Historians and Sexual Harassment: The Challenge for the AHA

Related Link Do Historians Have a Sexual Harassment Problem? By Rick Shenkman

Marcy Norton is a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania.  In November she circulated a petition asking the American Historical Association to take on the issue of sexual harassment.  Some 750 historians backed the effort.  This led to the establishment of a group now known as the Feminist Historians' Collective.

Katrin Schultheiss is the chair of the history department at George Washington University and the chair of the AHA's Committee on Gender Equity.  She reported that the AHA is preparing to survey its membership to determine how big a problem sexual harassment is in the profession. This will be the first comprehensive survey of this nature aimed at historians.  It is modeled on a survey used recently by the American Political Science Association.

Laura J. Mitchell is an associate professor of history at UC Irvine.  

They were interviewed by the History News Network's Rick Shenkman on January 6, 2018 at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association following a panel discussion, "Historians and Sexual Harassment: The Challenge for the AHA." Norton and Schultheiss were members of the panel.  About 75 people showed up for the discussion. We have collected tweets from the session below.

As can be gleaned from the picture the audience was mainly made up of women.