The charge for the AHA’s Ad Hoc Committee on Academic Freedom is to “provide ideas and resources to guide the Association’s efforts to support the protection of academic freedom.” This is the second in a series of posts to help you understand what we’re doing, what we’re not doing, and why.
As we shared in the spring, in this extraordinarily difficult time for historians across professional situations, we are working to 1) articulate clearly the ways that academic freedom is inextricably bound up with our standards of professional practice, 2) develop some relatively straightforward pointers about the ideas and practices of academic freedom as they relate to historians specifically, and 3) compile and share information about AHA advocacy efforts on behalf of academic freedom.
On the first, the AHA’s Professional Division is working on a revision to our statement of professional standards that clarifies and emphasizes the centrality of academic freedom to our professional practice. This will be reviewed by the AHA Council at its annual meeting in January and shared with the membership as soon as possible. This committee will provide input to that process.
On the second and third, we share today a developing page of resources about academic freedom. This resource page recognizes at the outset the challenge to any strict definition of academic freedom, that the concept has a history, and that there are nonetheless core articulations of academic freedom on which individuals and institutions have relied for decades. Here we provide links to the AHA’s own advocacy efforts, and to specific actions, policies, and statements from other organizations and governments.