At its semiannual meeting on Sunday June 3, 2007, the AHA Council released the following statement (see the press room page on the AHA web site) in support of the recent letter from the Middle East Studies Association on the detention of scholars in Iran:

We, the members of the Council of the American Historical Association, write to express our support for the recent statements issued by the Middle East Studies Association protesting the arrests and detention of Dr. Haleh Esfandiari and Dr. Kian Tajbakhsh. As Council members of an organization dedicated to academic freedom and free scholarly exchange, we are deeply disturbed by the Iranian government’s actions in this matter and join our colleagues in MESA in calling for the immediate release of Dr. Esfandiari and Dr. Tajbakhsh.

You can find the Middle East Studies Association’s letter, written jointly with the International Society for Iranian Studies (ISIS), to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei protesting the arrest of these two scholars here.

This post first appeared on AHA Today.