CCWH Statement on Protecting Academic Freedom and Promoting Scholarship on Women, Gender, and Sexuality

The Coordinating Council for Women in History (CCWH) was founded on the belief that the history of women, gender, and sexuality is integral to an accurate understanding of the past and that academic freedom, due process, and shared governance are features integral to the proper functioning of higher education institutions.

Recent attacks across the country on scholars and their work prompt us to reaffirm our values to our membership and the wider public. We believe that First Amendment Rights are critical to ensuring the free exchange of ideas in academic settings as well as the free exchange of ideas in democratic societies, in general.

We also reaffirm our commitment to and sponsorship of scholarship related to women, gender, and sexuality. Generations ago, scholars fought to make sure that history reflected the fullness of human experience. As such, these topics — as so many others — are intrinsically worthy and important because all human beings are intrinsically worthy and important.

Relatedly, we recognize that many scholars of women, gender, and sexuality often belong to the most historically marginalized members of our community. As a result, it is these scholars who find themselves policed, disciplined, and otherwise targeted during times of crisis like those we presently endure.

We demand that higher education leaders restore fair and transparent rules of due process; we demand that they recommit to the values of academic freedom and free speech; we demand that they recommit to shared governance; we demand, in short, that they renew their pledge to uphold our constitutional order.

In solidarity,

The Coordinating Council of Women in History