American Historical Association Leadership Vetoes Anti-Israel Resolutions Brought by Members
“Approving [the resolutions] on behalf of the entire association would present institutional risk and have long-term implications for the discipline and the organization”
This is the second time they have had to do this, and it probably won’t be the last.
The College Fix reports:
Historian group again vetoes anti-Israel resolutions
The American Historical Association’s leadership again vetoed anti-Israel resolutions brought by its members.
Over the weekend, historians met in Chicago for the annual conference of the academic group. As like last year, they passed resolutions condemning Israel and asking the association to take an official stance.
“The first resolution criticized what it characterized as intentional ‘scholasticide’ in Gaza, where most of the educational system, including all 12 universities, has been damaged or destroyed,” the New York Times reported. “The second condemned ongoing attacks on academic freedom at American universities, including the silencing of protest against ‘the U.S.-sponsored genocide perpetrated by Israel in Gaza.’”
“Both resolutions passed with nearly 80 percent support from the roughly 360 members who attended the vote, held on Saturday during the group’s annual conference in Chicago,” the newspaper reported. “But on Sunday the 16 voting members of the executive council voted not to pass them on to the full membership of roughly 11,000 for final consideration.”
A similar situation played out last year, when leadership rejected a “scholasticide” resolution for the same reasons, arguing it was improper for the association to take a political stance.
“Approving [the resolutions] on behalf of the entire association would present institutional risk and have long-term implications for the discipline and the organization,” the executive leadership stated this year.
New School historian Natalie Petrzela again raised concerns that such a resolution would lead to increased scrutiny from the Trump administration, an objection she raised in 2025 as well.
“History is under assault right now,” Petrzela told the New York Times. “Pushing the pre-eminent organization of historians to take an overtly political stance only serves to divide the organization and also to jeopardize its reputation as a place for nonpartisan historical inquiry.”
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look at its people:
https://www.historians.org/membership/
These activist historians are not very good historians if they cannot report the conflict in a historically accurate way. They rely on Hamas for casualty figures.
Such nonsense often results from the disparity between general voting membership verses the less numerous activists who are motivated to pack any in person assemblies. Elected leadership usually tries to look out for the welfare of the organization, whereas the conference attendees are mostly there to express their prejudices. If they prevail, then it alienates many of the general membership, who then abandon the society, leaving it open to further exploitation by the political ideologues who eventually destroy it. This cycle is playing out in numerous other professional groups, including my own American Psychiatric Association.