[Our email of earlier today was in error regarding the action of the Modern Language Association’s Executive Council, which has forwarded to their membership the Resolution Opposing Attacks on Core Principles of Education for discussion and a vote at the 2026 Delegate Assembly meeting. We regret this unfortunate mistake.]
Dear HPAD members,
We are writing to you in surprise and with dismay. The AHA Council has refused to place on the agenda of the January 10, 2026 Business Meeting our Resolution in Solidarity with Gaza and our Resolution Opposing Attacks on Core Principles of Education, despite being initially told that they met all of the conditions specified in the Association’s bylaws. The Council did not explain why they intend to bar the resolutions from being voted on. They only issued a public statement, citing the organization’s mission, fiduciary responsibility, and legal obligations, without offering any specific examples of how our resolutions contravened those constraints.
At several points this fall, HPAD’s Co-Chairs were approached by AHA President Ben Vinson and Executive Director Sarah Weicksel, who indicated they intended to set up committees addressing concerns expressed in the two resolutions, and asking us to withdraw them. Indeed, in November, we had a productive conversation about who might serve on these committees. At no point did they suggest that Council might bar debate and voting on the resolutions if they were not withdrawn. After discussion, including with key allies, our Steering Committee wrote to the AHA leaders on November 19 and explained why withdrawing the resolutions was neither feasible nor desirable.
By refusing to allow open discussion of the resolution dealing with scholasticide in Gaza or of the resolution dealing with academic freedom, free speech, and the weaponization of antisemitism, the AHA Council is repeating its earlier rejection of a similar Resolution to Oppose Scholasticide in Gaza that was passed by 82 percent of the over 500 members who attended last January’s Business Meeting. The Council did not then circulate the resolution to the membership for a vote, as has been done previously in similar circumstances; nor did it respond to a petition signed 1,882 historians and history educators, asking the Council to reconsider that decision. Now, by refusing to even allow a debate about the resolutions opposing the current attack on all of higher education and scholasticide in Gaza, it has gone further down the anti-democratic road. Such actions ignore the sentiments of AHA members and violate democratic procedures.
Unfortunately, the AHA Council is not an outlier here. Its behavior is part of a broader pattern of collaboration by other disciplinary organizations and educational institutions with the wave of authoritarianism currently threatening U.S. higher education and our entire polity; the American Public Health Association has actually expelled an individual member because of that scholar’s support for Palestine.
Nonetheless, the AHA has taken certain actions since the inauguration of the current Trump administration on January 20 of this year that we applaud. It has spoken out against the firing of individual tenured historians and joined other disciplinary organizations in a law suit against cuts to the NEH. It has also contested state level history standards and urged its members to speak out against visa restrictions for scholars. It has set up a vaguely defined Ad hoc Committee to aid Palestine historians and an Ad hoc Committee on Academic Freedom.
Thus, we find it inexplicable that the Council refuses to allow AHA’s members to debate and vote on a general statement defending free speech, academic freedom, and shared governance, or allow open discussion about scholasticide in Gaza. What dangers are the AHA’s Council trying to fend off? Is this simply a case of anticipatory obedience or have outside pressures influenced the decision?
HPAD, as well as the Palestinian Historians Group and Historians for Palestine, plan to challenge the Council’s undemocratic actions at the business meeting on January 10, at 5:15 pm.
If you are planning to attend the AHA conference in Chicago, we urge you to come to the business meeting and support our challenge. We need the largest possible turn-out of supporters at the Business Meeting. Please use this form to let us know!
In solidarity,
The Steering Committee of HPAD (Marc Becker, Carolyn Eisenberg, Van Gosse, Mary Nolan, Jim O’Brien, Prasannan Parthasarathi, Margaret Power, Ellen Schrecker, Barbara Weinstein, Kevin Young)
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The Constitution and Bylaws of the AHA state in Article VII: Business Meeting that resolutions meeting the criteria for submission will be placed on the agenda. Following submission by the deadline on September 30, the AHA staff wrote us on October 2 that “both resolutions have the requisite number of member signatures to be placed on the business meeting agenda at the annual meeting in January. The resolutions will be posted on the AHA website as part of the November issue of Perspectives on History.” Yet, they were not posted.