This moment is overwhelming. Each day we wake up to new attacks on history; the humanities; libraries, museums, and archives; and colleges and universities, as well as individual faculty, scholars, and students. We work from the resolute belief that scholarship, teaching, and free inquiry are essential for democracy. As a scholarly organization committed to careful historical analysis of the role of the United States in the world, the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) denounces the attacks on these values. 

SHAFR and its leadership have signed statements on the political assault on the Smithsonian Institution, the National Archives, and the National Park Service. Yet the situation continues to worsen. We have recently witnessed the shutting down of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars; the arrest, detention, and deportation of students and faculty who are green-card and visa holders for their exercise of free speech; the attacks on all efforts to make our campuses and organizations inclusive and welcoming for all; and the Trump administration’s refusal to respect judicial and congressional authority. We have seen attempts to rewrite history for the sake of partisan agendas, and both the Federal and Presidential Records Act have been violated.

In this context, we know that SHAFR as an organization cannot respond in a timely fashion to each new assault on free speech, academic integrity, and/or higher education. As we continue to monitor the changing academic and political landscapes, we ask that Congress respond forcefully to all attempts to bypass the separation of powers or to unlawfully silence speech. We also call for university presidents, provosts, and deans to stand firm in safeguarding their institutions’ missions. We place our hope in the organizing and activism of the people of the United States, who value their museums, their National Parks, the scholarship that informs teaching in the schools, and the protection of free speech rights for themselves and their neighbors. This is the time for all of us to respond vigorously and urgently to the attacks on our democracy. SHAFR is committed to working on its own and with other organizations to stand up for the work of research and teaching, and for universities as sites of free and open debate about our country, our world, and our future.