On January 5, members of the American Historical Association (AHA)—the leading professional organization for academic historians—voted at an annual meeting for a resolution that would “oppose scholasticide in Gaza.” The crime of scholasticide, Jeffrey Herf notes, was concocted in 2009 by UN functionaries specifically to condemn Israel for, supposedly, deliberately destroying Palestinian educational institutions. A group of historians’ conclusion that such a systematic pattern exists, based on the dubious evidence of various UN reports—without considering Israel’s own claims—is, Herf notes, a failure to exercise the most basic principles of the discipline:
Professional historians are frequently faced with the dilemma of assessing conflicting truth claims; an ability to scrutinize sources and evaluate their credibility is essential to the historian’s craft. What are the most reliable sources? Who is telling the truth and who is lying? . . . Israel’s antagonists never bother to engage with the arguments and evidence offered by Israel in its own defense.
But this lack of intellectual integrity is only the beginning of the problem:
The packed meeting erupted into cheers when proponents of the resolution approached the microphone and merely stated their names, and their statements evoked further cheers and standing ovations. When I described the historical scholarship that the resolution ignored and referred to the biased nature of UN reports, hissing and jeering filled the room. Celebratory chants of “Free, free Palestine!” rang out when the lopsided vote results were announced. An AHA discussion had degenerated into a political rally. The hatred of Israel and, yes, of those of us who defended it, was intense.
The public outside the universities and colleges may conclude that historians who vote for such resolutions are no longer credible as scholarly professionals in their own specialties.
Finally, adopting this resolution sends a clear message to anyone, Jewish or not, who supports Israel’s efforts to defend itself and rejects the propaganda war waged by Hamas and UN institutions. That message is: there is no place for you in the American historical profession and, if you are young or in mid-career, your chances of securing an academic position in a history department in the United States or advancing from your current position are zero. So you should probably get out of the profession.
More about: Academia, Anti-Semitism, History, Israel on campus