The Association of University Presses (AUPresses) repudiates the recent presidential Executive Order that grossly mischaracterizes primary and secondary history education across the US as “radical indoctrination.”
We join with the American Historical Association (AHA) and the Organization of American Historians, among others, in this statement, which rejects the premise “that it is ‘anti-American’ or ‘subversive’ to learn the actual history of the United States.”
AUPresses agrees that teachers must be allowed to teach without interference or ideological tests and students to learn how to think, rather than what to think.
Our community of mission-driven presses is proud to assist in the thorough examination of human history and many other disciplines by publishing peer-reviewed scholarship that is rigorous and reliable. As an association, we will continue to champion the freedom to think, research, publish, read, and teach as pillars of an open and just society.
Of note: This executive order clearly draws on the deeply flawed report of the “1776 Commission” in early 2021, which “calls for a form of government indoctrination of American students, and in the process elevates ignorance about the past to a civic virtue.” For more information on the AHA’s and our response to this propaganda in the waning days of the first Trump administration, see https://aupresses.org/news/aupresses-responds-to-the-1776-report/.