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Following is a statement approved by a group of historians at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association. (Their website: www.yachana.org/haw.) As of January 24, 2003, it had been signed by more than 1,000 historians.

  • Click here for the developments at the OAH annual meeting 4-4-03.
  • Click here for the news release 1-22-03.
  • Click here for a list of signers.
  • Click here for details about the circumstances that led to the circulation of the petition.

At a meeting on the evening of Friday, January 3, 2003 at the 117th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, historians from more than forty colleges and universities agreed to form a new national network,"Historians Against the War." A committee was appointed to draft the following statement:

We historians call for a halt to the march towards war against Iraq. We are deeply concerned about the needless destruction of human life, the undermining of constitutional government in the U.S., the egregious curtailment of civil liberties and human rights at home and abroad, and the obstruction of world peace for the indefinite future.
Any historian can endorse and circulate this statement. All signatures collected on Saturday, January 4, at the AHA Meeting should be turned into the Radical History Review table near the Message Center in the Southwest Exhibition Hall, before 1 PM, or between 5 and 6 PM. Signatures collected later should be mailed to Van Gosse, Department of History, Franklin & Marshall College, PO Box 3003, Lancaster, PA 17604, or emailed to van.gosse@fandm.edu.