Dear Supporters of Historians for Peace and Democracy,
This is a call for help.
H-PAD has enthusiastically signed on to the campaign against what PEN calls educational gag orders– i.e. all the state laws banning the teaching about race, sexuality, and historical truth.
We do have an agenda for confronting the right-wing culture wars.
1. We have enlisted in a campaign launched by Kimberlé Crenshaw’s African American Policy Forum to encourage faculty senates to pass resolutions against the educational gag orders. (For information about the faculty senate academic freedom resolutions campaign, follow this link to our most recent Call to Action.) The AAPF’s campaign is surprisingly effective. It has already produced senate resolutions at such universities as Texas, Alabama, Minnesota, Colorado, Ohio State, and Oregon, among others and is beginning to get national recognition in the media.
2. We are putting together a website that contains reports and documents that may be of use for faculty members, journalists, and other groups and individuals concerned about the attacks on academic freedom. We will also collect and post up-to-date information about the faculty senate academic freedom resolution campaign. No such central repository exists; its value for the campaign against the educational gag rules is obvious. Here is the link to the current version of that website.
3. We are also engaged in publicizing events connected with that campaign such as the March 2nd Teach-In on “Race, History, & Academic Freedom,” sponsored by the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions at Hunter College (CUNY). We hope to be able to present similar webinars in the next few months as well.
BUT WE CAN’T DO THIS WORK WITHOUT YOUR HELP
There are only a handful of us in the H-PAD Steering Committee and the H-PAD subgroup working on the Culture Wars, we are only human and we need more warm bodies – with a strong political commitment to the movement for peace and social justice and a willingness to make a concrete contribution to that movement. Please join us in this important work. Even a few hours will make a difference. And money won’t hurt either. The Steering Committee is planning to hire a part-time assistant to help with some of our work, but we still need volunteers to push resolutions by faculty senates, councils or other faculty organizations and to help us gather information on the culture war and how to combat it. We also need donations to continue this work.
Please let us know if you are interested in joining our work. Contact Molly Nolan, mn4@nyu.edu.
In Solidarity,
Ellen Schrecker and Molly Nolan
for the Steering Committee of Historians for Peace and Democracy
A-CALL-TO-ACTION.pdf