AHA–OAH Joint Statement on Federal Censorship of American History
The American Historical Association (AHA) and the Organization of American Historians (OAH) condemn recent efforts to censor historical content on federal government websites, at many public museums, and across a wide swath of government resources that include essential data. New policies that purge words, phrases, and content that some officials deem suspect on ideological grounds constitute a systemic campaign to distort, manipulate, and erase significant parts of the historical record. Recent directives insidiously prioritize narrow ideology over historical research, historical accuracy, and the actual experiences of Americans.
As the institution chartered by the US Congress for “the promotion of historical studies” and “in the interest of American history, and of history in America,” the American Historical Association must speak out when the nation’s leadership wreaks havoc with that history. So, too, must the OAH, as the organization committed to promoting “excellence in the scholarship, teaching, and presentation of American history.” It is bad enough to forget the past; it is even worse to intentionally deny the public access to what we remember, have documented, and have expended public resources to disseminate.
At this writing, the full range of historical distortions and deletions is yet to be discerned. Federal entities and institutions subject to federal oversight and funding are hastily implementing revisions to their resources in an attempt to comply with the “Dear Colleague” letter issued by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights and executive orders such as “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” These changes range from scrubbing words and acronyms from websites to papering over interpretive panels in museums. Some alterations, such as those related to topics like the Tuskegee Airmen and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, have been hurriedly reversed in response to public outcry. Others remain. The scrubbing of words and acronyms from the Stonewall National Monument web page, for instance, distorts the site’s history by denying the roles of transgender and queer people in movements for rights and liberation. This distortion of history renders the past unrecognizable to the people who lived it and useless to those who seek to learn from the past.
It is bad enough to forget the past; it is even worse to intentionally deny the public access to what we remember, have documented, and have expended public resources to disseminate.
It remains unclear whether federal agencies are preserving the original versions of these materials for future reference or research. Articles written by historians for the National Park Service, for example, have been altered, and in some instances deleted, because they examine history with references to gender or sexuality. These revisions were made without the authors’ knowledge or consent, and without public acknowledgment that the original articles had been revised. The AHA’s Statement on Standards of Professional Conduct is clear: “Honoring the historical record also means leaving a clear trail for subsequent historians to follow. Any changes to a primary source or published secondary work, whether digital or print, should be noted.”
Words matter. Precision matters. Context matters. Expertise matters. Democracy matters. We can neither deny what happened nor invent things that did not happen. Recent executive orders and other federal directives alter the public record in ways that are contrary to historical evidence. They result in deceitful narratives of the past that violate the professional standards of our discipline. When government entities, or scholars themselves, censor the use of particular words, they in effect censor historical evidence. Censorship and distortion erase people and institutions from history.
The AHA’s Statement on Standards of Professional Conduct makes clear that historians can neither misrepresent their sources nor omit evidence because it “runs counter” to their interpretations. The OAH and AHA condemn the rejection of these professional standards. Classifying collective historical scholarship as “toxic indoctrination” or “discriminatory equity ideology” dismisses the knowledge generated by the deep research of generations of historians. It violates the training, expertise, and purposes of historians as well as their responsibility to public audiences.
Our professional ethics require that “all historians believe in honoring the integrity of the historical record.” We expect our nation’s leadership to adhere to this same basic standard, and we will continue to monitor, protest, and place in the historical record any censorship of American historical facts.
Approved by the AHA Council on March 13, 2025.
AHA Statement Condemning Indiscriminate Cuts to the Federal Government
Federal agencies—and the historians who staff them—preserve, record, and interpret the history of the United States, serving the public and supporting the work of policymakers. The American Historical Association (AHA) condemns the dismantling of federal departments and agencies through the indiscriminate termination of federal employees and elimination of programs, including historical offices.
Nearly every unit of the federal government depends on the work of historians who provide resources essential to research and education. They document, analyze, and share histories of war, military service, diplomacy, and nearly every aspect of domestic policy. However, they are now on the front lines of an unprecedented assault that threatens to undermine the basic functions of government, from national security to the national park system, the environment to economic development, transportation and housing to education—nearly every aspect of civic life, from the highly visible to the quietly essential.
The list of agencies affected by sweeping executive orders and cuts applied by the Department of Government Efficiency continues to grow. The National Archives and Records Administration, including the National Historical Publications and Records Commission; the Institute of Museum and Library Services; the National Park Service; and the Department of Defense—these and many other vital agencies employ and support the work of historians and interpret history for the public. Our nation’s museums and libraries provide a constructive gateway for the public to engage with the past; yet the Institute for Museum and Library Services is now targeted for dismantling.
Nearly every unit of the federal government depends on the work of historians who provide resources essential to research and education.
Consider, for example, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Archivists and historians work with the three branches of government and their agencies to identify, preserve, and ensure the accessibility of materials subject to the Federal Records Act and the Presidential Records Act. That work ensures current and future access to our nation’s records for purposes including historical research and genealogy, consultation by federal agencies and policymakers, and records requests from military veterans and their families applying for crucial benefits. Members of NARA’s senior staff, who possess decades of institutional knowledge, have been terminated or forced to resign—along with dozens of recently hired employees—while budget uncertainty has required canceling an application cycle for projects that ensure online public discovery of historical records.
The intended demise of the Department of Education provides another alarming example. Established by Congress, this agency works to ensure equal access to learning opportunities, collects and shares essential data on the nation’s schools, distributes financial aid, and provides critical funding, guidelines, and research. Shuttering its National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) will eliminate data collection and research that guide educational policy and are essential to future scholarship in the history of education. Educators, policymakers, and parents rely on NCES data to measure student learning, track changes over time, and find places for improvement in public education. Students in fields that require deep knowledge of global challenges—including history, business, and national security—benefit from the Title VI programs and Fulbright-Hays grants now under threat.
A scorched-earth approach to the federal bureaucracy will leave our nation without the records and accumulated knowledge to make well-informed decisions.
Closing federal history offices, rolling back protections granted by the Freedom of Information Act, firing archivists, and dismantling departments responsible for education, the humanities, arts, and sciences will render it impossible for Americans to learn about and from the past. Historians and researchers from all fields will lack the data—from the military, the US Census, and innumerable other sources—essential to providing a full picture of US history. Shuttering history and archival offices will foreclose the benefits of learning from the past to help inform the future.
Good policy requires good history. We recognize that the AHA’s singular focus on history describes only a portion of the chaos that ensues when those entrusted with our nation’s institutions assume a mandate to move fast and break things. Chartered by Congress in 1889 “to sustain and enhance the work of historians,” the American Historical Association recognizes that haphazard disruptions to federal services impede historical research, undercut historic preservation, and interfere with history education. A scorched-earth approach to the federal bureaucracy will leave our nation without the records and accumulated knowledge to make well-informed decisions. That historical foundation is essential to the nation’s health and prosperity.
Approved by the AHA Council on March 20, 2025.
AHA Statement Defending the Smithsonian
The Executive Order “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” issued on March 27 by the White House, egregiously misrepresents the work of the Smithsonian Institution. The Smithsonian is among the premier research institutions in the world, widely known for the integrity of its scholarship, which is careful and based on historical and scientific evidence. The Institution ardently pursues the purpose for which it was established more than 175 years ago: “the increase and diffusion of knowledge.” The accusation in the White House fact sheet accompanying the executive order claims that Smithsonian museums are displaying “improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology.” This is simply untrue; it misrepresents the work of those museums and the public’s engagement with their collections and exhibits. It also completely misconstrues the nature of historical work.
Historians explore the past to understand how our nation has evolved. We draw on a wide range of sources, which helps us to understand history from different angles of vision. Our goal is neither criticism nor celebration; it is to understand—to increase our knowledge of—the past in ways that can help Americans to shape the future.
No person, no nation is perfect, and we should all learn from our imperfections.
The stories that have shaped our past include not only elements that make us proud but also aspects that make us acutely aware of tragedies in our nation’s history. No person, no nation, is perfect, and we should all—as individuals and as nations—learn from our imperfections.
The Smithsonian’s museums collect and preserve the past of all Americans and encompass the entirety of our nation’s history. Visitors explore exhibitions and collections in which they can find themselves, their families, their communities, and their nation represented. They encounter both our achievements and the painful moments of our rich and complicated past.
Patriotic history celebrates our nation’s many great achievements. It also helps us grapple with the less grand and more painful parts of our history. Both are part of a shared past that is fundamentally American. We learn from the past to inform how we can best shape our future. By providing a history with the integrity necessary to enable all Americans to be all they can possibly be, the Smithsonian is fulfilling its duty to all of us.
Approved by the AHA Council on March 31, 2025.
Historians Defend the National Endowment for the Humanities and American Public Culture
The American Historical Association condemns the evisceration of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
On April 3, 2025, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), using a nongovernmental microsoft.com email address, notified hundreds of recipients that grants awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) have been terminated. These grantees include state humanities councils, museums, teachers, researchers, and organizations that serve the public, including the American Historical Association. Later that night, letters were sent from a DOGE microsoft.com email address notifying roughly 75 percent of NEH staff that they have been placed on administrative leave. This frontal attack on the nation’s public culture is unpatriotic, anti-American, and unjustified.
The NEH and the grants it administers nourish our democracy through research, education, preservation, institutional capacity building, and public programming in the humanities for the benefit of the American people. These grants support work ranging from professional development workshops for teachers to the preservation of historic sites, research initiatives, and a wide array of programs for politically and demographically diverse audiences. Despite these significant contributions to public culture, DOGE justifies the termination of these programs by declaring their destruction to be “an urgent priority for the administration.”
The NEH nourishes our democracy through research, education, preservation, institutional capacity building, and public programming for the benefit of the American people.
The grant termination notices refer to a reallocation of funds to “a new direction in furtherance of the President’s agenda.” The specific reallocations remain unknown, but that agenda, as several executive orders have made clear, prioritizes narrow political ideology over historical research, historical accuracy, and the actual historical experiences of Americans.
The NEH was established in 1965 by an act of Congress. The legislation affirmed that “the arts and the humanities belong to all the people of the United States.” The AHA recognizes that the chair of the NEH always has been a political appointment made by the president. The overall agency and its grantmaking programs, however, include a wide range of topics, perspectives, and approaches. The agency was never intended to be, nor has it been, focused solely on a single president’s narrow—and in this case, deeply ideological—agenda.
Under the guise of “safeguarding” the federal government, DOGE has terminated grants and diminished staffing to a level that renders it impossible for the agency to perform its mission responsibly and with integrity. These actions imperil both the education of the American public and the preservation of our history.
Approved by the AHA Council on April 4, 2025.
For a full list of signatories, please see the versions of these statements on the AHA’s Advocacy page.
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