Historians Against the War (HAW)
Electronic Newsletter No. 6,
December 2007
The HAW
2009 Conference, April 11-13, Atlanta
HAW
at the AHA
HAW
at the Latin American Studies Association
HAW Working Groups
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Over twenty panels, roundtables, and workshops have been accepted for the
HAW national conference, April 11-13 at Georgia State University in
Atlanta. Featured speakers have also been
lined up for plenary sessions.
The conference will begin Friday evening, April 11, with a keynote
session featuring Bill Fletcher, Jr., a long-time activist in the black freedom
and labor movements, former president of TransAfrica and former education
director of the AFL-CIO. It is possible
that Naomi Klein, author of Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,
will be a co-keynote speaker; she won’t know until January if she will be
able to attend the conference.
A Saturday evening plenary session will feature Dina Rizk Khoury of
George Washington University, a historian of Iraq, and Zachary Lockman of New
York University, who just finished his term at president of the Middle East
Studies Association.
For a complete list of the other sessions, scheduled for Saturday morning
and afternoon and Sunday morning, see the conference web site: http://www.historiansagainstwar.org/hawconf.
Pre-registration is $40 (or $25 low-income) and includes lunch on
Saturday as well as coffee, fruit, and pastries both Saturday and Sunday
mornings.
The annual HAW membership meeting will be held at 4:30 pm Saturday,
January 5, during the AHA convention, location to be announced. During the meeting we will vote for the 2008
Steering Committee, analyze our work in 2007, and discuss plans for 2008.
We will share a literature table with the Radical History Review, as
in the past. It will be near the
Convention Registration Counter on the lobby level of the Marriott Wardman Park
on Friday, starting at 11:30.
Several HAW Steering Committee members (Chris Appy, Carl Mirra, and
Margaret Power), along with Linda Shopes and Jerry Lembcke, will be on the
panel “Voices of Military Resistance: Continuities and Discontinuities among
Dissenters in Chile, Vietnam, and Iraq” at 9:00-11:00 Saturday morning in the
Omni Capital Room.
At the 2007 AHA business meeting, members overwhelmingly passed the
Resolution included below. In a
subsequent on-line vote by AHA members, over three-fourths of those voting
confirmed the business meeting’s approval of the Resolution.
Resolution on United States Government Practices Inimical to the Values of the Historical Profession
(AHA
Resolution passed, January 2007)
Whereas,
The American Historical Association’s Professional Standards emphasize the
importance of open inquiry to the pursuit of historical knowledge;
Whereas,
the American Historical Association adopted a resolution in January 2004
re-affirming the principles of free speech, open debate of foreign policy, and
open access to government records in furthering the work of the historical
profession;
Whereas
during the war in Iraq and the so-called war on terror, the current
Administration has violated the above-mentioned standards and principles
through the following practices:
*excluding
well-recognized foreign scholars;
*condemning
as “revisionism” the search for truth about pre-war intelligence;
*re-classifying
previously unclassified government documents;
*suspending
in certain cases the centuries-old writ of habeas corpus and substituting
indefinite administrative detention without specified criminal charges or
access to a court of law;
*using
interrogation techniques at Guantánamo, Abu-Ghraib, Bagram, and other locations
incompatible with respect for the dignity of all persons required by a
civilized society;
Whereas
a free society and the unfettered intellectual inquiry essential to the
practice of historical research, writing, and teaching are imperiled by the
practices described above; and
Whereas,
the foregoing practices are inextricably linked to the war in which the United
States is presently engaged in Iraq; now, therefore, be it
Resolved,
That the American Historical Association urges its members through publication
of this resolution in Perspectives and other appropriate outlets:
1. To take a public stand as citizens on behalf of the values necessary to the practice of our profession; and
2.
To do whatever they can to bring the Iraq war to a speedy conclusion.
HAW
at the Latin American Studies Association:
by
Margaret Power
About 40 people
attended the HAW-organized panel at the recent Latin American Studies
Association (LASA) Congress in Montreal, Canada. The panel, titled, "U.S. Imperialist Policies in Latin
America and the Middle East" looked at similarities and difference between
U.S. policies in the two regions.
Enrique Ochoa, California State University, chaired the session and
Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, Historians Against the War; Walter Hixson, University of
Akron; Rula Abisaab, McGill University; Malek Abisaab, McGill University;
Margaret Power, Illinois Institute of Technology, and Gregory Grandin, New York
University, made a series of brief presentations. A lively discussion ensued.
HAW
Working-Group Updates
If you are a
“Congress Watcher,” feel free to send news to: Carolyn “Rusti” Eisenberg, Legislative
Working Group. Updates will be posted
as regularly as possible. Help with
editing of Legislative Updates is very welcome: contact Rusti for details, hiscze@aol.com
The HAW Teaching
Working Group would like to propose the development of about six "Document
Based Questions" for inclusion on the AP History exams--US, European, and
World. We need your help. Anyone who has worked for ETS in
developing DBQs in the past, has worked as an ETS AP Essay Reader, or has
taught AP History in a US high school: we need your expertise and
guidance. If you would like to contribute to and guide the development of
these questions, please contact Jeri Fogel, " jerise@redjellyfish.net,
or David Applebaum, applebaum@rowan.edu
The "Teaching Resources" section of the HAW web site (www.historiansagainstwar.org/resources) contains
information on pamphlets, guides, essays, and new K-12 on-line “Teaching
Resources on the Vietnam War and the Iraq War” (by John Fitzgerald, a Vietnam
veteran and retired high school history teacher who is on the HAW Steering
Committee).
This
issue of the Newsletter was edited by Jeri Fogel along with Margaret Power and
Jim O’Brien.