News & Advocacy
News
The latest activity of the AHA and historians in supporting history and historical thinking.
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AHA Letter to Museum of the American Revolution Featured in Media Coverage of Moms for Liberty Event (June 2023)
Jun 28, 2023 -The AHA’s letter to the Museum of the American Revolution has been featured in media coverage of opposition to the museum‘s decision to rent event space to Moms for Liberty, an organization “whose mission is to obstruct the professional responsibilities of historians.” The letter was referenced in articles from the 74, Alternet, Arkansas Times, The Guardian, New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Slate, and York Dispatch.
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AHA Member Awarded 2023 Stuart L. Bernath Scholarly Article Prize for American Historical Review Article (June 2023)
Jun 27, 2023 -Congratulations to AHA member Emilie Connolly (Brandeis Univ.), who was awarded the 2023 Stuart L. Bernath Scholarly Article Prize for her article “Fiduciary Colonialism: Annuities and Native Dispossession in the Early United States,” which was published in the March 2022 issue of the American Historical Review. The Bernath Scholarly Article Prize is awarded annually by the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations “to recognize and encourage distinguished research and writing by junior scholars in the field of diplomatic relations.”
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American Historical Review Article Awarded 2023 Dorothy Ross Prize (June 2023)
Jun 26, 2023 -Congratulations to Gili Kliger (Harvard Univ.), whose article “Translating God on the Borders of Sovereignty” was selected as the winner of the 2023 Dorothy Ross Prize for the best article in US intellectual history by the Society for US Intellectual History. Kliger’s article was published in the September 2022 issue of the American Historical Review.
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AHA Member Awarded 2023 ACLS Leading Edge Fellowship (June 2023)
Jun 26, 2023 -Congratulations to AHA member Nicole Navarro (Univ. of Michigan), who was awarded a 2023 ACLS Leading Edge Fellowship and appointed as a research associate at the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. The Leading Edge fellowships “support recent PhDs in the humanities and interpretive social sciences as they work with social justice organizations in communities across the United States.”
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US Supreme Court Cites AHA and OAH Amicus Curiae Brief in Haaland v. Brackeen Decision (June 2023)
Jun 15, 2023 -In the US Supreme Court’s June 15 decision in Haaland v. Brackeen upholding the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), Justice Neil Gorsuch cited the amicus curiae brief co-sponsored by the AHA and the Organization of American Historians in his concurrence. The brief, based on decades of study and research by professional historians, aimed to provide an accurate historical perspective of the IWCA as the court considered the case.
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AHA Testimony Objecting to Ohio Education Bill Featured in Ohio Capital Journal (June 2023)
Jun 15, 2023 -The AHA’s testimony objecting to Ohio House Bill 103, which would create a new, politically appointed task force to produce state social studies standards, was featured in an Ohio Capital Journal article by Susan Tebben about an amendment to the bill creating a timeframe for the proposed task force’s work. The task force, the AHA wrote, would be “an entirely new bureaucratic apparatus” designed for “overruling an open, democratic, and professional process simply because this bill’s sponsors did not get to dictate the terms of history education in the state through established channels. Ohio’s students deserve better.”
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AHA Director of Research and Publications Quoted in New York Times Memorial Day Article (June 2023)
Jun 05, 2023 -AHA director of research and publications Sarah Weicksel was quoted in a New York Times article by Livia Albeck-Ripka on the history of Memorial Day. Weicksel spoke about the establishment of Memorial Day on the last Monday of May as part of a larger effort to create three-day weekends, explaining, “They wanted it to be an opportunity for people to be able to gather.”
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AHA Testimony Featured in Ohio Capital Journal Articles (June 2023)
Jun 05, 2023 -The AHA’s testimony opposing Ohio House Bill 103, which would create a politically appointed task force to produce state social studies standards, was featured in an article by Susan Tebben and an op-ed by Jeanne Melvin in the Ohio Capital Journal about the current battle over K–12 standards in the state. The legislation, the AHA wrote, “would create an entirely new bureaucratic apparatus as a strategy for overruling an open, democratic, and professional process” for “a radical overhaul of history and social studies education in Ohio.”
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AHA Endorses Senate Resolution Recognizing Anniversary of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre (June 2023)
Jun 05, 2023 -The AHA has endorsed a US Senate resolution “recognizing the anniversary of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and honoring the lives and legacies of the nearly 300 Black individuals who were killed and the nearly 9,000 Black individuals who were left homeless and penniless as a result.” Executive director Jim Grossman said about the resolution, “Everything has a history, including white supremacy and the many forms of violence, coercion, and cultural practices that have legitimated and enforced it. What happened in Tulsa was extreme, but not unusual. It is part of our nation's heritage. We must acknowledge that heritage, learn from it, and do whatever each of us can to ensure that it is just that—heritage, rather than continuing practice.”
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AHA President-Elect and Members Awarded Long-Term Huntington Fellowships (May 2023)
May 17, 2023 -Congratulations to AHA president-elect Thavolia Glymph (Duke Univ.) and members Hilary Buxton (Kenyon Coll.), Gordon H. Chang (Stanford Univ.), Peter C. Mancall (Univ. of Southern California), Bernadette J. Pérez (Univ. of California, Berkeley), and Gabriela Soto Laveaga (Harvard Univ.), who were awarded long-term fellowships by The Huntington as part of the 2023–24 fellow class.
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.
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