The American Historical Association, as a member of Scholars at Risk, and also as a scholarly body concerned with and committed to protecting the working environments and rights of historians across the world, endorses in full the statement issued by Scholars at Risk calling for an ongoing dialogue about and the restoration of legal rights to academics in Turkey. (Update, 7/26/2016: The AHA has also joined more than 20 other scholarly societies and the American Council of Learned Societies in a letter expressing similar concerns and objections.)

The AHA sent on February 4, 2016, a letter to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, expressing “alarm and deep concern regarding reports of punitive measures and criminal investigations taken against Turkish academics who recently signed a petition addressing Turkish government policies in southeastern Turkey.” Clearly the situation has grown far more serious, and the AHA joins our colleagues in other disciplines and across the world in supporting academic freedom and institutional integrity essential to scholarship and teaching.

This post first appeared on AHA Today.