<div dir="ltr">In case you have not seen this statement, please read it and share it. And note the use of the word "horror!"<div><br></div><div>Margaret Power for</div><div>Historians for Peace and Democracy</div><div><br clear="all"><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><font size="4"><i>Solidarity Across the Americas: The Puerto Rican Nationalist Party and Antiimperialism<br></i></font><div><a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469674056/solidarity-across-the-americas/" style="color:rgb(17,85,204);font-family:AppleSystemUIFont;font-size:17.3333px" target="_blank">https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469674056/solidarity-across-the-americas/</a></div><div><font size="4">Margaret Power</font><div><font size="4">Professor of History Emerita<br></font><div><font size="4">Department of Humanities</font></div><div><font size="4">Illinois Institute of Technology </font></div><div><font size="4">3301 South Dearborn</font></div><div><font size="4">Chicago, Illinois 60616</font></div><div><font size="4"><br></font></div></div><div><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-size:17px"><i>I acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land I am on today, the Kickapoo and the Potawatami, and pay my respects to their elders past and present.</i></span><font size="4"><br></font></div></div></div></div></div><br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">---------- Forwarded message ---------<br>From: <strong class="gmail_sendername" dir="auto">American Historical Association</strong> <span dir="auto"><<a href="mailto:announcements@historians.org">announcements@historians.org</a>></span><br>Date: Mon, Mar 6, 2023 at 9:02 AM<br>Subject: [Ext] AHA Releases Statement Opposing Florida HB 999<br>To: <<a href="mailto:power@iit.edu">power@iit.edu</a>><br></div><br><br><div class="msg-7933500324362093591"><u></u>
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<p style="color:#515151;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:21px;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;text-align:left">
Dear Colleague,</p>
<p style="color:#515151;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:21px;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;text-align:left"> </p>
<p style="color:#515151;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:21px;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;text-align:left">The American Historical Association has released a <strong><a href="http://historians.informz.net/z/cjUucD9taT0zODY0Njc5JnA9MSZ1PTM5MzYzNTQ0OCZsaT0zOTc5Mjk2MA/index.html" style="color:#4ec6b7;font-weight:inherit;text-decoration:none" target="_blank"><span>statement</span></a></strong> expressing horror at the assumptions that
lie at the heart of Florida House Bill 999 and its “blatant and frontal attack
on principles of academic freedom and shared governance central to higher education
in the United States.” Filed in the Florida House of Representatives on February
21, 2023, HB 999 represents “an attempt at a hostile takeover of a state’s
system of higher education.” “Florida’s legislature has on its agenda a
dagger to the heart of an American institutional framework that has long been
the envy of the world,” the AHA writes. This bill is not only about Florida.
“It is about the heart and soul of public higher education in the United States
and about the role of history, historians, and historical thinking in the lives
of the next generation of Americans.”</p>
<p style="color:#515151;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:21px;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;text-align:left"> </p>
<p style="color:#515151;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:21px;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;text-align:left">The
statement is reproduced below and available, along with a full list of signatories,
<strong><a href="http://historians.informz.net/z/cjUucD9taT0zODY0Njc5JnA9MSZ1PTM5MzYzNTQ0OCZsaT0zOTc5Mjk2MA/index.html" style="color:#4ec6b7;font-weight:inherit;text-decoration:none" target="_blank"><span>on our website</span></a></strong>. To date, 34 organizations have signed
onto the statement. If you are a member of an organization that would like to
add its signature to this statement, please have that organization's leadership
get in touch with the AHA at <strong><a href="mailto:info@historians.org" style="color:#4ec6b7;font-weight:inherit;text-decoration:none" target="_blank"><span>info@historians.org</span></a></strong>. </p>
<p style="color:#515151;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:21px;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;text-align:center">__________________________________________________</p>
<p style="color:#515151;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:21px;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;text-align:left"> </p>
<p style="color:#515151;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:21px;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;text-align:left">
HB 999, filed in the Florida House of Representatives on February 21, 2023, merits attention and comment. </p>
<p style="color:#515151;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:21px;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;text-align:left"> </p>
<p style="color:#515151;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:21px;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;text-align:left">The American Historical Association has been monitoring the
genre of legislation commonly referred to as “divisive concepts” bills for
two years. Normally we do not engage with what gets fed into the hopper; we wait
until legislation is viable, generally when a bill emerges from committee. But
HB 999 is different, and we consider it imperative to speak out immediately and
forcefully. What has previously best been characterized as unwarranted political
intervention into public education has now escalated to an attempt at a hostile
takeover of a state’s system of higher education.</p>
<p style="color:#515151;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:21px;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;text-align:left"> </p>
<p style="color:#515151;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:21px;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;text-align:left">We express horror (not our usual “concern”) at the assumptions
that lie at the heart of this bill and its blatant and frontal attack on principles
of academic freedom and shared governance central to higher education in the United
States. Florida’s legislature has on its agenda a dagger to the heart of an
American institutional framework that has long been the envy of the world (and
a source of billions of dollars in revenue from international students).</p>
<p style="color:#515151;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:21px;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;text-align:left"> </p>
<p style="color:#515151;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:21px;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;text-align:left">What would implementation of this legislation look like? Consider history education.</p>
<p style="color:#515151;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:21px;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;text-align:left"> </p>
<p style="color:#515151;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:21px;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;text-align:left">HB 999 allows political appointees unprecedented oversight
of day-to-day educational decisions. Universities and departments will face consequences
should unelected partisan actors decide that any “general education core courses”
somehow “suppress or distort significant historical events.” All history teachers
“suppress” some events; everything has a history, and no course can include
all histories. It is up to the teacher, within reasonable state guidelines, to
select what is most important and most useful to students in a particular class. All else is “suppressed.”</p>
<p style="color:#515151;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:21px;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;text-align:left"> </p>
<p style="color:#515151;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:21px;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;text-align:left">The bill also gives to boards of trustees the authority to
determine if and when teachers of a mandated set of core courses have “define[d]
American history as contrary to the creation of a new nation based on the universal
principles stated in the Declaration of Independence.” Is it illegal for a faculty
member to suggest that the US Constitution, rather than the Declaration of Independence,
created the political framework for the new nation? Given that HB 999 would empower
boards of regents to review the tenure status of any faculty member, such legitimate
(and pedagogically useful) interpretive disagreements could have dire implications
for all instructors, even faculty best protected by traditional norms of governance and procedure.</p>
<p style="color:#515151;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:21px;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;text-align:left"> </p>
<p style="color:#515151;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:21px;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;text-align:left">This is not merely an escalation of the “history wars”
that have ebbed and flowed across the American landscape—and indeed, in other
nations as well; the United States is hardly exceptional in this regard. Like
the proponents of more conventional “divisive concepts” legislation, advocates
of this particular assault especially fear the implications of the state’s youth
learning that slavery and racism have enduring legacies. The idea that racism
is a central aspect of American historical development—and its enduring presence
in institutions, cultures, and practices—is well within the mainstream of historical
scholarship, however much we might disagree about dynamics, relationships, and
models of change. Notably, HB 999 mentions “critical race theory” more often
than the words “democracy,” “freedom,” and “liberty” combined. This
legislation aims to incite and divide, rather than to establish a healthy foundation for civic understanding.</p>
<p style="color:#515151;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:21px;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;text-align:left"> </p>
<p style="color:#515151;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:21px;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;text-align:left">The AHA does not disagree with HB 999’s premise that the
mission of the state university system should be “education for citizenship
of the constitutional republic [and] . . . the state’s existing and emerging
workforce needs.” Employers look for applicants who have learned how to think,
rather than what to think. Using evidence and deciding what facts matter is vital
to being a successful engineer, doctor, or teacher. Would we want heart surgeons
whose coursework or choice of tools had been dictated by political appointees?
As for the viability of our constitutional republic, it is neither possible nor
desirable to forge unity by refusing to acknowledge and understand division; instead,
the very language of this legislation sows and perpetuates division. An informed
citizenry requires the skills of historical literacy and the ability to test ideas,
which is the core of history education.</p>
<p style="color:#515151;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:21px;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;text-align:left">
</p>
<p style="color:#515151;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:21px;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;text-align:left">This
is not only about Florida. It is about the heart and soul of public higher education
in the United States and about the role of history, historians, and historical
thinking in the lives of the next generation of Americans.</p>
<p style="color:#515151;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:21px;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;text-align:center">__________________________________________________</p>
<p style="color:#515151;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:21px;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;text-align:left"> </p>
<p style="color:#515151;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:21px;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;text-align:left"><strong>Teaching History with Integrity</strong></p>
<p style="color:#515151;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:21px;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;text-align:left"> </p>
<p style="color:#515151;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:21px;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;text-align:left">The AHA, its members, and other historians find ourselves on
the front lines of a conflict over understandings of America’s past, confronting
radical activists who are promoting ignorance in the name of unity. Please visit
our <strong><a href="http://historians.informz.net/z/cjUucD9taT0zODY0Njc5JnA9MSZ1PTM5MzYzNTQ0OCZsaT0zOTc5Mjk2MQ/index.html" style="color:#4ec6b7;font-weight:inherit;text-decoration:none" target="_blank"><span>Teaching History with Integrity</span></a></strong> site for the most up-to-date
information about AHA efforts to combat these bills and for resources and expressions
of support for history educators. We hope that you will distribute widely our
short videos on <strong><a href="http://historians.informz.net/z/cjUucD9taT0zODY0Njc5JnA9MSZ1PTM5MzYzNTQ0OCZsaT0zOTc5Mjk2Mg/index.html" style="color:#4ec6b7;font-weight:inherit;text-decoration:none" target="_blank"><span>Teaching with Integrity: Historians Speak</span></a></strong>.</p>
<p style="color:#515151;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:21px;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;text-align:left"> </p>
<p style="color:#515151;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:21px;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;text-align:left">Sincerely,</p></td>
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James Grossman</p>
<p style="color:#515151;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:normal;line-height:21px;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;text-align:left">Executive Director</p></td>
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