the scope of the AHA’s mission?
The resolutions, as written, would have required the Association itself to take positions and actions that go beyond the scope of the AHA’s congressionally chartered mission and its responsibilities as a 501(c)(3) organization. In particular, the resolutions would have obligated the Association to adopt ongoing institutional positions on an active geopolitical conflict, creating precedent with implications well beyond the immediate case.
The AHA was chartered by Congress in 1889 for a specific purpose: “the promotion of historical studies, the collection and preservation of historical manuscripts, and for kindred purposes in the interest of American history and of history in America.”
The Association can and should take principled, history-focused actions in alignment with this mission, but it must do so in a way that neither undermines its ability to serve a diverse membership nor exposes it to undue legal and financial risks.
Why did the AHA not include these resolutions on the business meeting agenda, yet issued a statement condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and approved a resolution condemning the war in Iraq?
The 2025 and 2026 resolutions are substantively different—both in form and consequence—than the 2007 resolution related to the war in Iraq and the 2022 statement related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The 2007 resolution was far more limited in scope, simply urging individual AHA members “to take a public stand as citizens on behalf of the values necessary to the practice of our profession, and to do whatever they can to bring the Iraq war to a speedy conclusion.” It did not mandate any ongoing institutional statements, actions, or commitments.
The 2022 statement was coordinated and co-signed with 41 other organizations and dealt specifically with Russia’s use of “outlandish historical claims, including an argument that Ukraine was entirely a Soviet creation.” It was not a resolution, nor did it mandate any ongoing institutional statements, actions, or commitments.
The 2025 and 2026 resolutions regarding Israel and Gaza are far broader and mandate specific institutional actions and commitments that go beyond the scope of the AHA’s congressionally chartered mission and its responsibilities as a 501(c)(3) organization.
Why did the AHA create the Ad Hoc Committee to Aid Palestinian Historians? And what is the status of the committee?
Using the Council’s discretion on how to best advocate and support historians while also acting in the long-term best interests of the Association, the AHA has chosen to prioritize concrete, direct action to address the concerns of its members and the broader historical community related to Gaza.
At its regularly scheduled meeting in October 2025, the Council unanimously approved the establishment of the Ad Hoc Committee to Aid Palestinian Historians, which, similar to the body that both the 2025 and 2026 resolutions called for, is tasked with identifying resources and other organizations with whom to collaborate and ultimately presenting an actionable plan for the AHA to aid Palestinian historians and to support educational needs in the region.
This committee’s structure is consistent with the Association’s mission and institutional precedent. It also complements the AHA’s ongoing and longstanding partnership with Scholars at Risk, an organization that protects scholars suffering grave threats to their lives, liberty, and well-being by arranging temporary research and teaching positions and providing advisory and referral services.
The AHA is in the process of appointing committee members, which includes invitations to Palestinian historians, historians of genocide, and archival experts with expertise in human rights.
Does not including the resolutions on the business meeting agenda stifle discussion and debate?
No. The AHA is committed to robust scholarly debate and provides numerous opportunities at the annual meeting to discuss and engage with Palestinian history, genocide, and state violence. These include sessions organized or accepted by the program committee; sessions organized by Historians for Peace and Democracy (HPAD), who submitted the 2025 and 2026 resolutions; and a roundtable on “Historians and the Politics of Genocide Studies,” organized by the Council’s Research Division.
The Council’s decision concerned the use of the business meeting as a mechanism for adopting binding institutional policy, not the substance or legitimacy of scholarly debate.
Why did the AHA allow similar resolutions on the agenda in 2025?
The AHA initially allowed the 2025 resolutions to proceed in recognition of the depth of member concern and in good-faith engagement with members’ desire for action. Following the business meeting, however, the Council concluded that adopting the resolution as institutional policy would exceed the Association’s chartered mission.
Why did the Council veto the 2025 resolution that was approved by members present at the Business Meeting?
Under the AHA’s governance structure, the Council retains responsibility for ensuring that actions taken in the name of the Association comply with its legal obligations and mission. After careful review, the Council determined that implementing the resolution as institutional policy would exceed the Association’s chartered mission.
While the 2025 resolution was vetoed, the Council also asserted that the AHA “deplores any intentional destruction of Palestinian educational institutions, libraries, universities, and archives in Gaza.”
What other actions has the AHA taken related to the war in Gaza and the impact on Palestinian historians and educational facilities?
For years, the AHA has been actively involved in protecting both the rights of individual members to speak freely as well as the rights of scholars to study and preserve our past. These include statements and actions defending the right of faculty and students to engage in peaceful campus protests, as well as in support of international students and faculty. On these issues and others, the AHA has deeply engaged in advocacy with other associations across a broad landscape, including K–12 schools, universities, museums, archives, national parks, and others.
These are examples of direct actions taken in response to member requests that can create meaningful change and that also allow the AHA to continue to carry out its work on behalf of all its members.
Can individual historians and affiliated societies still advocate and take positions?
Absolutely. The Council’s decision applies only to what the Association itself formally adopts as institutional policy, and the AHA remains committed to fostering robust scholarly exchange and disagreement within the discipline.
Individual historians, caucuses, and affiliated societies remain free to debate, organize, advocate, and express moral and political positions, and the AHA will continue to defend their right to do so.
AHA Council Letter to Members, January 20, 2026Collapse
To Our Members:
On January 11, 2026, the American Historical Association’s Council vetoed by majority vote two resolutions that were passed at the January 10 Business Meeting, which was attended by 360 members.
The Council made this decision even as we recognize and deplore the killing of scholars and students and the destruction of archives, libraries, museums, and universities in Gaza. Numerous AHA members as well as international humanitarian and human rights groups have concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. We also express our horror at the violence unleashed by Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. The loss of life and the destruction of educational and historical resources are matters of grave concern to us as people and members of the historical community.
However, the AHA as an organization is bound by its legal obligations and congressionally chartered mission. As worded, the two resolutions go beyond a specific focus on history and thereby fall outside the scope of the AHA’s mission. As such, approving them would present institutional risk and have long-term negative implications for the organization. It is critical that the AHA maintain its organizational standing, congressional charter, nonpartisanship, and independence, in order to preserve and defend scholarly expertise; support historical research and teaching; and otherwise fulfill our core mission. The AHA supports the historical discipline and historians on behalf of its 11,000 members in the United States and abroad. Our responsibility as Council members is to protect the institution’s capacity and stability so that the AHA can continue to serve the discipline and its constituents into the future.
The Council took concrete action after the 2025 business meeting to respond constructively to the concerns of members and established a Committee to Aid Palestinian Historians. It is our hope that this committee, in collaboration with Palestinian historians, can identify an actionable plan to mobilize members and identify partners with whom we can work to support Palestinian historians and Gaza’s historical and educational institutions. We welcome all with expertise or interest in these pursuits to join in this endeavor.
In response to increasing threats to academic freedom, we also established a Committee on Academic Freedom to support our members and the historical discipline in the face of ongoing and new attacks on teaching and learning. The AHA is committed to defending all historians’ ability to teach, research, and work in their area of expertise, without fear that their evidence-based scholarship and teaching will be construed or attacked as divisive political speech.
The last few years have been extraordinarily challenging, and we all, as historians and individuals, have divergent views about how to identify, prioritize, and respond to threats to our discipline. But there is no question that the threats to historians and historical scholarship—from violence, censorship, and harassment of many kinds—is uppermost in our minds.
We will continue to lead efforts to confront the many threats to history and historians at local, state, national, and international levels as outlined in our fall 2025 Call to Action. Historians’ particular skills—and the work of historical thinking—put us at the center of current crises. We must act collectively to defend the individuals and institutions that make this work possible.
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Update as of January 17, 2025: The AHA Council deplores any intentional destruction of Palestinian educational institutions, libraries, universities, and archives in Gaza. The Council considers the “Resolution to Oppose Scholasticide in Gaza,” however, to contravene the Association’s Constitution and Bylaws, because it lies outside the scope of the Association’s mission and purpose, defined in its Constitution as “the promotion of historical studies through the encouragement of research, teaching, and publication; the collection and preservation of historical documents and artifacts; the dissemination of historical records and information; the broadening of historical knowledge among the general public; and the pursuit of kindred activities in the interest of history.” After careful deliberation and consideration, the AHA Council vetoes the resolution. The AHA Council appreciates the work of Historians for Peace and Democracy and recognizes the diversity of perspectives, concerns, and commitments among AHA members.
Update as of January 6, 2025: The “Resolution to Oppose Scholasticide in Gaza” was passed by members attending the business meeting. As per the AHA’s Constitution, article 7(3–5), all measures passed by the business meeting shall come before the AHA Council for acceptance, nonconcurrence, or veto. The AHA Council has begun a thoughtful and vigorous conversation and will make a decision at its next meeting, which will take place within the month.
Jan 15, 2026
We Refuse to be Silenced: The Palestinian Historians Group Responds to the AHA Council Vetoes
By : Jadaliyya Reports
We, the Palestinian Historians Group, are outraged by the American Historical Association Council’s decision to veto two resolutions that members passed by 78 and 79 percent at the AHA Annual Business Meeting on January 10, 2026. The first resolution condemns Israeli scholasticide in Gaza and calls on the AHA to support our colleagues in Palestine. The second opposes attacks on core principles of education, including academic freedom at US universities and the freedom to criticize the US-sponsored Israeli genocide in Gaza.
The AHA Council claims these resolutions fall outside the AHA’s mission and pose “institutional risk” to the organization. They are wrong. It is their vetoes that violate the AHA’s mission. These vetoes are an abandonment of the AHA’s democratic principles and a dereliction of the AHA’s duty to defend academic freedom. With these vetoes, the AHA Council has silenced Palestinian scholars and colleagues, placed historians of Palestine at greater professional and personal risk, and fed rising authoritarianism at home and abroad.
The AHA’s mission is to serve historians in “every historical era and geographical area.” Its guiding principles commit it to take a public stance “when public or private authorities, in the United States or elsewhere, threaten the preservation of or free access to historical sources.”
It has taken such public stances before in defense of institutions and scholars in the US and elsewhere. Yet it refuses to do so for Palestinians.
Over the past two years, Israel’s military has killed, injured, and displaced tens of thousands of our academic colleagues and students. It has severely damaged or destroyed Gaza’s seven universities, six university colleges, and five intermediate colleges, as well as over 100 major archaeological sites. At least 195 historic buildings, 12 museums, 3 historic shrines, 6 public libraries, and 8 publishing houses in Gaza, were destroyed, damaged or looted by Israeli armed forces between October 2023 and January 2024 alone. All of Gaza’s major university libraries were bombarded or burnt, and the same fate befell the major archival and manuscript collections, including the Gaza City municipal archives and the Great Omari Mosque collection. Shouldn’t the deliberate destruction of these irreplaceable historical sources, archives, libraries, and universities demand an institutional response from our professional association?
The Emergency Committee of Universities in Gaza has called on us to support Palestinian historians as they retrieve what remains from Palestine’s cultural artifacts and rebuild Gaza’s universities. They have asked us to work alongside them and “to refuse all plans seeking to bypass, erase, or weaken the integrity of our academic institutions.”
The AHA Council’s decision to establish an “Ad Hoc Committee to Aid Palestinian Historians” has no legitimacy, substance or mandate. Without a democratic mandate, and without taking a clear, public stance against scholasticide, such a committee would bypass, rather than support, our Palestinian colleagues.
In contrast to such toothless efforts, genuine solidarity with Palestinians has come from principled historians across the profession: graduate students, early-career scholars, tenured and contingent faculty, K-12 teachers, education unionists, librarians, archivists, as well as museum and preservation experts and curators. In the face of doxxing campaigns, professional blacklisting, and other harms, they continue to speak up and organize against genocide. They understand the inextricable link between scholasticide in Palestine and the rising tides of authoritarianism in the US.
Palestine has become a test of institutional courage, and the Council members who vetoed these resolutions failed that test. They have revealed a disregard for our fellow Palestinian academics and a fundamental contempt for democratic processes. The leadership’s message is clear: they seek to silence us so they can return to a comfortable status quo.
We refuse to be silenced, and we refuse to accept that our colleagues’ lives matter less than institutional comfort. We will win because history—and the majority of historians—are on our side.
Palestinian Historians Group
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AHA Members Support Our Resolutions
Filed under: Announcements
January 14, 2026
We want to share the news of our victories at the recent American Historical Association meeting in Chicago. On Jan. 10, 2026, the AHA Business Meeting passed the Resolution in Solidarity with Gaza by a vote of 282 to 76 and the Resolution Opposing Attacks on Core Principles of Education by a vote of 245 to 62. Barbara Weinstein, HPAD, and Abdel Razzaq Takriti, a member of the Palestinian Historians Group (PHG), gave powerful speeches in favor of the Gaza resolution. Ellen Schrecker, HPAD and Sherene Seikaly, PHG, spoke forcefully for the academic freedom and free speech resolution. This success was the result of the ongoing collaboration among Historians for Peace and Democracy, the Palestinian Historians Group and Historians for Palestine and months of mobilization before the 2026 AHA conference and at the meeting.
Our victory was short lived, however, for on Jan. 11 the AHA council vetoed both resolutions. In a statement on the AHA website, the Council said both resolutions fell “outside the scope of American Historical Association’s chartered mission.” Yet, according to the Guiding Principles on Taking a Public Stance, “the AHA has the responsibility to take public stands” in a variety of situations, including “when public or private authorities in the United States or elsewhere threaten the preservation of or free access to historical sources.” The AHA leadership said approving the resolutions would result in “institutional risk” but did not specify what sort of risks they feared, how they had been assessed, or who was determining them. The AHA further said the resolutions would have “implications for the discipline and the organization,” but again failed to specify of what sort. Nonetheless, we remain committed to extending solidarity to Palestinian historians and educators in Gaza and to denouncing allegations of antisemitism on college campuses when they are used to restrict criticism of Israel.
This year’s veto follows the veto of the Scholasticide Resolution passed by an overwhelming majority of members at the January 2025 AHA business meeting. It follows the Council’s refusal to put this year’s resolutions on the business meeting’s agenda, after AHA staff accepted them as they met all the requirements outlined in the bylaws. Only when two-thirds of those attending the business meeting approved a motion by HPAD’s Patrick Manning, a former AHA President, to suspend the rules, was discussion and passage of the Gaza and the Core Principles of Education resolutions allowed. The votes at the well-attended 2026 business meeting reflected the democratic will of the AHA membership. If the Council doubted that, it should have sent the resolutions to the full membership for a vote.
Despite this setback, Historians for Peace and Democracy will continue to work within the AHA to make our professional organization more democratic, transparent, inclusive, and willing to respond to the challenges of our time. The energy and enthusiasm of the working historians at the Business Meeting convince us that conscience-driven activism in the historical profession will flourish. We believe our efforts are part of a broader struggle being undertaken within other disciplinary organizations and academic groups to take a strong stand against political repression.
In solidarity,
Historians for Peace and Democracy
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Resolution in Solidarity with Gaza
Whereas the U.N. Special Committee on Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People; leading international, Palestinian, and Israeli human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders, Al-Haq, and B’Tselem; and the International Association of Genocide Scholars and prominent genocide scholars and historians have concluded that Israel is perpetrating genocide in Gaza; Whereas U.S. military and diplomatic support enables Israeli actions, including providing Israel with $30 billion in funding since October 7, 2023; Whereas U.N. experts have raised alarm over the “intentional effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system, an action known as ‘scholasticide.’” This includes bombing Gaza’s 12 universities; destroying over 90 percent of its schools and most archives, libraries, and museums; and killing, starving, and displacing thousands of students, faculty, and staff; Whereas academics in Gaza have declared their refusal to allow this “continuous Nakba” to “extinguish the flame of knowledge and resilience,” and Gaza university presidents have called for “immediate international mobilization to support and protect Gaza’s higher education institutions,” stating: “We are more than buildings—we are academic communities, comprised of students, faculty, and staff, still alive and determined to carry forward our mission”; Whereas Gaza’s nonprofit universities have established a unified Emergency Committee that has articulated concrete priorities for international support; Be it resolved that the AHA, which supports the right of all peoples to freely teach and learn about their past, condemns Israeli scholasticide against Palestine; echoing the call of AHA members at the Association’s business meeting on January 5, 2025; Be it resolved that the AHA, in cooperation with universities in Gaza and their representative bodies, will support efforts to ensure the survival and rebuilding of Palestinian higher education by forming a committee that will pursue the objectives specified in this resolution. Resolution in Solidarity with Gaza Resolution Opposing Attacks on Core Principles of Education Whereas ongoing attacks on academic freedom, free speech, faculty governance, and equity from government officials including the president of the United States, are irreparably damaging education in the United States; Whereas these attacks weaponize allegations of antisemitism and racism to obscure struggles against real problems, justify massive cutbacks, and silence protests against the U.S.-sponsored genocide perpetrated by Israel in Gaza; Be it resolved that the AHA condemns attacks on academic freedom, free speech, faculty governance, and equity and their specious justifications; it urges all U.S. educational institutions to join in this opposition, and to particularly defend untenured and adjunct faculty and international students who are especially vulnerable to doxxing, firing, and deportation. Be it resolved that the AHA will form a committee to protect academic freedom that will pursue the objectives specified in this resolution.
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Feb 16, 2025
The American Historical Association Veto Should Terrify Queer People
By : Dana M.On January 5, 2025, attendees at the American Historical Association annual conference, representing the largest and oldest organization of historians and history teachers in the nation, voted overwhelmingly (423 to 88) to condemn scholasticide in Gaza. The resolution denounced the “pattern of attacks on schools, universities, teachers, and students in the Gaza Strip,’” including the destruction of all Gazan universities, as well as the targeted destruction of “archives, libraries, cultural centers, museums, and bookstores,” and the near obliteration of “Gaza’s education system,” during the Israeli genocide in Gaza over the past year and a half. Just over a week later, the AHA Council, a partially democratically elected leadership committee, vetoed the resolution. Among their stated reasons was a fear of right-wing backlash and potentially losing government contracts.Scholars of authoritarianism have long warned of “anticipatory obedience” in cementing the power of fascism. If the American Historical Association’s act of obeying in advance is any indication of the state of our institutions going into the second – and much scarier – Trump era, queer and trans scholars (and people in general) should be terrified.
Palestine is a litmus test. If the AHA council refuses to recognize a genocide that has played out live on the internet, that has been condemned in the court of global opinion (and in global courts), and which their membership overwhelmingly opposes, how can we, queer and trans scholars, expect them to show even an ounce of backbone in opposing American fascists’ increasingly genocidal rhetoric and plans to “eradicate” us from public life.
Over the past few years, the American Historical Association has made itself into an active lobbying body, correctly recognizing teaching historical facts as an inherently political project, especially given the centrality of erasing and rewriting History to contemporary fascist and far-right movements. As they state in their last tax filings, the AHA provides the critical service of defending its members’ “academic freedoms” and “access to archives.” They have taken stances on the importance of queer and trans histories, opposed the panic over “Critical Race Theory,” written an amicus curae brief in the Supreme Court Case that ultimately overturned Roe v. Wade, and attacked Trump’s hackey and racist attempts to whitewash US history. For one of dozens of examples of foreign–policy positions, in 2022, the Association condemned Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, in fact actively supporting “Ukrainian nation and its people in their resistance to Russian military aggression.” The Association, moreover, has taken positions explicitly supporting queer and trans people, from a 2015 LGBTQ taskforce, to public statements in defence of queer history, and, more performatively, branding much of their merch in rainbow and trans flag colors.
One refrain that emanated from sympathetic-centrist-types, was a candid worry that the American Historical Association may lose lucrative federal money and projects if it took an allegedly controversial stance on the Israeli genocide in Gaza. The Association requires money to fund its increasingly public political scope and the US government has been a source of some of that money.
This is, to be fair, a scary time to adopt even the most milquetoast resolution in support of Palestinian life and history. At the end of the last legislative session, Congress Passed H.R. 9495, which many have taken to calling the “Nonprofit Killer” bill, terminating “tax-exempt status” for organizations deemed to be supporting terrorism, whatever that means. Even large nonprofits, working across sectors, but especially those like Students for Justice in Palestine, Committee on American Islamic Relations, and American Muslims for Palestine, as well as Jewish Voice for Peace, have expressed existential dread. This bill is part of a broader strategy, outlined in a document titled “Project Esther,” aiming to combat an alleged “Hamas Support Network” ostensibly operating on university campuses across the nation. Conflating hatred of Israel and hatred of America with antisemitism, the project seeks to eradicate pro-Palestine groups from America’s “open society” or its public sphere. To this end, they plan to use financial audits, academic blacklists, and lawfare campaigns, including hate-speech and counterterrorism laws, as well as the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). This playbook is not new. Though originally passed to imprison the mob, the RICO Act and domestic terrorism accusations have been thrown at a range of progressive protest movements, especially the climate and racial justice movements.
The worry over the finances of the American Historical Association, however, is either misinformed or disingenuous. With an existing annual revenue of almost $6 million and assets totalling almost $11 million, the AHA’s budget dwarfs those of most other professional organizations in the humanities. Much larger associations, however, have taken much stronger stands. The American Anthropological Association, with $7.8 million in revenue and almost $16 million in assets adopted a Boycott, Divest, and Sanction proposal in 2023, while the American Sociological Association ($7.8 million in revenue, almost $15 million assets) in 2024 denounced the genocide in Gaza and called for defending scholars’ rights to speak out on Palestine.
In fact, this argument does little more than serve to hold queer scholars hostage. It pits us and those few groups the association has deigned to stand up for against Palestinians and their historians. If we want to keep having nice things (in this case an association that feigns regard for our lives) we must play a game of make-believe and at least not publicly reject a near consensus in our leadership that holds a well-documented and already litigated genocide to not be “settled” history.
What this veto actually teaches us is that American Historical Association Council will, when under enough pressure, refuse to stand for what the vast majority of their members believe is just and good. Beneath their ostensibly caring liberal platitudes lies a cold and vicious spinelessness that leaves transgender scholars uniquely vulnerable.
Since entering office, Donald Trump immediately began his onslaught against transgender people. While the worst wildfires in US history continues to burn across California, Donald Trump has issued executive orders banning transgender athletes from competing in sports, erasing the gender-neutral X as a marker on US passports, and legally requiring all people to re-register on their passports with their “god-given” sex “at contraception” (a nod to how anti-trans legislation is also a gateway to attacks on all women and bodies). Meanwhile, from day one, Trump is overseeing an onslaught against DEI initiatives and funding, seeking to eradicate “gender ideology,” alongside other ostensibly subversive ideas out of the government.
At this last AHA conference, we heard story after story of scholars being systematically targeted, harassed, and threatened by the right-wing outrage machine just for being transgender. We heard stories of loneliness and immiseration in Britain. And we heard how already at public institutions in states with proliferating anti-trans laws, professors have been hounded out of their jobs, and have faced doxing and death threats for teaching historical facts that the right wing deems controversial. The Committee on LGBT History even held an open Listening Sessionto try to figure out how the AHA could respond to the rising tides of well-funded and politically powerful transphobia around the world. But to what end? What use is this accumulating archive of transgender suffering?
Republicans, moreover, have long viewed Palestinian and queer liberation as intertwined. Republicans blamed the Spring 2024 encampments (much like the 2025 L.A. wildfires) on a nebulous “woke agenda” ostensibly making campuses unsafe for “regular” people.” Across the country, as the American Association of University Professors tell us in a recent report, we are entering an era of McCarthyist repression. Public university systems across the country are mandating the removal of discussions of “race,” “gender,” and “sexuality,” while the University of Florida system even yoking these anti-gender and anti-DEI efforts to a mass review of courses for any “anti-Israel bias.” In the schizoid mind of a representative “gender critical” City University of New York Emeritus Professor, “The Palestine True Believers and the Trans True Believers,” are one and the same. Conservatives are “pro-Israel and pro-biology,” while both transgender people and Palestinians are “bloodthirsty barbarians” on a Jihad to destroy “Judeo-Christian” civilization.
Indeed, many queer and trans scholars have long been at the forefront of solidarity struggles with Palestinian liberation. There is, notably, a rich and varied tapestry of queer and trans Arab and Muslim life in and around the academy, for whom Palestine is a central concern. By November 2023, over 1200 scholars in queer, trans, and feminist studies had signed onto a letter declaring that “None of us are free until we are all free. Palestine is not an exception. … Our feminism compels us to say: Free Palestine!” Beyond a ceasefire, the letter declared: “End the Siege. End the Occupation. Land Back.” The National Women’s Studies Association, moreover, has gone beyond just calling for a ceasefire (which it did in October 2023), recommitting itself to the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and endorsing the 2024 People Conference for Palestine in Detroit. Over this past year around the world queer and feminist historians have been at the frontlines supporting students on and off campus, where they have also born the disproportionate brunt of administrative backlash. Famous cases include Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian at Hebrew University, Mohammed Abdou at Columbia, Maura Finkelstein at Muhlenberg College, and Steven Thrasher at Northwestern, among many, many others.
These scholars, as do many other queer and trans people, recognize that the Israeli Genocide of Gaza is a genocide of queer and trans people. Over 85,000 tons of bombs raining down (more than all of World War II) do not distinguish between straight and queer people. Up until the eve of the ceasefire, Israel’s blocking of medical aid has led to massive shortages of life-saving HIV medication, while Palestine as a whole was in 2020 already declared an area of “increasing concern” for the spread of the disease. Now, in the wake of the almost entire destruction of Gaza’s one-robust health infrastructure, during which the Israeli military treated medical caches “like weapons depots” and systematically destroyed and denied medical aid, HIV/AIDS is just one of many epidemics roiling across the Gaza strip.
During this genocide, the Israeli army has openly wielded queerness and gender violence interchangeably as weapons. Video of soldiers sexually humiliating and brutalizing Palestinian men has aired on Israeli television, while at least one Israeli soldier sodomized a man to death. As Al-Qaws, a Palestinian LGBT organization has put it, the past year and a half saw the regular outpouring of media of “Israeli soldiers posing with their rainbow flags and other Western gay symbols atop the ruins of our society, alongside genocidaires boasting about their sexual abuse, torture, and rape of Palestinian men, women, and children.” This, in turn, emerges out of years of Israeli policy. This self-proclaimed beacon of gay rights has for years systematically blackmailed queer Palestinians, and sexually tortured the Palestinian prisoners and hostages the state holds at any given time.
As queer people, we must ask ourselves: if the AHA is willing to go so far against their members’ stated beliefs and desires in anticipatory obedience over the potential outcry over us condemning the extermination of queer and trans people in Palestine, what will they do in the face of the powerful anti-trans outrage machine in the United States? Will this council have the moral fortitude to stand with marginalized historians and against American fascism? Will it mobilize any of its millions of dollars in annual revenue and its lobbying arm to protect us? If this vote is any indication, the answer is clearly no. Not unless forced to do so.
A smart, liberal, democratic, member-run organization would be working overtime to seek alternative sources of funding and support, as Trump Administration begins its onslaught against marginalized scholars and people. A courageous organization would support the vast army of precarious, adjunctified workers that sustain our profession. It would use its vast reach and influence in curriculum development to tell stories of Palestinian life, of queer life, of, in short, real history. It would demand more: better history through better working conditions, more funding for the humanities, and clearer ties between history and the present.
Instead historians will remember that in the days before the inauguration of Donald Trump as our President, one of the most powerful and well-respected, not to mention well-resourced, academic organizations in the nation chose anticipatory obedience.
To my fellow queer and trans historians: institutions will not protect us. It is up to us to defend our past and secure our future. There is no pride in genocide and the struggle for Palestinian liberation is ours as well. Join Historians for Palestine and Historians for Peace and Democracy. Organize and fight back.
To the AHA Council: as scholars and moral beings you are clearly incapable facing our historical moment. Fund Palestinian history. Let members vote. Resign.
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The year BDS became the number one concern for American Jews
Posted on December 27, 2014 | Debra Nussbaum Cohen | Haaretz
source
[Note de l’AURDIP] Malgré un parti-pris clairement anti-BDS, cet article du Haaretz illustre le succès du boycott académique dans les campus américains et l’inquiétude qu’il suscite en Israël et parmi ses relais habituels dans les universités.
NEW YORK – This was the year that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement moved to the center of the American Jewish community’s agenda.
While BDS efforts began more than a decade ago and have not reached the level of impact that similar work has in Europe, BDS proponents claim progress.
This academic year “we faced the most organized campaign to demonize Israel and attack pro-Israel students we have ever seen,” wrote Hillel CEO Eric Fingerhut in a Dec. 22nd letter to Hillel International board members. “We were prepared,” he wrote, citing Hillel’s work with nearly 250 campus professionals on communications and other training, and plans to bring many to Israel in January.
The academic sphere is a major focus, with BDS resolutions brought before student governments and graduate student unions, as well as academic associations of college professors. The next attempt will be at the annual conference of the American Historical Association, a 14,000-member group meeting in early January in New York City.
BDS has become a central focus for the organized American Jewish community, which views it as a long-term threat. This year new coalitions were formed and efforts to fight it intensified by countering anti-Israel speakers and events on college campuses with others on the pro-Israel side. A new book of nearly three dozen essays, “The Case Against Academic Boycotts of Israel,” edited by Cary Nelson and Gabriel Noah Brahm, has just been published.
Prompted in part by last summer’s Gaza war, “we certainly did see an increase in anti-Israel activity in the beginning of the semester but simultaneously we’ve seen a dramatic surge in pro-Israel activism. The movement has never been broader, has never been stronger,” said Jacob Baime, executive director of the Israel on Campus Coalition. “We’re tracking at least 4 or 5 pro-Israel events for every anti-Israel event. Pro-Israel activism by far outweighs anti-Israel activity in the aggregate. There are tons of pro-Israel speakers for every anti-Israel speaker” on a campus, he said.
One of the few BDS resolutions to win endorsement in a college system was at the University of California, whose graduate student union members on December 10th approved a resolution that calls on the UC system and United Auto Workers International union “to divest from companies involved in Israeli occupation and apartheid.” The union has 13,000 members working as teaching assistants and tutors on UC’s nine campuses.
Just over half the 2,100 union members who voted personally pledged not to participate in any research, conferences, events or exchange programs sponsored by Israeli universities.
Another was at Chicago’s Catholic DePaul University, where divestment narrowly won a student referendum in May.
A similar measure was rejected in the City University of New York’s graduate student union.
BDS opponents say in the U.S. “the BDS campaign has been a complete failure. They have not really succeeded in convincing anybody except a handful of students and some professors that this in any way will contribute to peace or improving the lot of Palestinians,” said Mitchell Bard, executive director of the Israeli-American Cooperative Enterprise, a group which brings Israeli academics to American campuses.
“When it comes to campuses, the boycott has been a colossal failure,” he said. “There are roughly 2,000 four-year colleges in the U.S., and in the last academic year there were 16 or 17 divestment resolutions and they lost at least 12.”
Andrew Kadi, an IT professional of Palestinian descent in Washington, D.C., is co-chair of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. In an interview, he took issue with Bard’s description. If “this has been a complete failure, then why is so much money being invested in trying to counter it? All of the explicitly Zionist Jewish organizations in the country seem to be investing very heavily in the millions to oppose BDS,” Kadi said.
“I am not going to sit here and try and paint boycott as the greatest victory success of this year. This is a long-term process. It took 10 to 15 years for these type of campaigns to help end apartheid in South Africa, for those campaigns to have an effect at the policy level.”
Kadi acknowledged that BDS has been far more influential in Europe. “In the U.S., he said, “we still have a long ways to go.”
Death by papercuts
American Jewish organizations are shifting strategy in order to make change in the long term, moving toward building relationships with potential partners rather than being reactive when a new BDS initiative emerges.
“All of the leaders of our community believe we have to broaden our efforts. We all believe that this is not just a Jewish issue, but an American issue,” said Baime. “We’re seeing pro-Israel students active in politics making new allies outside the pro-Israel traditional circles.”
The David Project, for instance, is growing a program that this winter break will bring a pro-Israel student and two or three non-Jewish campus leaders they invite on a trip to Israel. This year it involves 32 campuses. Next year, said Philip Brodsky, the group’s executive director, they plan to involve 40.
“The community has gotten more sophisticated in understanding that every fight doesn’t have to be at the nuclear level,” said Bard. “Different tools are needed.”
“There are reasons to be concerned about growing disaffection from Israel, concern that even if today we have support, 10 years down the road we will have a bigger problem,” said Geri Palast, director of the Israel Action Network. Her network, which supports pro-Israel work at Hillels, JCRCs and non-Jewish groups like churches and black and Latino organizations, is a partnership between Jewish Federations of North America and the Jewish Center for Public Affairs and has a $1.5 million annual budget.
A decade from now, “will you have a progressive community in America that is no longer as supportive of Israel as they are today because they’ve grown up in this environment? That’s what you have to think about – not the resolution itself.”
“It’s death by a thousand papercuts,” Bard said. “People seem to feel we need to defeat it everywhere so they don’t gain the foothold or confidence they’ll need to succeed.’
Ethan Felson, vice president of the JCPA, the community relations arm of the organized Jewish community, said there should be a positive focus to anti-BDS efforts. “We’re trying to develop a movement in support of peace embodied in two states for two people, not fighting some bogeyman,” he said.
Felson tracks BDS efforts among Christian churches and said that he anticipates divestment resolutions similar to that passed in June by the Presbyterian Church (USA) to be raised in just about every mainline Protestant denomination in the coming year.
Entry point to academia
BDS proponents say their efforts this year have yielded success.
“BDS efforts have been greatly effective,” said Sydney Levy, advocacy director of Jewish Voice for Peace, which describes itself as part of the BDS movement. The decision of Durham, NC, to drop a $1 million contract with G4S, a multinational security corporation, over the company’s work in Israeli prisons and security checkpoints is one reflection of their success, Levy said.
Another is SodaStream’s decision to move its factory from a West Bank industrial park to a town in southern Israel. The home seltzer-maker manufacturer said in November it was moving for purely commercial reasons. But, Levy told Haaretz, that it is “moving out of a settlement shows the success of the BDS campaign.”
Beyond, perhaps, that instance, the BDS fight is not influencing Israeli policy, said JCPA’s Felson. “Even if Israelis are aware of the BDS movement, it’s not a motivator. Israeli leaders make decisions and Israeli voters make decisions based on far more tangible factors like security, their economic interests and political concerns. They’re inured to international isolation. They’re used to the UN and the EU and this one here and that one there saying they should go away.”
BDS has also not impacted Americans’ views on Israel, as a whole. In focus groups with influential non-Jewish Americans “no one knew what BDS was,” said a source, who did not want to be named. “It consumes a lot of our energy but it doesn’t have much reach. We think the whole world is BDS. It’s not so much.”
One arena in which BDS advocates have been notably successful this year is in academia, where being pro-boycott and divestment has become a near prerequisite for progressive bona fides.
“Our contacts on campuses are extremely alarmed at the way the Palestinian issue is being framed as a kind of entry point for people who want to see themselves as defenders of the downtrodden,” said Gideon Aronoff, CEO of Ameinu, a liberal Zionist organization that started The Third Narrative in 2013. This year TTN launched a forum for academics who oppose both the occupation and boycotts of Israeli universities.
“Its ability to become a sort of huckster for being properly left is very worrisome. When it becomes this kind of ideological signifying issue it loses its ability to be countered with factual arguments. That transition has happened this year,” Aronoff said.
The next battle?
At next month’s conference of the American Historical Association, which has 14,000 members, there will be a roundtable discussion by historians “critical of Israeli policy,” said one of the organizers, Van Gosse, and two resolutions condemning Israel will be raised at the business meeting.
Historians Against The War, a group started in 2003 to oppose the American occupation of Iraq, is trying to put the Israeli occupation on the AHA’s agenda.
Their resolutions reprimand Israel for “acts of violence and intimidation by the State of Israel against Palestinian researchers and their archival collections, acts which can destroy Palestinians’ sense of historical identity as well as the historical record itself,” for “refusing to allow students from Gaza to travel in order to pursue higher education abroad, and even at West Bank universities” and its “policy of denying entry to foreign nationals seeking to promote educational development in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.”
“If you move a large body like the AHA, which has real standing, that changes consciousness and opinion,” said Gosse, associate professor of history at Pennsylvania’s Franklin and Marshall College, and a member of HAW and the AHA. “If we stimulate debate on these issues, that’s what we’re seeking to do,” said Gosse, who has personally donated money to JVP.
The AHA has not addressed international issues in his four years as AHA’s executive director, said Jim Grossman but previously that took a stand on the freedom of scholars in Russia. Grossman declined to share if he is Jewish or pro-Israel, saying, “my views on this are irrelevant. If there are historians whose rights as scholars, whose academic freedom is being constrained then we will speak out on their behalf.”
The AHA would join several other academic associations that have put anti-Israel resolutions on their dockets in the past year, though the AHA is the largest by far. The Middle East Studies Association adopted a policy last month allowing its 2,700 members to boycott Israel. The American Studies Association, with 5,000 members, passed a resolution to boycott Israeli academics and institutions in December 2013, though Israeli scholars were permitted to participate in its conference this year.
The American Anthropological Association rejected an anti-boycott measure at its annual conference last month, instead appointing a task force to bring recommendations to its 2015 conference. The Modern Language Association, which has nearly 24,000 members, rejected an Israel boycott motion at its conference in June.
Some pro-Israel historians members said they are working behind the scenes to try to scuttle boycott efforts at the AHA.
“The notion the AHA will have any effect whatsoever on Israel’s policies in the West Bank or nudging the parties toward negotiations is ridiculous,” David Greenberg told Haaretz. Greenberg is associate professor of history, journalism and media studies at N.J.’s Rutgers University. “There is a worldwide campaign of delegitimization of Israel. Every little piece makes a difference. In and of itself it’s not important but insofar that it contributes to the idea that Israel should be a pariah state it’s a bad thing. It’s bad for the AHA, it alienates Jewish members and creates divisions.”
Young scholars’ views on BDS can threaten their career prospects, he said.
“People who are even mildly supportive of Israel are in kind of a delicate position in academia. If you’re a graduate student or junior untenured professor you’re really fighting a strong anti-Israel climate in a lot of departments and your future could be on the line,” said Greenberg. “It’s no secret that there are almost no conservatives in the historical profession. Support for Israel has become equated with the conservative position. Anyone remotely supportive of Israel faces the legitimate worry that they will suffer as a result.”
“You should be able to say that I’m a Zionist and still get tenure and people shouldn’t care. It shouldn’t impinge on judgments of your scholarship. But it does.”
israel-academia-monitor.com 