Confronting the Palestine Exception of the American Historical Association
Juan Cole 07/06/2026
Statement by US Scholars Speak:
Amid pivotal elections underway, a growing coalition of historians are demanding accountability for war crimes in Gaza and election interference at the oldest historical association in the United States.
Preface
The American Historical Association (AHA) was founded in 1884, a time of continuing dispossession, displacement, and assault on Indigenous peoples; systematic discrimination and violence targeting Black, immigrant, and other marginalized communities; and when women were denied the right to vote. The early AHA was often complicit in such exclusionary practices, with non-US and non-European histories relegated to the association’s sidelines. Thanks to the intergenerational struggle of students and scholars to hold the AHA accountable to higher standards, the association has come a long way since. In recognition of that continuing struggle at the AHA in its 142nd year, the first 142 historians to endorse our statement below are listed at the bottom of this page. US Scholars Speak strongly encourages all AHA members to Vote in the AHA Elections currently underway (closes July 15, 2026).
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STATEMENT
In January 2007, the American Historical Association (AHA) approved an official statement of enduring significance to all AHA members entitled Guiding Principles on Taking a Public Stance. “In a wide range of situations,” the statement declares, “the AHA has the responsibility to take public stands.” Among the foremost examples given are “When public or private authorities, in the United States or elsewhere, threaten the preservation of or free access to historical sources.”
Over the past two years, the majority of the AHA’s sixteen-member Council (and in 2026 its smaller six-person Executive Committee) has utterly failed to uphold this responsibility with regard to events in Gaza. Furthermore, it has undermined its own democratic principles in its exceptionalist treatment of the Resolution to Oppose Scholasticide in Gaza, and most recently, in its attempts to cast a shadow over the candidacy of some of the resolution’s many supporters to positions of institutional responsibility.
We, the undersigned historians and historical practitioners, write to urge the AHA’s membership to vote their consciences in this year’s elections and hold the association accountable to higher standards than its leadership has demonstrated in confronting one of thegravest moral challenges of our time.
Background: The AHA on genocide and scholasticide
The AHA Council has itself recognized that “Numerous AHA members as well as international humanitarian and human rights groups have concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.” It is not our task to restate that case in any detail here. The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) has already done so in an August 2025 resolutionoverwhelmingly backed by participating members (and, notably, not vetoed by its Executive Board), which concluded that the Israeli government’s conduct in Gaza meets the legal definition of genocide under the 1948 UN Convention. We note the IAGS resolution and similar authoritative studies by experts dispel the Netanyahu administration’s repeated genocide denials, including its feeble claims to necessity or self-defense; professed aversion to harming Palestinian civilians; or stated goal of rescuing Israeli hostages taken in the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks.
US supplied and replenished the majority of Israel’s arsenal, provided extensive intelligence, strategic, and auxiliary support, and offered repeated political and diplomatic cover to the Netanyahu government (including vetoing UN Security Council resolutions condemning Israel’s conduct), these charges of genocide are directly and profoundly relevant for an association of American scholars and educators. Yet the AHA Council has failed to put forward a single resolution or statement of its own condemning an ongoing genocide in Gaza. In still more concerning moves, the Council has now twice vetoed resolutions passed by AHA members that condemn a war crime of special concern to educators: scholasticide, defined by the UN as the systemic obliteration of a society’s institutions of learning through the arrest, detention or killing of teachers, students, and staff and the destruction of educational infrastructure. As AHA members are well aware, over the past two years a Resolution to Oppose Scholasticide in Gaza has been proposed by fellow members, first by the AHA affiliate society Historians for Peace and Democracy (HPAD) in 2025, and then by a coalition of scholars including HPAD, the Palestinian Historians Group, and Historians for Palestine (H4P). The resolution was overwhelmingly endorsed at AHA business meetings in January 2025 (by 82% of attendees) and again in January 2026 (by 79% of attendees). The Council’s successive vetoes–issued by most but not all of its 16 members–and its refusal to let the general membership even to vote on the resolution therefore represented both an overturning of its own democratic processes and a unilateral declaration of institutional priorities directly at odds with the clearly expressed positions of voting members.
Unfortunately, this was not the end of its deeply troubling interventions.
Today: Institutional interference in the 2026 AHA elections
On May 26, 2026, the Executive Committee–six officers consisting of the AHA’s Past President, Current President, and President-Elect, plus three Vice Presidents–issued an unprecedented message to the entire AHA membership on the eve of the association’s elections scheduled for June 1–July 15. First, the Executive Committee justified the Council’s aforementioned vetoes by claiming that the Scholasticide resolution “would have bound the AHA to actions, language, and commitments that lay outside our congressionally chartered mission and would have jeopardized our nonprofit and nonpartisan status.” It then made the prejudicial decision of “alerting” voters to the “implications” of electing some candidates—specifically those nominated by a HPAD petition in partnership with the Palestinian Historians Group and H4P, an entirely proper path to the ballot per the AHA’s own bylaws and procedures. In explaining its vetoes and defending its interference in the 2026 electoral process, the Executive Committee wholly failed to make a convincing case.
We wish to briefly remind our readers of some basic facts compelling the Resolution to Oppose Scholasticide. In September 2025, the US humanitarian agency Save the Children concluded that Israeli forces had killed over 20,000 Palestinian children in Gaza since late 2023. In the same month, the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities reported at least 21,000 Palestinian children were left permanently disabled by Israeli attacks in the territory. During the same period, as documented by numerous witnesses and detailed in the resolution, the Israeli military razed every one of Gaza’s 12 universities and more than 90 percent of its schools, leaving at least 625,000 children with no educational access. In addition, Israeli forces have destroyed nearly all Palestinian archives, libraries, museums, cultural centers and bookstores in the territory, including 195 heritage sites, 230 mosques and churches, and the unparalleled al-Aqsa University library, which preserved critical manuscripts, records, and other valuable materials related to the history and culture of Gaza and Palestine more broadly. In the face of such catastrophic violence and destruction—carried out with US weapons and political support—we might well ask: Why exactly is a resolution condemning Israeli violence in Gaza, calling for a permanent ceasefire, and forming a committee to assist in rebuilding Gaza’s educational infrastructure beyond the AHA’s mission of “defending the rights of historians to research and teach honest, expert history”?
The Council’s successive vetoes of the Gaza resolutions, and its subsequent attempts to defend those vetoes, are utterly inconsistent with the AHA’s Guiding Principles on Taking a Public Stance cited at the opening of this essay. They also illustrate a glaring double standard when set alongside past statements issued by the Counciland grounded in the same moral and professional commitment to protect historians and historical sources. Among these were the AHA Council’s decisions to “strongly condemn” a Polish law criminalizing public discussion of Polish complicity in Nazi war crimes (February 2018) and to “condemn in the strongest possible terms” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (February 2022). Even closer to home, the same moral commitment led the AHA to condemn the US war in Iraq and “war on terror” in its landmark Resolution on US Government Practices Inimical to the Values of the Historical Profession (March 2007). The latter urged all AHA members to “take a public stand as citizens on behalf of the values necessary to the practice of our profession”; to condemn “interrogation techniques at Guantanamo, Abu-Ghraib, Bagram, and other locations incompatible with respect for the dignity of all persons”; and to “do whatever they can to bring the Iraq war to a speedy conclusion” – positions that surely also require a public reckoning with the US-abetted devastation of Gaza. Nothing in the AHA’s charter, then, precludes using the association’s authority publicly to comment on questions of overriding moral and professional concern. Why is the destruction of Palestinian lives, historical sites, and educational infrastructure deemed less worthy of censure?
The Executive Committee’s actions with respect to the current AHA elections are still more disturbing. In the first instance, its decision to use its institutional resources and official voice to warn against particular candidates running in a procedurally sound election is reprehensible, akin to an incumbent administration making use of public resources to distribute campaign materials against its opponents. Adding insult to injury, the Executive Committee’s commentary, in which it compares itself to the American Red Cross and likens HPAD to the National Rifle Association, is, to say the least, offensive and in poor taste. If it is interested in aligning with humanitarian actors, we respectfully urge our current Executive Committee to watch The Voice of Hind Rajab (2025), an Oscar-nominated film about the work of the Palestinian Red Crescent—sister organization to the American Red Cross—in Gaza over the past three years.
Photo of Gaza 2025 by Mohammed Ibrahim on Unsplash
Voting (y)our conscience: The AHA Democracy Slate
To our colleagues citing the Trump administration’s attack on U.S. universities and honest history as an institutional priority: we honor that struggle and also note that the 2026 Democracy Slate endorsed by HPAD, H4P, and the Palestinian Historians Group are entirely supportive of the AHA Council’s efforts in this domain, including the lawsuit to restore NEH funding led by the ACLS. As should be clear by now, this is a group of academics unwilling to self-censor, concede fundamental ethical principles, or capitulate to intimidation of any kind.
As for the Executive Committee’s dubious claims that the Resolution to Oppose Scholasticide contributes to “internal infighting” or somehow weakens resolve against federal threats to our profession: we refuse to accept such a devil’s bargain, with its implication that Palestinian lives and history must be sacrificed in the name of immediate political expediency and to individual and institutional comfort. Indeed, we are appalled by the Executive Committee’s recent actions, which appear designed to sidestep a basic moral and professional imperative that should guide all historians witnessing acts of genocide and scholasticide: to oppose such brutality and historical destruction as vigorously as possible.
Unless the current AHA Executive Committee is claiming itself as an independent authority on genocide, it would do well to heed the world’s leading experts on the subject, including the International Association of Genocide Scholars and the UN Human Rights Council. At the very least, it must refrain from disparaging principled opposition to genocide and scholasticide in Gaza as “political”, “aggressive”, or “antagonistic,” as it did on the eve of AHA elections currently underway. In doing so, the Executive Committee has not only publicly associated the AHA with a craven institutional silence on a genocide and scholasticide unfolding in real time, but has also actively suppressed and obstructed an academic and democratic movement for accountability. For all these reasons, the AHA Executive Committee owes the Palestinian Historians Group, HPAD, and the entire AHA membership—so many of whom clearly understand the moral stakes of this moment—a public apology and a restatement of its commitments to both a genuinely democratic electoral process and a clear moral stance against genocide and scholasticide.
Five-year old Hind Rajab and 20,000 other Palestinian children like her are dead. Every university in Gaza has been flattened; hundreds of schools, archives, and libraries have been burned to the ground. But by demanding real accountability from our leaders and ourselves, we can help save Palestinian lives, educational institutions, and historical sources that have survived and endured against seemingly insurmountable odds, and despite the unforgivable silence of the American Historical Association to date. At risk now are not only the Palestinian people and Gaza’s history—and those are stakes high enough—but the AHA’s integrity as a professional and historical association.
END OF STATEMENT
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HISTORIANS: TO SIGN THIS STATEMENT, CLICK HERE
SIGNATORIES
In alphabetical order, with affiliations for identification only. All sign as individuals and not as representatives of any university, department, or administrative position.
Osama W. Abi-Mershed, Associate Professor of History, Georgetown University
Ervand Abrahamian, Professor Emeritus of History, City University of New York
Ziad Abu-Rish, Associate Professor of Human Rights and Middle Eastern Studies, Bard College
Greg Afinogenov, Associate Professor of History, Georgetown University
Faiz Ahmed, Joukowsky Family Distinguished Associate Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History, Brown University
Leslie M. Alexander, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of History, Department of History, Rutgers University
Ali Anooshahr, Professor of History, University of California, Davis
Zayde Antrim, Professor of History and International Studies, Trinity College
Beth Baron, Distinguished Professor of History, City College and Graduate Center, City University of New York
Yesenia Barragan, Associate Professor of History, Rutgers University-New Brunswick
Omer Bartov, Dean’s Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Brown University
Joel Beinin, Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History and Professor of Middle East History, Emeritus, Stanford University
Arbella Bet-Shlimon, Associate Professor of History, University of Washington
Houri Berberian, Chancellor’s Professor of History, University of California, Irvine
Juan Cobo Betancourt, Associate Professor of History, University of California, Santa Barbara
Martha Biondi, Professor of Black Studies and History, Northwestern University
Fahad Ahmad Bishara, Associate Professor of History, University of Virginia
Palmira Brummett, Professor of History, Emerita, University of Tennessee
Rosie Bsheer, Frederick S. Danziger Associate Professor of History, Harvard University
Holly Case, Professor of History, Brown University
Caroline Castiglione, Professor of Italian Studies and History, Brown University
Verónica Castillo-Muñoz, Associate Professor of History, University of California, Santa Barbara
Sidney Chalhoub, Professor of History and of African and African American Studies, Harvard University
Miroslava Chávez-García, Professor of History, University of California, Santa Barbara
Utathya Chattopadhyaya, Associate Professor of History, University of California, Santa Barbara
Juan Cole, Richard P. Mitchell Distinguished University Professor of History, University of Michigan
Belinda Davis, Professor of History, Rutgers University, New Brunswick
Corrie Decker, Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, University of California, Davis
Lauren (Robin) Derby, Professor of History, University of California, Los Angeles
Jennifer L. Derr, Associate Professor of History, University of California, Santa Cruz
Alan Shane Dillingham, Associate Professor of History, School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, Arizona State University
Beshara Doumani, Professor of History and Mahmud Darwish Professor of Palestinian Studies, Brown University
Theodora Dryer, Historian, New York University
Esmat Elhalaby, Assistant Professor of Transnational History, University of Toronto
Ahmed El Shamsy, Professor, University of Chicago
Betsy Esch, Associate Professor, American Studies, University of Kansas
Khaled Fahmy, Professor of History and Edward Keller Professor of North Africa and the Middle East, Tufts University
Aria Fani, Associate Professor, Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Professorship in Persian and Iranian Studies, University of Washington
Stacy D. Fahrenthold, Professor of History and Middle East/South Asia Studies, University of California, Davis
Melissa Feinberg, Professor of History, Rutgers University
Heather Ferguson, Associate Professor of History, Claremont McKenna College
Joan Flores-Villalobos, Associate Professor of History, University of Southern California
Cecilia Méndez Gastelumendi, Professor of History, University of California, Santa Barbara
Linda Gordon, University Professor of History and the Humanities, NYU
Karen Graubart, Professor of History, University of Notre Dame
Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky, Associate Professor of Global Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
Françoise Hamlin, Associate Professor of History & Africana Studies, Brown University
Shah Mahmoud Hanifi, Professor of History, James Madison University
Will Hanley, Associate Professor of History, Florida State University
Huricihan Islamoglu, Professor of Economic History, Boğaziçi University
Samantha Iyer, Associate Professor of History, Fordham University
Maurice Jackson, Professor of History and Black Studies, Georgetown University
Aaron Jakes, Associate Professor of History, University of Chicago
Michael R. Jin, Associate Professor of Global Asian Studies and History, University of Illinois Chicago
Gaye Theresa Johnson, Associate Professor of Black Studies and Director, UCSB Blum Center on Poverty, Inequality, and Democracy
Walter Johnson, Winthrop Professor of History and Professor of African and African American Studies, Harvard University
Toby C. Jones, Associate Professor of History, Rutgers University-New Brunswick
Moon-Ho Jung, Professor of History, University of Washington
Hilary Kalisman, Associate Professor of History and Endowed Professor of Israel/Palestine Studies at the Program in Jewish Studies, University of Colorado Boulder
Temma Kaplan Distinguished, Professor of History, Emerita, Rutgers University
Rebecca E. Karl, Professor of History, New York University
Robin D. G. Kelley, Distinguished Professor of History and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History, UCLA
Kevin Kenny, Professor of History, NYU
Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor Emeritus of Modern Arab Studies, Columbia University
Osamah Khalil, Professor of History, Syracuse University, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs
Akram Khater, Khayrallah Distinguished Professor of Lebanese Diaspora Studies, North Carolina State University
Arash Khazeni, Professor of History, Pomona College
Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, Associate Professor of History, Northeastern University
Monica Kim, Associate Professor of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Roger Kittleson, Professor of History, Williams College
Shira Klein, Associate Professor of History, Chapman University
Karen Kupperman, Silver Professor of History Emerita, New York University
Scott Laderman, Professor of History, University of Minnesota, Duluth
Brian Lander, Associate Professor of History and Environment and Society, Brown University
Dennis Laumann, Professor of African and African Diasporic History, University of Memphis
Andrew H. Lee, Historian, Author, and Curator Emeritus, New York University
Jacob F. Lee, Associate Professor of History, Penn State University
Zachary Lockman, Professor of History, New York University
Ussama Makdisi, Professor of History and Chancellor’s Chair, University of California, Berkeley
Sean L. Malloy, Professor of History and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, UC Merced
Maddalena Marinari, Professor of History and Dorothy Peterson, Mildred Peterson Hanson, and Arthur Jennings Hanson Endowed Professor of Liberal Studies, Gustavus Adolphus College
Katherine Marino, Associate Professor of History, UCLA
Afshin Matin-asgari, Professor of History, Cal State University, Los Angeles
José Juan Pérez Meléndez, Associate Professor of History, University of California, Davis
James Millward, Professor of Inter-Societal History, Georgetown University
Mostafa Minawi, Professor of History, Cornell University
Farina Mir, Professor of History and Honors, and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, University of Michigan
Susan Morrissey, Professor of History, University of California, Irvine
Dirk Moses, Spitzer Professor of International Relations, City College of New York
Elias Muhanna, Associate Professor of History and Comparative Literature, Brown University
Stephennie Mulder, Associate Professor, Department of Art and Art History, University of Texas at Austin
Maha Nassar, Associate Professor of Modern Middle East History and Islamic Studies, University of Arizona
Rebecca Nedostup, Associate Professor of History and East Asian Studies, Brown University
Golnar Nikpour, Associate Professor of History, Dartmouth College
Mary Nolan, Professor of History emerita, New York University
Elizabeth O’Brien, Associate Professor of History, UCLA
Alice O’Connor, Professor of History, University of California, Santa Barbara
Annelise Orleck, Professor of History, Dartmouth College
Emily Owens, Associate Professor of History, Brown University
A. Naomi Paik, Associate Professor of Global Asian Studies and Criminology, Law and Justice, University of Illinois Chicago
Kim Phillips-Fein, Professor of History, Columbia University
Margaret Power, Professor of History Emeritus, Illinois Institute of Technology
Teresa Prados-Torreira, Professor of History, Columbia College Chicago
Mezna Qato, Margaret Anstee Fellow, Newnham College, University of Cambridge
Erika Rappaport, Professor of History, University of California, Santa Barbara
Paul Renfro, Professor of History-Aug 2026, Florida State University
Laura Robson, Elihu Professor of Global Affairs and History, Yale University
Daniel A. Rodríguez, Associate Professor of History, Brown University
David Roediger, Foundation Distinguished Professor, Department of History, University of Kansas
Ellen Ross, Professor of History Emerita, Ramapo College of New Jersey
Doug Rossinow, Professor, Department of Ethnic, Gender, Historical, and Philosophical Studies, Metro State University
Jasamin Rostam-Kolayi, Professor of History, California State University Fullerton
Adam Sabra, Professor of History, University of California, Santa Barbara
Dana Sajdi, Associate Professor of History, Boston College
Tomás F. Summers Sandoval Jr., Professor of History & Latinx Studies, Pomona College
Andrew Sartori, Professor of History, New York University
Daniel Segal, Jean M. Pitzer Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Professor Emeritus of History, Pitzer College of the Claremont Colleges
Raz Segal, Associate Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies and Endowed Professor in the Study of Modern Genocide, Stockton University
Sherene Seikaly, Associate Professor of History, University of California, Santa Barbara
Jennifer D. Selwyn, PhD, Retired History Lecturer, California State University, Sacramento and Portland State University
Elyse Semerdjian, Professor of History, Clark University
Mitra Sharafi, Evjue-Bascom Professor, University of Wisconsin Law School
Naoko Shibusawa, Associate Professor of History, Brown University
Ahmad Shokr, Associate Professor of History, Swarthmore College
Joel Sipress, Professor of History, University of Wisconsin-Superior
Dale J. Stahl, Associate Professor of History, University of Colorado Denver
Andrea Stanton, Professor of Islamic Studies, University of Denver
Lior Sternfeld, Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies, Penn State University
Baki Tezcan, Professor of History, University of California, Davis
Barry Trachtenberg, Rubin Presidential Chair of Jewish History, Wake Forest University
Judith E. Tucker, Professor of History Emerita, Georgetown University
Aro Velmet, Associate Professor of History, University of Southern California
Pamela Voekel, Associate Professor of History, Dartmouth College
Karine Walther, Associate Professor of History, Georgetown University-Qatar
Barbara Weinstein, Silver Professor of History, New York University
Kirsten Weld, Professor of History, Harvard University
Michael O. West, Professor of African American Studies, History, and African Studies, Penn State University
John M. Willis, Associate Professor of History, University of Colorado, Boulder
Gabriel Winant, Associate Professor of History and the College, University of Chicago
Jonathan Wyrtzen, Professor of History, Yale University
David Yaghoubian, Professor of History, California State University, San Bernardino
Mir Yarfitz, Associate Professor of History and Affiliated Faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Wake Forest University
The 142+
Having briskly surpassed our initial goal of signatories, colleagues still wishing to sign are urged to do so and shall be added below in alphabetical order. Last updated July 5, 2026
Mustafa Aksakal, Associate Professor of History, Georgetown University
Andrew Arsan, Professor of Arab and Global History, University of Cambridge
Nadim Bawalsa, PhD, New York University, and Editor, Institute for Palestine Studies, Washington DC
Faisal Chaudhry, Assistant Professor of Law and History, University of Massachusetts
Shannan Clark, Associate Professor of History, Montclair State University
Joshua Donovan, Instructor of History and Social Science, Phillips Academy
Julia Gettle, Lecturer, New Mexico State University
April Haynes, Professor of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Christina Heatherton, Associate Professor of American Studies, Everett and Joanne Elting Associate Professor for Human Rights and Global Citizenship, Trinity College
Adnan A. Husain, Associate Professor of Medieval Mediterranean and Islamicate World History, Queen’s University (Ontario)
Kimberly Katz, Professor of Middle East History, Towson University
Sam Klug, Assistant Teaching Professor of History, Loyola University Maryland
Elaine LaFay, Assistant Professor of History, Rutgers University-New Brunswick
Priya Lal, Associate Professor of History, Boston College
Crystal Luo, Assistant Professor of Asian American History, Georgetown University
Edward Miller, Associate Professor of History and Asian Studies, Dartmouth College
Aseel Najib, Assistant Professor of History, Dartmouth College
Alan Parkes, Assistant Professor of History, Longwood University
Samantha Payne, Assistant Professor of History, University of Chicago
L.H. Roper, SUNY Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus, State University of New York–New Paltz
Louis Segal, PhD in History alum, University of California, Davis and Adjunct Instructor in Latin American History
Zach Sell, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies, University of Notre Dame
Lauren Lassabe Shepherd, Independent Historian
Asheesh Kapur Siddique, Associate Professor of History, University of Massachusetts-Amherst
Ula Taylor, Professor of African American Studies & African Diaspora Studies, University of California, Berkeley
Murat C Yildiz, Associate Professor of History, Skidmore College
Alden Young, Associate Professor of History and Global Affairs, Yale University
Vazira Zamindar, Associate Professor of History, Brown University
And growing..