News Topic

From the Executive Director's Desk

AHA executive director Sarah Weicksel delivered this report at the AHA business meeting on January 10, 2026.

Since becoming executive director on July, I have spent a great deal of time listening. I’ve been listening to learn about the needs of the AHA’s members—and historians more broadly.  I’ve been listening to better understand their challenges and the areas in which they are most in need of support, and to learn about the exciting work they are undertaking and the opportunities they are creating for the discipline’s future. At conferences, history departments, museums, meetings, and on Zoom, I have talked with historians working in a wide range of contexts, among them public historians; federal historians; foreign scholarsl high school, undergraduate, and graduate students; faculty working on and off the tenure track; high school teachers; historians experiencing work precarity; independent scholars; and trained historians working in a range of professions. I’ve talked with historians who have been threatened because of their historical expertise or their political views, historians who are just starting their first jobs, and those who have been fired. And by listening, I’ve learned that while everyone I spoke with looks to the AHA to lead the discipline forward, their immediate needs and requests vary widely. So, too, does the scope of those needs and requests.

Our members’ requests range from responding to threats to an individual historian’s employment to addressing the urgent and wide-ranging needs resulting from the destruction of Gaza’s educational infrastructure. Some department chairs need guidance on navigating university budget cuts and crafting arguments in support of their departments. Others need a letter to their administration explaining why research and writing intensive history courses need enrollment caps. Some historians’ greatest concerns revolve around the cascading effects of social studies standards revision. Others are confronting threats posed to international scholars and students by the current administration’s policies. Some need the AHA to defend their expertise when they do not feel like they can speak publicly; others, guidance on navigating the classroom in an age of AI. Some look to us to read cutting-edge scholarship in the American Historical Review, others for our disciplinary standards and guidelines, the latest in history pedagogy, or professional development resources. At the same time, our role in promoting historical studies and the role of history in public life requires the AHA to attend to a seeming torrent of threats to the practice of history in a wide range of institutions in the United States and elsewhere.

The AHA’s 20-person staff works to assist on all of the issues I’ve just mentioned, to serve the discipline at large, and the many wide-ranging needs of our members. I want to provide a snapshot of some of the highlights of our work this past year, which has included a combination of advocacy, professional development, conferences and convenings, publications, consultations for history departments, and support on behalf of departments and individual historians.

We are operating in an environment—as you all know—where the value of our discipline has been questioned on many levels but at the same time our discipline’s importance could not be more important.  History and evidence-based research have been under attack for years, but more recently we’ve seen our discipline and historical thinking challenged everywhere, from local school boards to state legislatures and beyond. In statements, briefings, and lawsuits we’ve spoken out, trying to stay focused on the discipline, historical thinking, and what we can do as individual historians and as an organization.

We are at the forefront in the fight to preserve the National Endowment for the Humanities and filed a lawsuit in its defense.

Most recently, on December 22, we filed an amicus brief in support of Harvard University’s lawsuit against the federal government over the university’s ability to host foreign scholars and students. The brief conveys the importance of international scholars and students to the development of the historical discipline.

We have also:

We have also:

  • Hosted free conferences on introductory history courses in Texas and Virginia;
  • Co-hosted the first of three symposia on Large Scale Collaborative Historical Research;
  • Held workshops for department chairs;
  • Created Guiding Principles on Artificial Intelligence in History Education;
  • Published the American Historical Review and Perspectives on History;
  • Published a new edition of a resource on Careers for History Majors, which is used by dozens of history departments;
  • Provided dozens of interviews to international, national, and local media on topics pertaining to the discipline and historical context for current events;
  • Offered professional development opportunities for department chairs, DC public school teachers, and more;
  • Collaborated with PBS to connect historians to local stations;
  • Analyzed data from our recent survey on non-tenure-track faculty;
  • Funded the work of small history organizations through our Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources grant program, as the Mid-Atlantic and US Territories regional partner;
  • And launched a new multiyear Doctoral Futures project in collaboration with the American Council of Learned Societies to reimagine humanities doctoral education.

The AHA has done all of this, and more, with just 20 people on our staff. As the extent of our work suggests, the enormity of the challenges currently facing our discipline are real and unrelenting. Some have been percolating for years, shape-shifting along the way and becoming increasingly urgent. Issues that might seem to affect only historians also directly and indirectly affect the public.

The AHA is identifying new strategies for engagement, working to garner more public support, and fighting for a reinvestment in our discipline. These challenges are bigger than the AHA—or any scholarly association—can resolve on its own.

And that is precisely the point. A multifront attack on history, higher education, and expertise requires a multipronged response from an AHA that does not work alone. Rather, we must work collaboratively and play an active role in building effective coalitions.

The AHA plays a critical role—a leading role—in the larger, national ecosystem of nonprofit associations and organizations with varied missions, disciplines, and kinds of expertise (from ethics and legal aid to publishing and academic freedom). In the last six months, the AHA staff have been working to both strengthen our longstanding partnerships and exploring new collaborations. By building these relationships and taking an active role in the work of coalitions, we are amplifying and expanding the reach of the AHA’s work on multiple fronts. The AHA’s status and reputation as a nonpartisan organization has been and continues to be essential to our success.

Our upcoming work will include the programming and publications upon which our membership relies. We will also continue to refine our approach to state and federal advocacy on behalf of the discipline. The challenges of this past year have led us to think strategically about how to work most effectively and we have identified strategies that involve collaboration, behind the scenes work, and prioritizing actions when possible. This has also involved working to activate our membership by providing them with advocacy toolkits on a range of issues.

The AHA’s 20-person staff is an extraordinary group of people who bring a wealth of expertise—professional and historical—to their daily work on behalf of the Association, our members, and the discipline of history writ large.

They do so in conjunction with more than 300 volunteers, including members of the Council, working groups, committees, and others. These historians bring their knowledge and expertise to bear on the AHA’s work in numerous ways.

And at this time I want to formally extend our sincere thanks to these volunteers for their service and leadership. Their contributions are essential to the vitality of the Association and to advancing the study, teaching, and public understanding of history.

As I look ahead to 2026, I plan to do more listening—not only through my meetings and travel but also by hosting a series of listening sessions for AHA members. I want to ensure that our membership is connected to the Association and its work—that you see our staff as a resource.

I close by acknowledging that it has been my great pleasure to work with the Council, the staff, the AHR team, and the AHA’s many member volunteers during my first six months as executive director of the Association. I look forward to continuing that work on your behalf in the year ahead.