News & Advocacy
News
The latest activity of the AHA and historians in supporting history and historical thinking.
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AHA Member Interviewed in IGN about Using Video Games to Teach History (March 2024)
Mar 18, 2024 -AHA member Tore Olsson (Univ. of Tennessee) was interviewed by Wesley Yin-Poole for IGN about his use of the video game Red Dead Redemption as a teaching tool in his American history classes. “[H]istorians, we use pop culture all the time. We use film and literature and TV series, but a lot of historians have been reluctant to engage video games for various reasons. And I decided, well, no, I want to take this medium seriously, because it’s so dominant,” Olsson said. “Video games are so powerful at instilling that curiosity and passion in people. The games themselves usually can’t provide the full story, but they can at least get people fascinated and interested in learning more about it.” Olsson also wrote about teaching with video games in the December 2023 issue of the American Historical Review.
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AHA Letter Opposing Iowa Education Bill Featured in Media Coverage (March 2024)
Mar 15, 2024 -The AHA’s letter opposing HF 2544, a bill that “directly encroaches on the authority and expertise of the members of the Iowa State Board of Education,” was featured in local and general news coverage of the legislation. “If enacted, this measure would disrupt the implementation of Iowa’s current academic standards. The result is likely to disorient Iowa teachers and do a disservice to Iowa students, all while elbowing Iowans out of their own educational policymaking,” the Gazette quoted. The letter was also referenced by Bleeding Heartland and BNN.
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TIME Publishes Article by AHA Researchers and Executive Director on K–12 Instruction and the ‘History Wars’
Mar 14, 2024 -AHA researchers Nicholas Kryczka, Whitney E. Barringer, and Scot McFarlane, along with executive director Jim Grossman, wrote an article for TIME discussing the findings of the research team’s Mapping the Landscape of Secondary US History Education project, a two-year initiative investigating how social studies is being taught in K–12 classrooms. “The typical American history classroom is neither awash in white supremacy nor awoke with critical race theory,” they wrote. “Politically motivated activists may be waging a history war, but teachers are not its warriors.”
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AHA Sends Letter of Concern about Missing Chinese Scholar (March 2024)
Mar 12, 2024 -The AHA has sent a letter to President Xi Jinping of the People’s Republic of China expressing “concern for the fate of Professor Rahile Dawut, a scholar of Uyghur studies who has apparently been sentenced to life in prison and whose specific whereabouts are unknown.” Professor Dawut, missing since 2018, has “been detained and sentenced in connection with her peaceful exercise of the right to academic freedom” in a situation that, in addition to raising concern for Dawut’s well-being, “raises questions about the ability of intellectuals in China generally to conduct scholarship safely and freely.” The AHA urges President Xi to secure Professor Dawut’s immediate and unconditional release.
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AHA Member Authors Book on Alexander Hamilton’s Old Harlem Neighborhood (March 2024)
Mar 01, 2024 -AHA member Davida Siwisa James has authored Hamilton Heights and Sugar Hill (Fordham Univ. Press), which traces four centuries of the West Harlem neighborhood where Alexander Hamilton built his home in 1802. The book recounts the landmark architecture, Harlem Renaissance gatherings, and many luminaries who lived there. Untapped New York Insiders will host Siwisa James’ Virtual Book Launch on March 27.
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AHA Member Awarded the Lewis Mumford Prize for Best Book in Planning History (March 2024)
Mar 01, 2024 -Congratulations to AHA member Mike Amezcua (Georgetown Univ.), who has been awarded the Lewis Mumford Prize by the Society for American City and Regional Planning History (SACRPH) for his book, Making Mexican Chicago: From Postwar Settlement to the Age of Gentrification (Chicago Univ. Press). The Mumford Prize is awarded biennially to “the best book on American city and regional planning history.”
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AHA Members Awarded 2024 ACLS HBCU Faculty Fellowships and Grants (February 2024)
Mar 01, 2024 -Congratulations to AHA members Ana Lucia Araujo (Howard Univ.), Karen Cook Bell (Bowie State Univ.), Yinghong Cheng (Delaware State Univ.), Frederick Knight (Morehouse Coll.), Danielle E. St. Julien (Xavier Univ., La.), and Darius J. Young (Florida A&M Univ.), as well as the other historians who were named as recipients of 2024 ACLS HBCU Faculty Fellowships and Grants.
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AHA Member Featured in Article about National Parks Tribal Liaisons (March 2024)
Mar 01, 2024 -AHA member Jason Herbert was featured in an article from ABC 7 Denver about the work that US Forest Service tribal liaisons are doing to“bridge the gap between the federal government and Indigenous communities through the work of tribal liaisons.” “I felt like I owed tribes my due diligence to come out here and learn these landscapes that they call home,” said Herbert, named the first tribal liaison for the Pike-San Isabel National Forests & Cimarron and Comanche National Grasslands region in June 2023. “I want to make sure that tribal voices are being heard within our national forest system.”
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AHA Members Named to Brennan Center Historians Council on the Constitution (March 2024)
Mar 01, 2024 -Thirteen AHA members were recently named to the Historians Council on the Constitution, a new initiative from the Brennan Center for Justice which“seeks to address the misuse of history in major constitutional debates.” As part of the Council’s work, Alexander Keyssar (Harvard Univ.) co-wrote an article about constitutional originalism and history; Gautham Rao (American Univ.) co-wrote an article about corporations misusing history in Supreme Court cases; Holly Brewer (Univ. of Maryland) and Rosemarie Zagarri (George Mason Univ.) participated in a Q&A on the historical dimensions of Trump’s criminal immunity defense, and Brewer served on the panel for a virtual event on the same topic.
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Coalition of Organizations Submit Letter Opposing Florida SB 1372 (February 2024)
Feb 29, 2024 -The AHA, as part of a nonpartisan coalition of organizations, has signed on to a letter opposing Florida SB 1372, which would threaten the integrity of K–12 history education in the state. This statement expresses “serious concerns that the bill is not constitutionally viable, is overly vague, and is an example of viewpoint discrimination that is contrary to free speech and expression. . . . This bill could create a new generation of history teachers who are unsure how to teach material about slavery, the Civil Rights Movement, or women’s suffrage.”
Advocacy
The AHA is part of the National Coalition for History, a consortium of over 50 organizations that advocates on federal, state and local legislative and regulatory issues. The NCH has compiled a list of advocacy issues most relevant to the study of history, as well as a list of resources to assist historians in their advocacy work.