Wanted: A Few Good AHA Members

Last January, David Beito, KC Johnson, and I proposed a substitute for an AHA resolution against David Horowitz's Academic Bill of Rights. Our substitute opposed both ABOR and campus speech codes that restricted free academic speech. For a variety of reasons, the substitute resolution was defeated in the AHA's business meeting. Many of those who voted against it did so because they thought that ABOR should be rejected in its own right and that speech codes were a different issue. I'm looking at you, HiramHover.

This year, we are returning to the AHA convention with this free-standing resolution against speech codes that restrict academic speech:

RESOLUTION ON SPEECH CODES AND ACADEMIC FREEDOM

Whereas, The American Historical Association has already gone on record against the threat to academic freedom posed by the Academic Bill of Rights; and
Whereas, Free and open discourse is essential to the success of research and learning on campus; and
Whereas, Administrators and others have used campus speech codes and associated non-academic criteria to improperly restrict faculty choices on curriculum, course content, and personnel decisions; and
Whereas, Administrators and others have also used speech codes to restrict free and open discourse for students and faculty alike through such methods as"free speech zones" and censorship of campus publications; therefore be it
Resolved, The American Historical Association opposes the use of speech codes to restrict academic freedom.

AHA rules require that resolutions proposed to its business meeting must bear the signatures of 25 or more of its dues-paying members by 13 October. Like KC Johnson, many supporters of the resolution have become disaffected from the AHA and cannot, for that reason, qualify as its endorsers. Yet, we have the registered support of: David Beito of Alabama, Michael Burger of MUW, Donald T. Critchlow of St. Louis, John K. Day, Jonathan Dresner of Hawaii, Michigan's David Fitzsimons, Lloyd Gardner of Rutgers, Alonzo Hamby of Ohio, John Haynes of the Library of Congress, Ralph Luker of Atlanta, UC Santa Barbara's John Majewski, Charles Nuckolls of Alabama, Drew's Jonathan Rose, Mark Smith of South Carolina, East Stroudsburg's Lawrence Squeri, and George Mason's Richard Stillson.

If you know the politics of historians in the United States reasonably well, you'll know that the list represents a very broad spectrum of attitudes -- left, middle and right. When was the last time you saw Lloyd Gardner and John Haynes on the same side of a political issue? Regardless of your own politics, we need another dozen members of the AHA to endorse this resolution against campus speech codes that restrict our freedom of academic speech.

Please register your support of the resolution and, thus help get it to the floor of the AHA's business meeting for action, by: a) copying the resolution into an e-mail; b) indicate in it your support of the resolution, your AHA membership status, and your institutional affiliation; and c) send it to the AHA's Sharon Tune: stune*at*historians*dot*org, with a copy of the e-mail sent to dbeito*at*history*dot*as*dot*ua*edu. Many thanks.