(Rebecca Karl, Margaret Power, Karen Miller, Prasannan Parthasarathi)

Rebecca Karl is a historian at NYU specializing in modern China. She was a vocal supporter of a 2025 resolution within the American Historical Association (AHA) condemning scholasticide.

Karen Miller, a historian at LaGuardia Community College, CUNY, was a petitioned-in candidate in the recent AHA elections and won a seat as Councilor for the Teaching Division.

Margaret Power is the co-chair of HPAD and a Professor Emeritus of history at the Illinois Institute of Technology and has publicly supported the AHA resolutions condemning scholasticide in Gaza.

Prasannan Parthasarathi, a member of the steering committee of HPAD, is a professor of history at Boston College and has been involved in advocacy within the AHA related to defending academic freedom.

Introduction

At the annual conference in January 2025, the on-site membership of the American Historical Association (AHA) passed a resolution condemning the ongoing scholasticide in Gaza, the targeted destruction of Palestinian educational infrastructure. Despite overwhelming support (428–88), the AHA Executive Council vetoed the resolution, creating extensive criticism. This Q&A brings together four historians: Rebecca Karl (NYU), Karen Miller (CUNY), Margaret Power (Illinois Institute of Technology), and Prasannan Parthasarathi (Boston College).

Each of these distinguished panelists has long advocated for Palestinian academic freedom and institutional responsibility within the discipline of history. In this exclusive interview for CounterPunch, they talk about the fight for more democratic participation, the so-called politics of neutrality, and the role historians must play in times of global crisis in addressing state violence.

The Veto

Daniel Falcone: In my last Q/A with Rebecca Karl, she stated that “condemning scholasticide cannot be controversial.” Given the overwhelming support for the resolution at the AHA’s annual meeting (428-88) and the fact that the Executive Council has yet to implement it, how do you evaluate the AHA’s current position and has the symbolic power of that vote translated into any institutional accountability?

Rebecca Karl: The AHA’s current Executive Council has been clear that the democratically passed resolution – passed by a landslide — to condemn scholasticide in Gaza at the January 2025 AHA meeting in NY will not be sent to the membership and even the fact of the vote has been erased from the website. For an association ostensibly concerned with history and American democracy – as evidenced in numerous interventions into the Trump administration’s increasingly bold tampering with history curricula and narratives in museums, public spaces, and so on — this erasure is beyond egregious.

It completely negates all credibility that this organization represents “history” or “historians.” The institutional accountability seems to have been nil, except that the nominate-by-petition movement gained steam and resulted in several notable victories. This makes one believe that, had the resolution been sent out to the membership after the January vote, the support for it would have been quite robust. Of course there’s no way to know that, since the EC was apparently afraid of its own shadow.

Margaret Power: The Executive Council’s veto of the scholasticide resolution represents a clear decision to ignore most of the membership that supported the resolution. The veto sent shockwaves through the organization, which translated into a widespread demand to democratize the AHA.

It also made many members realize that the AHA leadership should reflect and respect the expressed wishes of its members and be willing to stand up in support of Palestinians’ educational rights. Their failure to do so is in marked contrast to the Executive Council’s willingness to issue statements condemning the violation of other scholars’ rights in multiple countries around the world.

The AHA’s refusal to stand up for educational, let alone human, rights for Palestinians has a long history. Historians for Peace and Democracy (HPAD), the organization that sponsored the January........

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