A Message from the Executive Committee of the AHA Council 

Elections for next year’s AHA Council open on June 1, and this year, your ballot will look a little different. In addition to two candidates for each slot selected by the member-elected Nominating Committee, the ballot will also list several “by petition” candidates, all of whom have been nominated by Historians for Peace and Democracy (HPAD), in collaboration with Historians4Palestine and the Palestinian Historians Group. Believing that this is a particularly important election for the association’s future, and wishing to explain the origins of this “by petition” slate, the AHA’s Executive Committee is taking the unusual step of offering further context and alerting members to the implications of the “by petition” campaign.

As you are surely aware, we are living through a time of unprecedented attempts to rewrite history and threaten historians’ ability to access, study, and understand our past. In the past two years in particular, the AHA has been courageously engaging in monumental efforts to advocate for our discipline. Despite strong headwinds, we have had some recent wins, such as a successful outcome in our NEH lawsuit. Yet the AHA, like other organizations and institutions, has faced internal disagreement as to the kinds of actions we should take. To date, the Council and staff have focused the AHA’s work on issues within our core mission: promoting historical studies and supporting and defending the rights of historians to research and teach honest, expert history. For this we have faced severe criticism from HPAD, a 501(c)(4) (political) group that advocates for a much more aggressive stance on specific, political matters.

The antagonistic relationship of HPAD’s leadership towards the current AHA Council began in January 2025. HPAD had campaigned vigorously for a resolution on Gaza, which was passed at the Association’s business meeting. Afterwards, the Council vetoed that resolution because, as written, that 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, and therefore the legal and institutional foundations that make the AHA’s work possible. At the January 2026 meeting, HPAD again campaigned for a resolution that was again vetoed by the Council on the same grounds.

But we did hear members’ concerns, and since January 2025, the AHA Council and staff have worked diligently to address the resolutions’ central demands. We issued two statements condemning violence against scholars and students, and the devastation of historical sites and institutions. (Statement available here.) We provided numerous opportunities at the annual meeting to discuss and engage with the history of Palestine, genocide, and state violence. In response to the resolution, we created a committee that we hoped could do concrete good to support educational programs in the region, help preserve archives, and to aid Palestinian historians. But HPAD leadership and the groups that had proposed the resolutions have declined to participate, unless and until we accept their specific language. As a result, they have now labeled the AHA “anti-democratic” and have distorted the actions and motivations of the AHA.

Now these groups have used the “by petition” clause in the AHA bylaws to generate a full slate of candidates, the majority of whom sit on HPAD’s own steering committee or advisory board, to oppose the candidates put forward by the member-elected Nominating Committee. The petitions for their nomination were signed by about 200 members (less than two percent of our over 10,000 members). It should also be noted that among our 133 affiliated societies, HPAD is the only 501(c)(4) (political) organization, and the only one with an explicitly political mission. Its status means that it operates under the US tax code just as the National Rifle Association or Planned Parenthood, or any other 501(c)(4), and is not permitted to have formal members. HPAD, unlike the AHA, is not a membership organization and is therefore not obligated to any members and does not elect its own leadership.

The AHA, by contrast (and contrary to HPAD’s claims), has a governance structure very much like the other 501(c)(3) disciplinary associations, with a professional staff and a member-elected Council charged with decision-making. But the AHA is unique among the disciplinary associations in that it is the only one incorporated by a law, or charter, passed by the US Congress. That law charges us with a specific mission: “the promotion of historical studies, the collection and preservation of historical manuscripts and for kindred purposes in the interest of American history and of history in America.” (Other examples of congressionally chartered organizations include the American Red Cross and the US Olympic Committee.) Our foundational mission is to join together historians, whatever our personal and political views, in the common professional purpose of furthering the study and teaching of history. And we are able to join together historians from all regions, fields, and institution types because we adhere to this mission.

Today more than ever, we need the AHA, and historians need to work together effectively to support our colleagues. The wanton mutilation of institutions such as the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Park Service and repeated attacks on academic freedom in universities have been devastating to historians and to the integrity of history itself; the destruction of our national professional organization by means of internal infighting will only add to the wreckage of our discipline. We hope to work in concert with historians of Palestine and of the Middle East, and with colleagues who feel strongly about political or diplomatic issues. But we need to work and act together constructively and through compromise if we hope to maintain public trust in our nonpartisan integrity and expertise.

Because we feel so strongly that this year’s election is crucial to the direction the AHA will take in the near future, we urge you to carefully examine your ballot with the context provided above in mind. We thank you for your support for the AHA, and your concern for the future of our shared discipline.

–Executive Committee of the AHA Council