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The latest activity of the AHA and historians in supporting history and historical thinking.

  • AHA Submits Testimony on Idaho Social Studies Standards Review (April 2024)

    May 01, 2024 - 

    The AHA has reviewed the draft Idaho Content Standards for Social Studies and submitted testimony to the Idaho Department of Education offering suggestions to improve student learning in specific content areas. “Additional attention to state and local history would enhance this framework by engaging students through exploration of the pasts that shape their experiences and the communities in which they live,” the AHA wrote. “Taking advantage of this opportunity to revise the standards by bringing in more of Idaho’s unique story, especially in relation to Native history, westward migration, mining, and public land use, as well as specifying more than a single line about the Civil Rights Movement would further strengthen them.”

  • AHA Submits Testimony on Maine Social Studies Standards Review (April 2024)

    May 01, 2024 - 

    The AHA has reviewed the existing Maine Learning Results for Social Studies and has submitted testimony to the Maine Department of Education (DOE) as part of the state’s process for standards revision. This testimony includes suggested revisions and “encourages the DOE to provide more robust guidance to districts and teachers about themes, topics, ideas, and developments with which students should ideally be familiar by the completion of their K–12 education,” emphasizing the importance of teaching students to think historically.

  • AHA and OAH Amicus Brief for Dobbs v. Jackson Cited in New York Times Magazine Article (May 2024)

    May 01, 2024 - 

    The amicus curiae brief submitted by the AHA and the Organization of American Historians (OAH) in the Supreme Court case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was cited in a New York Times Magazine article by Emily Bazelon about the new “history and tradition” test that conservative court judges have recently adopted, which “allow judges to set aside modern developments in the law to restore the precedents of the distant past.” The brief, based on decades of study and research by professional historians, aimed to provide an accurate historical perspective of abortion and abortion laws; the article describes how the history presented in the brief was largely ignored by in favor of other interpretations by Justice Samuel Alito, the author of the majority opinion in Dobbs.

  • AHA President and President-Elect Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences (April 2024)

    Apr 25, 2024 - 

    AHA president Thavolia Glymph (Duke Univ.) and president-elect Ben Vinson III (Howard Univ.) were named as two of the individuals elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2024. Members of the academy are “those who discover and advance knowledge and those who apply knowledge to the problems of society.”

  • AHA Sends Letter to Iowa Governor Urging Veto of Social Studies Bill (April 2024)

    Apr 25, 2024 - 

    The AHA has sent a letter to Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds urging her to veto HF 2545, a bill “[r]iddled with distortions and inaccuracies” that “overrides the state’s mandated process for developing public school curricula, while imposing unprecedented restrictions on the content and structure of key courses in US and world history.” “This bill is a Frankenstein’s monster constructed out of five out-of-state model bills that share little more than the support of a small group of lobbyists with an overt political agenda,” the AHA wrote. 

  • AHA Researcher Testifies on Maine Social Studies Standards (April 2024)

    Apr 24, 2024 - 

    AHA researcher Scot McFarlane will testify on behalf of the AHA to the Maine Department of Education regarding the state’s current social studies standards. In a public hearing in Augusta on April 29, McFarlane will share prepared remarks. “Maine’s social studies standards… emphasize skills with little specificity about content. This is a missed opportunity. State-level social studies standards can help teachers engage their students by placing local, state, and regional history in a context that connects to national and global themes,” his testimony states. “Good, history-rich standards can guide parents, teachers, and school administrators as they prepare future generations of Maine students for success in a complex and interconnected world.”

  • AHA Members Named 2024–25 National Humanities Center Fellows (April 2024)

    Apr 24, 2024 - 

    Congratulations to AHA members Joseph M.H. Clark (Univ. of Kentucky), Mostafa Minawi (Cornell Univ.), and John W. Sweet (Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), along with the other historians who have been named as 2024–25 National Humanities Center (NHC) fellows. “[The fellows] were selected from a highly competitive group of applicants representing institutions from across the globe,” said NHC president and director Robert D. Newman. “We look forward to their arrival in the fall as they each contribute their individual brilliance to creating a lively intellectual community.”

  • AHA Council Member Receives New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance Teaching Award (April 2024)

    Apr 24, 2024 - 

    Congratulations to AHA Council member Kristin O’Brassill-Kulfan (Rutgers Univ.), who has been awarded the New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance’s 2024 Teaching Award. This award recognizes “innovation and creativity in teaching New Jersey studies on the elementary, middle, secondary, and college level.”

  • AHA Members Author Amicus Brief for SCOTUS Case Involving the Voting Rights Act (April 2024)

    Apr 24, 2024 - 

    AHA members Carol Anderson (Emory Univ.), Orville Vernon Burton (Clemson Univ.), and Alexander Keyssar (Harvard Univ.), as well as J. Morgan Kousser (California Inst. of Technology) have authored an amicus curiae brief to the US Supreme Court in Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. et al. v. Secretary of State of Georgia, an appeal involving Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. This group of voting rights historians, working with the Brennan Center for Justice and represented by Mayer Brown LLP and the Yale Law School Supreme Court Clinic, challenges Georgia’s claim that individuals and community groups cannot bring lawsuits to enforce Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. In the brief, they describe the historical evidence that supports the power of individuals and groups to sue to protect their voting rights.

  • Historians Author Amicus Curiae Brief in Trump v. United States (April 2024)

    Apr 24, 2024 - 

    A group of 15 founding-era historians represented by the Brennan Center for Justice have filed an amicus curiae brief in Trump v. United States, challenging the former president’s claim of immunity. The authors include AHA members Holly Brewer (Univ. of Maryland), Rosemarie Zagarri (George Mason Univ.), Jack N. Rakove (Stanford Univ.), Jonathan Gienapp (Stanford Univ.), Gautham Rao (American Univ.), Alexander Keyssar (Harvard Univ.), and Joanne Freeman (Yale Univ.).

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