Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which has brought incessant bombing and systematic starvation to the region during the past two years, has reignited the U.S. anti-war movement, with protests on college campuses and in the streets of major cities. Despite a ceasefire brokered by the United States between Israel and Hamas in October 2025, this movement has not dissipated; activists have argued that the ceasefire is faulty and that much still needs to be done to rebuild Gaza and realize a Palestine free from Israeli oppression and U.S. imperialism. As has been the case in the past two years, this activism has been countered by institutional dismissal of popular demands, federal infringement on the rights of protestors, and a reluctance to even discuss the issue, given concerns that such discussions will be seen as antisemitic.
In January, a group adjacent to the American Historical Association (AHA)—the largest professional organization of historians in the country which encompasses academics, graduate students, professional archivists, and teachers—continued to advocate on behalf of Palestine at the annual conference. During the conference, Historians for Peace and Democracy (HPAD) introduced two resolutions, one expressing solidarity with Gaza and another opposing attacks on academic freedom both in the United States and in Gaza.
One reason that HPAD felt it was important to introduce these resolutions was because, as members of an educational association, they have a responsibility to protect scholars, students, schools, and educational resources. Scholasticide, which HPAD defines as an “intentional effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system” including Palestinian institutional knowledge and historical archives, was seen as central to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
“Aside from the fact that there continues to be episodes of violence [in Gaza] and an expansion of violence in the West Bank,” says Barbara Weinstein, a professor of history at New York University and former president of the AHA, “the [first] resolution is not only about condemning what Israel has done in Gaza with respect to scholasticide, but also about the role that the AHA can play in helping to rebuild the educational infrastructure [of Palestine].”
HPAD submitted the resolutions to AHA in October of 2025 to be considered at the conference; AHA leadership then informed HPAD that the resolutions would not be on the agenda at all. In response, the Palestinian Historians Group explained in a December statement that “both resolutions met the conditions specified in the association’s bylaws. By blocking two resolutions that name and condemn the genocide and scholasticide in the Occupied Gaza Strip, the AHA Council is complicit in genocide denial.”
An outright denial to even consider the two resolutions left advocates with only one option: obtain a two-thirds majority to override AHA leadership in order to introduce the resolutions at the conference. After meeting this requirement during the January conference, the AHA discussed both resolutions, and they passed with 78 and 79 percent of the vote, respectively. However, although AHA bylaws allow members to override some leadership decisions, they ultimately still have the final say. The AHA Council ultimately vetoed both resolutions, stating that the resolutions went beyond the “chartered mission” of the association and that they “would present institutional risk.”
“There’s several things happening here,” explains Weinstein. “They felt that [Palestine] was too divisive an issue, and they felt that the AHA shouldn’t take political stances.” Weinstein challenges these reasons, explaining that the AHA has made statements about other geopolitical events including the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
She adds that HPAD’s first resolution on Palestine focused on “the attempt to obliterate any kind of historical memory for the people of Palestine,” which she says should not be seen as a divisive issue for a historical association. In fact, she explains, it would be a failure for the AHA to ignore the threads between history and the current iteration of genocide in Gaza. Since the U.S.-funded genocide began in October of 2023, students, faculty, and staff at higher education institutions have played a central role in pro-Palestine advocacy, pushing for universities to divest from arms manufacturers and condemning scholasticide. Historians play an especially important role in this work, including groups such as the AHA.
“There is a really important way that these associations take on representative advocacy work,” says Sherene Seikaly, a member of the AHA and a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “The focus on scholasticide is because . . . one of the [AHA’s] main principles is to intervene and take a position, particularly when historical sources are threatened. So we take very seriously the educational, scholarly, and historical mission of this association. The first three months of the Israeli genocide in Gaza targeted universities, educational institutions, libraries, and archives.”
Seikaly sees the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), which is a separate association for scholars studying the Middle East, as an example of the impact that associations can have on both domestic policy and global affairs. In 2016, MESA joined the American Civil Liberties Union in a lawsuit against Donald Trump’s travel ban. Last spring, the organization jointly filed a lawsuit to curb the Trump Administration’s efforts to deport students and faculty who take part in protected speech. The association also established the MESA Global Academy, a program that supports displaced scholars from the Middle East and North Africa region whose work falls within Middle East studies.
“It has really become an institutional representative voice for people in the field [of Middle Eastern studies] and scholars more broadly,” she says.
Since October 2023, U.S. colleges and universities, where most AHA members work, have actively dismissed proposals to divest from Israel and the arms manufacturers that supply it. They have also allowed law enforcement to arrest students who attend protests and succumbed to pressure from the Trump Administration regarding alleged antisemitism on campuses across the country, despite broad support for Palestine from students, staff, and faculty. The crackdown on student demonstrations prompted HPAD’s second resolution, which asks that the AHA “condemns these attacks [on higher education] and their specious justifications, and urges all United States educational institutions to join in this opposition.”
Seikaly explains that from the perspective of AHA leadership, the resolutions seemed as though they could make the organization vulnerable to attacks from the federal government and other influential actors. A November 2025 report from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) alleged antisemitic issues with the AHA, placing it in the “meaningful action required” category. This encourages the Trump Administration to target the association, even if allegations of failing to protect Jewish members are unfounded. An audit conducted by Jewish Currents of a past ADL antisemitism report exposed that the organization uses flawed methodology when determining what is considered antisemitic.
Yet, by placing educational institutions and associations in the hot seat, antisemitism is redefined by antisemites themselves. Organizations like the ADL, which, according to Jewish Voice for Peace, has a long history of repressing Constitutional rights and defending Israel “under the guise of civil rights,” become pawns in the midst of rising authoritarianism.
“The weaponization of antisemitism, to me, is one of those things that is just so upsetting,” Weinstein says. “It’s Trump and the people around him . . . that are antisemites.”
“I think the cowardice on taking a position on Palestine at this moment has a very direct and unsurprising parallel with the refusal to take a position on rising authoritarianism and the erosion of academic freedom and free speech,” Seikaly says. She explains that violence at the hands of federal agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and elsewhere in recent months make it clear that when violence abroad is ignored, it becomes possible to enact that same violence internally.
Not only do advocates for these resolutions thread our current moment with their efforts, but they tie today’s crackdown on Palestinian advocacy to their own historical research. Ellen Schrecker, who studies McCarthyism at Yeshiva University and is an AHA member, was one of two members who were given the chance to speak in favor of the second resolution at the conference. In her speech, she explained that she has “been studying higher education and political repression for nearly fifty years and in contrast to what’s happening today, McCarthyism appears as a gentle breeze compared to a Category 5 hurricane.”
For Weinstein, who has spent much of her career studying Brazilian history, there are evident parallels between the dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964 and 1985 and current repression today, especially in educational settings. Making sure that academic associations stand up for their members, she says, has never been more important. Her hope is that, in the coming years, the AHA can elect council members that reflect the views of the majority, allowing the association to be an active force in the future of higher education and international affairs. Efforts to do so don’t exist in a vacuum, but are connected to continued calls for divestment and the comprehensive rebuilding of Gaza, and may ultimately aid the fight for a liberated Palestine.
“I do still believe that the future is ours,” Seikaly says. She isn’t just referring to AHA, but to Palestine and all those that oppose state-sanctioned and state-funded violence.