Scholar Says AHA’s Vote on Gaza Scholasticide Shouldn’t Be Controversial

Part of the Series

Struggle and Solidarity: Writing Toward Palestinian Liberation

Founded in 1884, the American Historical Association (AHA) represents professional academics and historians that advance the study of history in the United States. With well over 10,000 members, it serves as one of the world’s most influential and robust associations for historians. The AHA contributes to an evolving and progressing body of scholarship, and inspires a civic-minded and public appreciation for history.

This year’s annual meeting in New York City saw AHA members vote 428 to 88 in support of a resolution to oppose scholasticide in Gaza. The resolution condemned Israel’s intentional targeting of Gaza’s education system — scholasticide — and called attention to U.S. government funding of Israeli militarization and the incredible human cost to Palestinian civilians and infrastructure. It also calls for a permanent ceasefire and for the AHA to form a committee to help rebuild Gaza’s educational infrastructure.

Rebecca E. Karl, a scholar of modern China at New York University (NYU), has been a member of the AHA on and off for 28 years and voted in favor of the resolution. In this exclusive interview for Truthout, Karl explains the historical issues around the AHA and resolution and discusses the breakdown of the vote. She also expands on the role of academics and professional historians when it comes to the issue of education in Gaza amid an ongoing genocide. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Daniel Falcone: Could you provide some background information on the AHA and how the resolution came to fruition? What is your own personal interest in the resolution, and what, according to the AHA, are the pressing human and social costs of Israel’s destruction of Gaza?

Rebecca Karl: The AHA has historically been a relatively conservative and a firmly U.S./Europe-centered organization. It has pretended for most of its existence that there is some sort of barrier between “history” and “politics.” For example, during the Vietnam War, it never issued any kind of statement of condemnation or reservations about the U.S. misuse of history to invade and militarily destroy another country; it never made any pronouncements about apartheid in South Africa, I don’t think.

Yet, in 2007, in the context of the Iraq War, this was the first time the AHA took a stand to end the U.S. occupation. That was under the AHA presidency of Barbara Weinstein, my colleague at NYU. In subsequent years, and more proximately, the AHA has issued condemnations of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as well as support for the Ukrainian state, and named Russian President Vladimir Putin specifically as an abuser of history. The organization has also condemned China’s treatment of Uyghurs, Myanmar’s assault on the Rohingya, and so on. In addition, the AHA has taken strong stands against the anti-diversity, equity and inclusion, and anti-gender studies/critical race studies initiatives and movements in many states in the U.S., advocating for the honest teaching of history from K-12 through university levels.

The resolution that was just passed, condemning the scholasticide perpetrated by the Israeli military and state in Gaza upon the Palestinian people — that is, the comprehensive destruction of the conditions for schooling and studying in Gaza — is thus one in a series of resolutions condemning political and geopolitical injustices.

I am Jewish in part (my father was a Jew), and have been a lifelong anti-Zionist as part of my Jewish identity. I have also been a lifelong political activist, in one sense or the next, since I was in high school. My own political stakes in this moment are to get people to think about the ongoing Israeli-produced genocidal catastrophe in Palestine, to place it in a longer historical context, and to make clear that they/we oughtn’t be turning away from this catastrophe, not only because it is horrific and being broadcast on all our screens in real time but also because the U.S. and the world at large are complicit (with U.S. weapons and financing and others actively refuting the genocide more pointedly — Germany, China, etc.).

This is not a “war” but “state violence.” The insistence by the opposition and the corporate media that this be characterized as a war makes it seem justified and symmetrical.

The AHA resolution, while it does very little in concrete terms, has great symbolic and moral value at a time when ethics and leadership have been hollowed out in our countries and universities while Palestinian children and young people are being killed, maimed, traumatized, burned, and abandoned to misery and long-term lack of learning.

Could you comment on the opening remarks ahead of the vote by AHA Executive Director James R. Grossman? How was the resolution and pending vote contextualized?

Grossman drew ridicule upon himself, in my opinion. He presented a “report” as if it were neutral but phrased it in highly political terms by disavowing “politics” and proposing that the AHA needed to stay out of “politics” in order to retain its legitimacy. This was clearly one of the talking points of the subsequent opposition speakers to the resolution. So, he primed the pump by contextualizing the proceedings in a very particular way. He failed to persuade folks, as the final vote makes clear, but he should be ashamed of himself for such a ham-fisted and patently biased preemptive attempt to sway votes.

What were some of the highlights and lowlights of the talks concerning the resolution? How did the voting break down? Also, what was the mood and tone of the debate and statements?

The environment in the Mercury Ballroom at the Hilton on the evening of January 5 was quite electric. There were hundreds seated in the room, hundreds standing along the sides and in back, and quite a huge number more who were prevented from getting into the room. The AHA had either negligently or pointedly decided not to take seriously that this was going to be a hugely attended and closely monitored event. There were no provisions made for this many people, either in the room or in the voting procedure; and ultimately the voting itself had to be done in a highly unorthodox way, with no safeguards against ballot-stuffing or other malfeasance. I’m pretty confident that things were done legitimately, but this is no way to conduct a highly contentious vote!

The five speakers for the resolution were logical and eloquently moving in their presentations, focusing on the matter at hand: the systematic erasure of the conditions and infrastructures for Palestinian learning and life that has been perpetrated in the past 15 months in an accelerated fashion by Israel that did not begin on October 7, 2023, but rather must be traced back at least to the 1948 displacements and dispossessions upon which the Gaza Strip refugee prison camp was established and eventually grew. After each speaker “for” the resolution spoke for their allotted two minutes, the room rose and roared in approval. That was when we sensed we had a majority.

The five speakers against the resolution dissimulated with three major talking points, without logical connection: What about Hamas? (That is, the resolution on systemic and targeted Israeli destruction of schools and places of learning in Gaza does not mention Hamas); What about the Israeli hostages still held in Gaza? (That is, the resolution on systemic and targeted Israeli destruction of schools and places of learning in Gaza does not mention Israeli hostages); and What about the legitimacy of the AHA as a professional organization which will be damaged with this statement of resolve? (That is, the resolution on systemic and targeted Israeli destruction of schools and places of learning in Gaza is not primarily concerned with the precious AHA). The applause after these contributions was tepid and sparse. That was when we really understood that we probably had a supermajority of votes.

In the end, the resolution passed 428 to 88, with four abstentions. I’m pretty certain that, had all those in the hallways been allowed in, the margin of victory would have been even larger.

Why is it important for professional historians to use the present to illuminate the past? A lot of people say things like, history teachers are not supposed to teach students what to think, but how to think. This seems like an obvious management technique in using doublespeak to avoid controversial historical interrogation.

If we do history, we have to teach our students that the past is a moving target, and at the risk of tipping my hand, that history is always history of the present. While I do stay away from telling my students what to think, and I do teach them more about how to think and analyze. I tend to believe that if they understand how to think, they will come to some very firm conclusions about what to think. That is, I really don’t want to support legislators in Florida and Texas, for example, legislating what can (and cannot) be taught and what students should learn/think. So, I’m pretty certain I’m on the “how to think” side and not “what to think” side.

It can of course be a technique of management, and an avoidance strategy, but since we do use materials to teach with, and at least in the private sector we still have a good deal of leeway on what to assign, there are ways of structuring inquiry that make analysis a cornerstone of historical thinking and learning.

Hamas obviously needs to be studied from an academic and critical perspective (much like Rashid Khalidi does), but did any speakers try to place the nonmilitary wings of the organization at the center of the discussion to muddy the waters of the ongoing politicide?

We were focused on scholasticide, which was the topic of the resolution. We were not focused on adjudicating in public with two-minute speeches how to see and understand Hamas historically or in contemporary terms. That is a necessary task, and Khalidi, among others, does it very well. But that was not our task, and we were not going to be baited and switched into taking it up. Sherene Seikaly — the one Palestinian speaking, and who spoke first — contextualized her remarks by framing her family history in terms of the Nakba of 1948. Our speakers all focused on why the AHA has a duty to not turn its back on the systematic destruction of archives, museums, schools, and other repositories of Palestinian culture, its past, heritage and people.

If this were happening anywhere other than Palestine, it would not be controversial to pass a resolution of condemnation.

Aside from the silencing of historical and current events, can you comment on how the language itself guided the resolution, debate and vote? For example, corporate media referring to the crisis as the “Israel-Hamas War” seemingly invites an inherent mischaracterization.

I was not involved in writing the resolution language. One of our speakers made the point that this is not a “war” but “state violence.” The insistence by the opposition and the corporate media that this be characterized as a war makes it seem justified and symmetrical. That is indeed a mistake and a mischaracterization.

Three of the speakers for/against were chosen by the organizers of the two sides. Two for each side were chosen by lottery. I put my name in for the lottery but was not chosen. I had, though, prepared my remarks, and I append them here. This is what I would have said, had I been chosen to speak:

I grew up in a New York academic setting, where my father and his colleagues in the English Department at City College — all of them Jews — began their careers, in part because it was one of the few places in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s that did not have Jewish quotas either for faculty or for students. My father and his colleagues were devoted to scholarship and teaching; they were also deeply involved in academic politics. They fought for open access at City College, so that graduates of New York City high schools with passing grades could have a shot at an almost-free college education. They agitated, they loudly protested, they consistently and openly demonstrated against university and city intransigence, they disrupted “business as usual,” and they prevailed. They willingly adapted syllabi to encourage immigrant and other disadvantaged students to stick with their studies, to overcome their difficulties, and to learn what academic achievement felt like. When my father died many years ago, I heard from a number of his former students, most of whom did not become professional academics, but all of whom were grateful for his commitment to school, to teaching, to their learning. I learned from my father that to be a Jewish academic is to fight for access to a chance for schooling for all.

Our professional organization, the American Historical Association, should have no difficulty affirming the value of education and of schooling for all. Condemning the systematic destruction of schools, archives, museums, dwellings, hospitals, roads, food sources and livelihoods for millions of people in Gaza by the Israeli state’s military; condemning the reveling in this destruction by members of that violent force, who wantonly parade their military superiority over babies and children; condemning the relegation of the surviving population to misery, starvation and no schools … condemning this by condemning scholasticide cannot be controversial. If this were happening anywhere other than Palestine, it would not be controversial to pass a resolution of condemnation. Have the courage to vote “yes” for the resolution.

In the end, the result read by departing president of the AHA, Duke University historian Thavolia Glymph, showed over 80 percent of voters supporting the resolution.

The AHA Executive Council now has three choices: to accept the vote and the resolution as is; to veto it; or to send it to the whole membership (something like 10,000 members) for a virtual vote. My suspicion is that they will do the latter, since the council was not in favor of the resolution and to veto it outright would be absurd, given the landslide support it had at the meeting. I’m not certain what the timeline is for any of these actions, but what is clear is that, if it is sent to the full membership, we will have to be on our guard for another biased Grossman-like framing of the resolution and vote. I would not put it past the council or maybe even the new AHA president, who spoke against the resolution at the meeting, to try to influence the outcome preemptively.