JVP Academic Council Statement on the American Historical Association, Scholasticide, Genocide, and Academic Freedom Resolutions

The Academic Council of JEWISH VOICE FOR PEACE (JVP) commends the member historians of the American Historical Association (AHA) who voted overwhelmingly (with roughly 80% majorities) at its annual meeting in Chicago on January 10th of this year in support of two resolutions: (i) a resolution condemning the Israeli state’s acts of scholasticide in Gaza, and (ii) a resolution standing against the ongoing surge of attacks on academic freedom in the United States, including attacks on teaching, writing, and speech addressing “the U.S.-sponsored genocide perpetrated by Israel in Gaza.”  

At the same time, the JVP Academic Council is appalled by the AHA Council’s decision to veto both resolutions, setting aside the AHA’s own stipulated procedures for sending resolutions approved at the annual meeting to the full AHA Membership for a vote. These actions manifest both anti-democratic and anti-Palestinian biases on the part of the AHA’s Council.  

The JVP Academic Council thus expresses its full support for, and encourages the wide circulation of, the responses to the AHA institutional leadership’s vetoes from (i) the Palestinian-led BDS movement and (ii) the Palestinian Historians Group (PHG).

Along with the PHG, the Academic Council notes that the AHA’s institutional leaders have said that they acted to thwart the very possibility of democratic affirmation of the two resolutions because recognition of Israeli scholasticide and genocide (as contained in the two resolutions) would expose the AHA to reputational and material “risk.”  Here, two points are crucial.

First, such risk is not remotely a defensible reason for what is, in effect, a pre-emptive and authoritarian veto of democratic votes on recognition of scholasticide and genocide. Risk avoidance, which has also been spoken of as fiduciary responsibility, cannot properly be a basis for setting aside either being truthful or adopting an ethical stance in response to horrible crimes and harms.  Any such interpretation of risk or fiduciary responsibility–as pole-vaulting over truth and ethics–prioritizes narrow institutional concerns of the AHA over extraordinary oppression and human suffering and thus makes a travesty of fiduciary responsibility.  

The second point shows us the working out of this travesty and echoes an important point in the statement from the Palestinian Historians Group.  To hold that risk avoidance mandates procedural ad hoc-ery in order to block democratic consideration of resolutions acknowledging Israeli scholasticide and genocide disregards the reputational and existential risks to the AHA of failing to be truthful about scholasticide and genocide, thus betraying the AHA’s core mission to provide “leadership for the discipline” and promote “the critical role of historical thinking in public life.”

It is justly said that a key lesson of the Nazi genocide is “never again.”  The Academic Council of JVP holds firmly to the view that the only understanding of this phrase that is consistent with the view that all human life is sacred, as Jewish ethics holds, is “never again for anyone,” without the Palestinian exception that Zionism shamefully insists upon.  The AHA’s institutional leaders clearly do not understand “never again” in this principled way.   

It is also important to observe how much this episode–the principled and courageous votes of members at the annual meeting followed by the institutional leaders’ panicky and unprincipled veto of those votes–is one we have seen over and over again, especially but not only since October 2023. The response of the institutional leaders is the same old obeisance of mainstream leaders to compulsory Zionism, effectively gifting impunity to the Israeli state for its denial of Palestinian freedom and equality, including both its revisionist program of Nakba denial and its ongoing genocide.  

What is new–and welcome–is the breadth of support for Palestinian rights and lives from informed persons of conscience, evidenced by the overwhelming votes for the resolutions at the annual meeting.

The JVP Academic Council is inspired by and deeply grateful to the AHA members at the annual meeting who voted for the two resolutions. The Council is similarly inspired by and deeply grateful to Historians for Peace and Democracy, Historians for Palestine, and the Palestinian Historians Group, for engaging in rigorous educational campaigns in support of these two resolutions.  
Institutional “leadership” of the sort evidenced by the AHA Council in its undemocratic vetoes of these resolutions must end: never again must be true for all human beings. 

The Jewish Voice for Peace Academic Council is a network of scholars dedicated to furthering JVP’s vision and values. Drawing upon our shared commitment to both progressive Jewish values and Palestinian liberation, we organize in solidarity with the Palestinian freedom struggle in educational and academic settings. We draw upon our skills as scholars, educators, and writers to develop critical analysis of contemporary censorship on Palestine. We oppose the deployment of the charge of antisemitism to censor or criminalize speech critical of the State of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.  We defend employment rights, academic freedom, and rights of association within higher education and confirm the core values of Jewish Voice for Peace.