On January 5, 2025, attendees at the American Historical Association annual conference, representing the largest and oldest organization of historians and history teachers in the nation, voted overwhelmingly (423 to 88) to condemn scholasticide in Gaza. The resolution denounced the “pattern of attacks on schools, universities, teachers, and students in the Gaza Strip,’” including the destruction of all Gazan universities, as well as the targeted destruction of “archives, libraries, cultural centers, museums, and bookstores,” and the near obliteration of “Gaza’s education system,” during the Israeli genocide in Gaza over the past year and a half. Just over a week later, the AHA Council, a partially democratically elected leadership committee, vetoed the resolution. Among their stated reasons was a fear of right-wing backlash and potentially losing government contracts.
Scholars of authoritarianism have long warned of “anticipatory obedience” in cementing the power of fascism. If the American Historical Association's act of obeying in advance is any indication of the state of our institutions going into the second – and much scarier – Trump era, queer and trans scholars (and people in general) should be terrified.
Palestine is a litmus test. If the AHA council refuses to recognize a genocide that has played out live on the internet, that has been condemned in the court of global opinion (and in global courts), and which their membership overwhelmingly opposes, how can we, queer and trans scholars, expect them to show even an ounce of backbone in opposing American fascists’ increasingly genocidal rhetoric and plans to “eradicate” us from public life.
Over the past few years, the American Historical Association has made itself into an active lobbying body, correctly recognizing teaching historical facts as an inherently political project, especially given the centrality of erasing and rewriting History to contemporary fascist and far-right movements. As they state in their last tax filings, the AHA provides the critical service of defending its members’ “academic freedoms” and “access to archives.” They have taken stances on the importance of queer and trans histories, opposed the panic over “Critical Race Theory,” written an amicus curae brief in the Supreme Court Case that ultimately overturned Roe v. Wade, and attacked Trump’s hackey and racist attempts to whitewash US history. For one of dozens of examples of foreign-policy positions, in 2022, the Association condemned Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, in fact actively supporting “Ukrainian nation and its people in their resistance to Russian military aggression.” The Association, moreover, has taken positions explicitly supporting queer and trans people, from a 2015 LGBTQ taskforce, to public statements in defence of queer history, and, more performatively, branding much of their merch in rainbow and trans flag colors.
One refrain that emanated from sympathetic-centrist-types, was a candid worry that the American Historical Association may lose lucrative federal money and projects if it took an allegedly controversial stance on the Israeli genocide in Gaza. The Association requires money to fund its increasingly public political scope and the US government has been a source of some of that money.
This is, to be fair, a scary time to adopt even the most milquetoast resolution in support of Palestinian life and history. At the end of the last legislative session, Congress Passed H.R. 9495, which many have taken to calling the “Nonprofit Killer” bill, terminating “tax-exempt status” for organizations deemed to be supporting terrorism, whatever that means. Even large nonprofits, working across sectors, but especially those like Students for Justice in Palestine, Committee on American Islamic Relations, and American Muslims for Palestine, as well as Jewish Voice for Peace, have expressed existential dread. This bill is part of a broader strategy, outlined in a document titled “Project Esther,” aiming to combat an alleged “Hamas Support Network” ostensibly operating on university campuses across the nation. Conflating hatred of Israel and hatred of America with antisemitism, the project seeks to eradicate pro-Palestine groups from America’s “open society” or its public sphere. To this end, they plan to use financial audits, academic blacklists, and lawfare campaigns, including hate-speech and counterterrorism laws, as well as the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). This playbook is not new. Though originally passed to imprison the mob, the RICO Act and domestic terrorism accusations have been thrown at a range of progressive protest movements, especially the climate and racial justice movements.
The worry over the finances of the American Historical Association, however, is either misinformed or disingenuous. With an existing annual revenue of almost $6 million and assets totalling almost $11 million, the AHA’s budget dwarfs those of most other professional organizations in the humanities. Much larger associations, however, have taken much stronger stands. The American Anthropological Association, with $7.8 million in revenue and almost $16 million in assets adopted a Boycott, Divest, and Sanction proposal in 2023, while the American Sociological Association ($7.8 million in revenue, almost $15 million assets) in 2024 denounced the genocide in Gaza and called for defending scholars’ rights to speak out on Palestine.
In fact, this argument does little more than serve to hold queer scholars hostage. It pits us and those few groups the association has deigned to stand up for against Palestinians and their historians. If we want to keep having nice things (in this case an association that feigns regard for our lives) we must play a game of make-believe and at least not publicly reject a near consensus in our leadership that holds a well-documented and already litigated genocide to not be “settled” history.
What this veto actually teaches us is that American Historical Association Council will, when under enough pressure, refuse to stand for what the vast majority of their members believe is just and good. Beneath their ostensibly caring liberal platitudes lies a cold and vicious spinelessness that leaves transgender scholars uniquely vulnerable.
Since entering office, Donald Trump immediately began his onslaught against transgender people. While the worst wildfires in US history continues to burn across California, Donald Trump has issued executive orders banning transgender athletes from competing in sports, erasing the gender-neutral X as a marker on US passports, and legally requiring all people to re-register on their passports with their “god-given” sex “at contraception” (a nod to how anti-trans legislation is also a gateway to attacks on all women and bodies). Meanwhile, from day one, Trump is overseeing an onslaught against DEI initiatives and funding, seeking to eradicate “gender ideology,” alongside other ostensibly subversive ideas out of the government.
At this last AHA conference, we heard story after story of scholars being systematically targeted, harassed, and threatened by the right-wing outrage machine just for being transgender. We heard stories of loneliness and immiseration in Britain. And we heard how already at public institutions in states with proliferating anti-trans laws, professors have been hounded out of their jobs, and have faced doxing and death threats for teaching historical facts that the right wing deems controversial. The Committee on LGBT History even held an open Listening Sessionto try to figure out how the AHA could respond to the rising tides of well-funded and politically powerful transphobia around the world. But to what end? What use is this accumulating archive of transgender suffering?
Republicans, moreover, have long viewed Palestinian and queer liberation as intertwined. Republicans blamed the Spring 2024 encampments (much like the 2025 L.A. wildfires) on a nebulous “woke agenda” ostensibly making campuses unsafe for “regular” people.” Across the country, as the American Association of University Professors tell us in a recent report, we are entering an era of McCarthyist repression. Public university systems across the country are mandating the removal of discussions of “race,” “gender,” and “sexuality,” while the University of Florida system even yoking these anti-gender and anti-DEI efforts to a mass review of courses for any “anti-Israel bias.” In the schizoid mind of a representative “gender critical” City University of New York Emeritus Professor, “The Palestine True Believers and the Trans True Believers,” are one and the same. Conservatives are “pro-Israel and pro-biology,” while both transgender people and Palestinians are “bloodthirsty barbarians” on a Jihad to destroy “Judeo-Christian” civilization.
Indeed, many queer and trans scholars have long been at the forefront of solidarity struggles with Palestinian liberation. There is, notably, a rich and varied tapestry of queer and trans Arab and Muslim life in and around the academy, for whom Palestine is a central concern. By November 2023, over 1200 scholars in queer, trans, and feminist studies had signed onto a letter declaring that “None of us are free until we are all free. Palestine is not an exception. … Our feminism compels us to say: Free Palestine!” Beyond a ceasefire, the letter declared: “End the Siege. End the Occupation. Land Back.” The National Women’s Studies Association, moreover, has gone beyond just calling for a ceasefire (which it did in October 2023), recommitting itself to the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and endorsing the 2024 People Conference for Palestine in Detroit. Over this past year around the world queer and feminist historians have been at the frontlines supporting students on and off campus, where they have also born the disproportionate brunt of administrative backlash. Famous cases include Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian at Hebrew University, Mohammed Abdou at Columbia, Maura Finkelstein at Muhlenberg College, and Steven Thrasher at Northwestern, among many, many others.
These scholars, as do many other queer and trans people, recognize that the Israeli Genocide of Gaza is a genocide of queer and trans people. Over 85,000 tons of bombs raining down (more than all of World War II) do not distinguish between straight and queer people. Up until the eve of the ceasefire, Israel’s blocking of medical aid has led to massive shortages of life-saving HIV medication, while Palestine as a whole was in 2020 already declared an area of “increasing concern” for the spread of the disease. Now, in the wake of the almost entire destruction of Gaza’s one-robust health infrastructure, during which the Israeli military treated medical caches “like weapons depots” and systematically destroyed and denied medical aid, HIV/AIDS is just one of many epidemics roiling across the Gaza strip.
During this genocide, the Israeli army has openly wielded queerness and gender violence interchangeably as weapons. Video of soldiers sexually humiliating and brutalizing Palestinian men has aired on Israeli television, while at least one Israeli soldier sodomized a man to death. As Al-Qaws, a Palestinian LGBT organization has put it, the past year and a half saw the regular outpouring of media of “Israeli soldiers posing with their rainbow flags and other Western gay symbols atop the ruins of our society, alongside genocidaires boasting about their sexual abuse, torture, and rape of Palestinian men, women, and children.” This, in turn, emerges out of years of Israeli policy. This self-proclaimed beacon of gay rights has for years systematically blackmailed queer Palestinians, and sexually tortured the Palestinian prisoners and hostages the state holds at any given time.
As queer people, we must ask ourselves: if the AHA is willing to go so far against their members’ stated beliefs and desires in anticipatory obedience over the potential outcry over us condemning the extermination of queer and trans people in Palestine, what will they do in the face of the powerful anti-trans outrage machine in the United States? Will this council have the moral fortitude to stand with marginalized historians and against American fascism? Will it mobilize any of its millions of dollars in annual revenue and its lobbying arm to protect us? If this vote is any indication, the answer is clearly no. Not unless forced to do so.
A smart, liberal, democratic, member-run organization would be working overtime to seek alternative sources of funding and support, as Trump Administration begins its onslaught against marginalized scholars and people. A courageous organization would support the vast army of precarious, adjunctified workers that sustain our profession. It would use its vast reach and influence in curriculum development to tell stories of Palestinian life, of queer life, of, in short, real history. It would demand more: better history through better working conditions, more funding for the humanities, and clearer ties between history and the present.
Instead historians will remember that in the days before the inauguration of Donald Trump as our President, one of the most powerful and well-respected, not to mention well-resourced, academic organizations in the nation chose anticipatory obedience.
To my fellow queer and trans historians: institutions will not protect us. It is up to us to defend our past and secure our future. There is no pride in genocide and the struggle for Palestinian liberation is ours as well. Join Historians for Palestine and Historians for Peace and Democracy. Organize and fight back.
To the AHA Council: as scholars and moral beings you are clearly incapable facing our historical moment. Fund Palestinian history. Let members vote. Resign.