In late August, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) challenged scholarly associations like the AHA as part of a conversation now widespread across higher education and beyond. At stake are issues that we take seriously: institutional neutrality, statements of support or censure, and the role of political activity in our work. According to the AEI, the AHA, Organization of American Historians, Modern Language Association, and our counterparts in other disciplines including STEM have “traded their scholarly mission for a political one.” Therefore, public universities should not use taxpayer money to fund conference travel or even basic participation in these organizations.
As I’ve indicated elsewhere, the AHA does not comment on the work of its counterparts in other disciplines, other than to occasionally sign on to statements, to praise significant work, or to announce collaborations. So I will stick with the AHA in my reflections on the AEI’s accusation and its funding implications.
At stake are issues that we take seriously: institutional neutrality, statements of support or censure, and the role of political activity in our work.
The AHA is specifically mentioned twice in the nine-page report: at the very beginning (alongside the American Chemical Society and American Statistical Association), to indicate the type of association in question, and later, in a brief description of the study’s methodology. Notably, although the AEI clearly finds the AHA useful as a marker of the genre, we are not a source for actual examples: not one of the specific references to what scholarly associations say or do cites the AHA.
Perhaps that is because we provide little, if any, evidence for the AEI’s argument. If that is the case—and were the AEI following the AHA’s professional guidelines to “not omit evidence that runs counter to their own interpretation”—then the report would focus greater attention on the AHA. A close look at our activities in recent years—a period of increasing advocacy—indicates that the AEI report is deeply flawed. Its accusations lack an empirical basis.
“Scholarly Associations Gone Wild: Stop Publicly Funding Scholarly Groups That Trade Academics for Advocacy” draws on a sample of 99 associations that are alleged to “operate more like political entities than scholarly ones.” Note the implicit quantitative or transactional basis for the claim. Such associations have “trade[d] academics for advocacy” and “traded their scholarly mission for a political one.” Not supplemented or infused, but “traded.” We now “operate more like political entities than scholarly ones.” The accusation, then, is that political activity at worst has replaced (traded) scholarship, or at best occupies a greater proportion (more) of our time and attention.
The AHA does indeed advocate on behalf of historians and historical work in various political arenas. We defend the professional integrity of secondary history educators in state legislatures. We advocate on Capitol Hill in favor of adequate funding for agencies such as the National Archives and Records Administration, Library of Congress, Smithsonian Institution, National Endowment for the Humanities, and National Park Service. This kind of “political activity” does not subvert our mission but fulfills it. Our congressional charter, granted in 1889, includes in the AHA’s mandate “the promotion of historical studies.”
The examples the report does provide are not this kind of advocacy on behalf of our discipline—the same kind of “political activity” that all sorts of private sector vendors for government agencies engage in on behalf of their work. If defense industries can advocate on behalf of public expenditures for military equipment, airlines testify on behalf of the FAA budget, or NASA contractors ply their trade in the corridors of the Capitol, then surely the American Historical Association can undertake “political activity” on behalf of funding historical work and assuring its professional integrity.
But that kind of “political activity” is not on the table here. The American Enterprise Institute surely doesn’t mind us promoting the enterprise of history. Their report is concerned, rather, with letters and statements: the kind of “political activity” that has recently been in the news but is only a part of our wide range of activities. I suggest the AEI’s researchers spend time on our website, or even take a shortcut and consult the AHA’s annual Year in Review. Either will reassure them that we agree with their premise that “value depends on [our] ability to advance research, generate knowledge, and uphold academic norms.” This is what the AHA does. It is work that requires resources and academic freedom, which in turn depend on the same “political activity” that so many other professions and economic sectors find imperative (and for which they hire expensive lobbyists).
We take letters and statements seriously and craft them carefully.
That leaves only the statements and letters. This, too, is important work. Though the bulk of our time, resources, and energy lies in other enterprises—publications including the AHR and Perspectives, events including the annual meeting and webinars, professional development activities for teachers, attentiveness to professional standards, keeping public agencies informed about the historical context of their work, and much more—letters and statements are indeed a high priority. We take them seriously and craft them carefully. Therefore, I ask the AEI to take the content of these documents seriously before generalizing about their supposed “progressive orthodoxy.” Despite their claims, the AHA’s advocacy aligns entirely with our mission to promote historical work and historical thinking.
The AEI claims that “associations routinely take positions on issues that seem far from their fields of study.” Clearly they have not read the AHA’s statements and letters, every one of which starts from the premise that we are weighing in because of a historical issue and proceeds by situating history at the center of the argument. The AEI specifically calls out letters relating to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, including them prominently in published graphics. Did they read our statement, issued in February 2022 and signed by 42 other associations? It begins with history—“Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rhetorical premise for this brutal violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty is anchored by a set of outlandish historical claims”—and ends by denouncing “the twisted mythology that President Putin has invented to justify his violation of international norms.” The AHA has also compiled resources related to the histories of Ukraine, Russia, and the Cold War.
The AEI is even more critical of statements relating to racism and issues that arose following the killing of George Floyd in 2020. The AHA Statement on the History of Racist Violence in the United States, which was endorsed by 98 other organizations, begins, “Everything has a history, including our nation’s deplorable record of violence against African Americans.” The statement was accompanied by a webinar co-sponsored with the National Council for the Social Studies, Teaching the History of Racist Violence in the High School Classroom, and our staff compiled and continues to update resources, especially for classroom use, on this complex history. Nothing in either the statement or webinar “delimit[s] the bounds of permissible thought” or allows “advocacy to erode their commitment to academic inquiry.”
However eager the AEI researchers were to invoke the AHA’s status among scholarly associations, they neither took the time to read our record of advocacy nor consulted us before making assumptions. I also lament that journalists covering this story did not consult directors of scholarly associations in their reporting. Had they done their homework, they would have found Schools, History, and the Challenges of Commemoration, a 2021 AHA statement that not only situates history at the center of “political activity” in its challenge to the San Francisco Board of Education but takes a position contrary to what the AEI calls “progressive orthodoxy.”
But the AEI “assumed.” At the AHA we don’t merely assume; we do our research before we speak. We work, and speak, as historians fulfilling the mandate from our congressional charter: “the promotion of historical studies.”
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