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For Historians, Facts Matter

(Times of Israel) Jeffrey Herf - On Jan. 9, members of the American Historical Association (AHA) meeting in Atlanta voted 111 to 50 to reject a resolution denouncing Israeli policies towards Palestinian universities in Gaza and the West Bank, as they did a year ago. The standards of evaluation of the AHA are those of professional historians, not those of diplomats in the UN General Assembly or partisan NGOs. Historians join the AHA for professional, not political, reasons. We take pride in defeating this resolution, viewing the vote as a defense of the discipline of history and a moment when scholars asserted that facts are indeed stubborn things. Other academic organizations may refuse to follow our lead and may support wretched texts filled with distortions about Israel. Yet if they do, many historians will conclude that their standards of evidence and verification are not as rigorous as ours and that their scholarly claims about other matters should be taken with a large grain of salt. The writer is Distinguished University Professor, Department of History, University of Maryland, College Park.
2016-01-15 00:00:00
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