This moment is overwhelming. Each day we wake up to new attacks on history; the humanities; libraries, museums, and archives; and colleges and universities, as well as individual faculty, scholars, and students. We work from the resolute belief that scholarship, teaching, and free inquiry are essential for democracy. As a scholarly organization committed to careful historical analysis of the role of the United States in the world, the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) denounces the attacks on these values. 

SHAFR and its leadership have signed statements on the political assault on the Smithsonian Institution, the National Archives, and the National Park Service. Yet the situation continues to worsen. We have recently witnessed the shutting down of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars; the arrest, detention, and deportation of students and faculty who are green-card and visa holders for their exercise of free speech; the attacks on all efforts to make our campuses and organizations inclusive and welcoming for all; and the Trump administration’s refusal to respect judicial and congressional authority. We have seen attempts to rewrite history for the sake of partisan agendas, and both the Federal and Presidential Records Act have been violated.

April 2, 2025

The Smithsonian Institution is a national treasure. It is a repository of knowledge and a site of learning. The Smithsonian museums and educational programs reach Americans and international visitors from around the world, telling stories of outer space and ordinary spaces, histories of hope and struggle, and histories of collaborative achievement.

Call for nominations for Peace History Society book and article prizes

SHAFR letter to President Trump regarding the removal of the Archivist of the United States

The text of the letter is reproduced below:

SHAFR Second Book Workshop

SHAFR welcomes applications for participants in a Second Book Workshop scheduled to take place in person on Wednesday June 25 (8:00am–5:00pm), right before the SHAFR Annual Meeting in Arlington, VA. This initiative is aimed at mid-career scholars who are researching/writing their second book and who would like to have a productive environment in which to receive feedback on their work. Participants will be part of a group of peers; they will give comments to others and receive feedback themselves. 

Selection process: The screening committee (formed by three members of the Women in SHAFR committee plus two other experienced SHAFR scholars) will select twelve participants in a two-stage process. In the first stage, they will select potential participants based on the excellence of their work in terms of originality, rigor, and significance. In the second stage, they will rank the applicants who have passed the first round depending on their belonging to a “priority group” (see below).

SHAFR Council voted unanimously to sign on to this statement on February 9^th.

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Stuart L. Bernath Lecture Prize

This year’s Bernath Lecture committee (Paul Chamberlin, Thomas Field, and Kelly Shannon) has selected Professor Amanda Demmer of Virginia Tech University to receive the 2025 Stuart L. Bernath Lecture Prize. An award-winning scholar and teacher, Professor Demmer’s two major research projects highlight some of the most exciting new developments in foreign relations history. Her 2022 book, After Saigon's Fall, has been widely acclaimed as one of the best recent examples of how to cross analyze histories diplomacy and migration. Meanwhile, her current project on Ginetta Sagan demonstrates Demmer's sustained interest in the diplomatic agency of nonstate actors while further historicizing our understanding of the contested realm of international human rights. Her work promises to shed a clarifying light on how developments in the 1970s came to define our times. Furthermore, she is a rising star who is sure to point the way for the next generation of foreign relations historians.

The Department of History at the University of Georgia invites applications for a tenure-track open rank position in Applied History with an anticipated start date of August 1, 2025. Applicants must have their Ph.D. in History or a related field conferred by July 30, 2025. To be eligible for tenure upon appointment, candidates must be appointed as an associate or full professor, have been tenured at a prior institution, and bring a demonstrably national reputation to the institution. Candidates must be approved for tenure upon appointment before hire. For information about rank requirements visit https://provost.uga.edu/faculty-affairs/promotiontenure-evaluation/promotion-and-tenure/promotion-guidelines/ or https://provost.uga.edu/wpcontent/uploads/ptu-criteria-history.pdf

The successful candidate will have a documented record of scholarship and teaching on public policy issues (either foreign policy or domestic policy) relevant to the contemporary United States. Policy expertise could be as diverse as constitution and law, elections and voting, foreign relations, humanitarianism and human rights, war and national security, policing and incarceration, environmental issues, taxation and regulation, immigration and refugees, disease and public health, computing and artificial intelligence, or other policy areas. The successful candidate will develop course offerings in Applied History, including “Introduction to Applied History,” and direct the new Applied History Certificate program, which trains students to use historical analysis in contemporary public policy and decision-making. (For more information about Applied History, see the description here.) Requirements include teaching undergraduate and graduate courses (two in each semester); mentoring and advising students; and maintaining an active scholarly research and publishing agenda. The successful candidate will also participate in activities related to the academic mission of the department and the university, including service on committees and recruitment.

The Linda Hall Library is now accepting applications for our 2025-26 fellowship program. These fellowships provide graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and independent scholars in the history of science and related humanities fields with financial support to explore the Library’s outstanding science and engineering collections. Fellows also participate in a dynamic intellectual community alongside in-house experts and scholars from other Kansas City cultural and educational institutions.

The Linda Hall Library holds nearly half a million monographs and more than 43,000 journal titles documenting the history of science and technology from the 15th century to the present. Its collections are exceptionally strong in the engineering disciplines, chemistry, and physics. In addition, the Library boasts extensive resources related to natural history, astronomy, earth science, environmental studies, aeronautics, life science, infrastructure studies, mathematics, and the history of the book.

The William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan welcomes applications for 2025-2026 research fellowships. The Clements’ holdings–books, manuscripts, pamphlets, maps, prints and views, newspapers, and ephemera– are among the best in the world on almost any aspect of the American experience from 1492 through 1900, and support a diverse array of research projects.

In addition to the existing slate of fellowship opportunities, the Clements is also delighted to introduce a new fellowship this year, provided in partnership with McBride Rare Books. The McBride Rare Books Fellowship supports projects in the study of bibliography, book history, and print culture in North America before 1900. Doctoral candidates, librarians and curators, independent scholars, and faculty are eligible to apply.

The National Archives wants your feedback on Archives.gov!

The National Archives is preparing to redesign the Archives.gov website, and wants to learn about the experiences that SHAFR members have had with the website.  Focus groups and usability testing interviews will be scheduled in the months ahead, and volunteers are sought for participation.   All feedback is welcomed, including details on any challenges that users may encounter while exploring Archives.gov, as well as suggestions for improvements.  Please consider filling out the Focus Group and Feedback Volunteer Form if you are interested in participating.  We encourage your submissions by November 30, 2024.  

CFA- “Writing the History of U.S. Foreign Relations in an Age of Crisis”
SHAFR Summer Institute

Belfer Center Ernest May Fellowship in History and Policy.