44 No. 74 JUSTICE The leadership’s ultimate position omitted any conversation about antisemitism, the ideology and actions of Hamas, or Israel’s conduct of the war. Instead, the decision essentially asserted that the AHA was a scholarly rather than a political organization. The AHA veto was a welcome first step but the AHA leadership needs to end the possibility of an organization, in this case H-PAD, to misuse the association to advance its own political agenda. The message of the “scholasticide” resolution and the BDS movement in general is three-fold. First, supporters of Israel are advocates of a racist, settler-colonial state that is bereft of moral legitimacy. Second, it is not acceptable to draw critical attention to the agency and beliefs of Hamas or the Islamic Republic of Iran because their antagonism toward Israel is an understandable reaction to Israel’s existence and nature. Third, therefore, there should be no place for any pro-Israel supporters in the American historical profession and, if you are young or in mid-career, your prospects for securing an academic position in a history department in the United States or advancing from your current position are next to zero. As all Jewish academics will likely be presumed guilty of Zionist sympathies until proven otherwise, saving their careers would likely require that they make strenuous efforts to demonstrate that they are not among those who “justify genocide” in Gaza, but rather are Jews who join the chorus of the supposedly righteous and the good against Israel.27 It remains to be seen if the H-PAD assault that culminated in the lopsided vote taken in New York on January 5, 2025, precedes an era where American historian communities are free of Jews in general, and certainly any Jews believed to be guilty of the sin of Zionism. Hopefully, as they have in the past, American historians will reject the voices of activists seeking to turn a scholarly organization into a political instrument. With regard to reasons why a distinction between scholarship and politics should be maintained, the strictly legal argument posits that such a distinction will gather the broadest support among American historians, given that many will not presume to be experts on the history of Israel, the antagonism of the Arab states, Islamist organizations, or Iran. In addition to resisting the politicization of the academy, university leaders must frankly address the fact that the sub-discipline of Middle East Studies has long been captured by an anti-Zionist consensus, one that uses claims of expertise to influence other fields in the humanities and social sciences. A realistic and practical response to this development is for leaders to create faculty positions which will introduce pluralism and genuine diversity of viewpoints into an intellectual climate notable for many years now by their absence. n Jeffrey Herf, Emeritus Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Maryland, College Park, has published extensively on Nazism, the Holocaust, antisemitism, and its impact on the Middle East. He is the author of the recently published Three Faces of Antisemitism: Right, Left and Islamist (Routledge, 2024). 27. See, for example, the statement of the “Genocide and Holocaust Crisis Network: Who We Are,” GHSCN, available at https://www.ghscn.org/about. The authors, who include professors in Israel and the U.S., write “over the last year and a half, we have witnessed the weaponization of Holocaust memory and accusations of antisemitism to justify genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing throughout Palestine – not only by state actors but also by institutions and scholars in our field.” For criticisms of the genocide accusation, see Tal Becker, “Opening Statement of the MFA Legal Adviser Dr. Tal Becker at the International Court of Justice Proceedings” (Dec. 29, 2023), https://www.gov.il/en/pages/openingstatement-of-mfa-legal-advisor-tal-becker-at-icjproceedings-12-jan-2024; and Norman Goda and Jeffrey Herf, “Why it’s wrong to describe Israel’s war in Gaza as a ‘genocide’,” WASHINGTON POST (June 3, 2025), https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/06/03/ israel-gaza-genocide-allegations/
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