The blog on the The American Historical Association Conference Summary for 2025 ended with a reference to the vote in the business meeting to condemn Israel for its actions in Gaza (The Hamas Wing versus the Hamilton Wing at the American Historical Association Conference). The last line was “Who knows what will happen as this year’s conference?”
Now the conference from January 8-11, 2026, is over. Another business meeting has been held. And once again the meeting was in The New York Times and by Jennifer Schuessler, the same reporter I met in 2025. The article “Rift in Academic Group over Mideast Conflict: Leaders of the American Historical Association Veto Resolutions Critical of Israel” (January 14, 2026, print). The latter refers to actions taken in private. The online version was posted on January 12 2026 which is fairly soon after the business meeting January 10 and the council meeting January 11.
Scattered in the report is some critical information which helps put the vote in context. There are about 11,000 members in the AHA. About 3000 attended the conference. About 360 attended the business meeting starting at 5:15 PM, Saturday. Around 250 people voted in favor of the two resolutions. So it would be inaccurate to claim the AHA membership supported the resolutions that “condemns Israeli scholasticide” and “genocide.”
A second issue was the double standard. The Council condemned Russia for its invasion of Ukraine back in 2022. Let’s look at what Russia did immediately after the conference this year.
“In Bitter Winter Freeze, Russia Focuses on Wiping Out the Heat” NYT 1/16/26 front page
“Strikes on Power Plants Force Closings of Schools” NYT 1/18/26 print
“As millions of Ukrainians endure the winter cold amid blackouts caused by the repeated Russian strikes on power plants, Kyiv authorities announced on Friday that schools in the capital would be closed until February ‑ one of the most severe disruptions yet to daily life.
“… Kyiv remained without heat, a week after Russia bombarded heating and electrical infrastructure around the capital …”
That would seem to qualify as scholasticide and part of why Putin has been charged with crimes against humanity.
Spanning the globe, one observes that Gaza and the Ukraine aren’t the only places where atrocities occur. Consider the following examples.
Sri Lanka
“A Brutal Rise of Militancy in Buddhism” July 9, 2019 NYT Print
A Buddhist abbot – “Muslims were violent, Muslims were rapacious. The aim of Muslims is to take over all our land and everything we value.”
“Buddhists have entered the era of militant tribalism, casting themselves as spiritual warriors who must defend their faith against an outside force.”
“Once great Buddhist empires dominated Asia. Then, beginning in the seventh century, Muslim invaders began tearing across the continent. Buddhist rulers in present-day Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia succumbed to Islam.”
“I don’t think anyone would rape Bengali women because they are ugly and disgusting” -Buddhist monk
Myanmar
“Groundbreaking Case Accuses Myanmar of Rohingya Genoicide” NYT 1/13/26 print
The case is now at the World Court. Citing a U.N.-backed investigation, [Paul Reichler, lawyer] said the government call the Rohingya an “impure and subhuman” race from abroad whose population growth “threatened to supplant the pure-blooded local race.” There are now over 1 million people in Bangladesh camps.
“My Rohingya People Are Running Out of Time,” Lucky Karim, 1/23/26 Op-ed, NYT print
Kids in Congo recount Gang Rape, Slavery (Reuters 12/28/25 print in The Journal News about the M23)
Sudan
“Largely out of sight and out of mind” (12/22/25 print, Thomson Reuters Foundation
“the world’s most neglected crisis of 2025, according to a poll of aid agencies.”
30 million people need assistance.
“What we are witnessing in Sudan is nothing short of an indictment of humanity,” said the U.N. refugee agency’s regional director Mamadou Dian Balde.
“This is the biggest humanitarian emergency that the world isn’t talking about,” said Christian Aid’s chief executive Patrick Watt.
As Sudan’s Civil War rages on, its heritage is under siege: at least six museums and multiple historic sites have suffered looting or damage (The Art Newspaper 2/11/25).
“The war itself has been under-reported as other conflicts have taken the global centre stage”
Geoffre Emberling, FOA (Friend of ASOR) webinar “Archaeology and Heritage During the Civil War in Sudan: What Can We Do” 1/8/25 7:00 PM
The American Schools of Oversea Research (ASOR) has had Sudan-related sessions at its annual conference:
Friday November 21, 2025 4:25 PM – 6:30 PM EST
Grand Ballroom A
8A – Cultural Heritage in Crisis: People Oriented (Workshop)
Umm al-Jimal Archaeological Project
Cultural Heritage and US Foreign Relations: Cultural policy is security policy
Communicating Cultural Heritage During Crisis: Challenges and Opportunities (Syria and Sudan)
Crisis Response, Risk and Actions during the Sudan War
Peace Building through Safeguarding Sudan’s Living Heritage during Sudan’s Crisis
With the possible exception of China and the Uyghurs, why are so many of these genocides overlooked or minimized. This analysis on the situation in Iran sheds light on the answer.
Iran
“Hostility of Dead Protesters Show Brutality of Crackdown in Iran,” (1/24/26 NYT frontpage)
“The Silence of the Left on Iran” (Gal Beckerman, Atlantic, 1/16/26, online)
But in the most animated corners of the activist ecosystem, so recently energized by their opposition to the death and destruction in Gaza, it has not resonated. The protest has been viewed instead through the thick lens of ideology, producing a reaction that has been dismissive at best and, at worst, degrading to the Iranians themselves. Many thousands of demonstrators, rising up all over the country, are accused of being witless tools of an imperialist agenda, part of a “CIA-Mossad regime change campaign,” or maybe just actual “Mossad agents.”
By Wednesday, they had reached a sustained-enough pitch that Cornel West, a high priest of anti-imperialism, was moved to reprimand his own comrades for “playing some ideological games”: “Shame on those on the left who view precious Iranians solely as pawns,” he said in a video posted on X. (For this, he was derided in replies as a “clown,” a “fool,” and “a useful tool of Zionism.”)
In my conversations with these Iranian exiles, I heard deep frustration. Whether they are responding to social media or drawing conclusions from a lack of organizing was sometimes hard to tell, but they confirmed for me that this was not just a problem of the very online: The Iranian protesters stepping fearlessly into the sights of government snipers are being seen by the American left with more suspicion than sympathy.
This framework has ideological, if not factual, consistency. In the (admittedly) simplified version of the hard left’s worldview, the Iranian regime represents an anti-imperialist force that should be defended against America and Israel, two countries they view as agents of oppression.
For the exiles I spoke with, the most disturbing—and telling—thing about the tepid response was the contrast with the impassioned reaction to Gaza. “Why is it that when Palestinians—armed or unarmed—fight for liberation, it is seen as a moral duty to support them, but when Iranians protest, they are labeled ‘armed terrorists’ or ‘agents of Mossad?’” Shams, the feminist scholar, said.
“I feel isolated and betrayed,” said Fatemeh Shams, a feminist scholar and poet at the University of Pennsylvania, referring to fellow academics. “I have already unfriended a bunch of these idiots who are, unfortunately, my colleagues. I don’t even know how I can bring myself, in the future, to even go to their conferences and give papers.”
The ideological left doesn’t know what to do with violence that doesn’t involve a Western aggressor, according to Kamran Matin, another exile and an international-relations professor at the University of Sussex in England. Matin noted other groups that received only muted support from anti-imperialists, including the Yazidis, persecuted by ISIS, and Rohingya, victims of the Myanmar government—in which case the aggressors were not Western hegemons.
There are two genocides, of course, which do draw the attention of the Progressives: the United States against the Indians and Israel against the Palestinians. Unless you are killed by the United States or Israel it doesn’t count.
