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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 January 2023
On 8 February 2022, an expert in Middle Eastern legal history – Florida State University associate professor Will Hanley – testified in front of Florida's House Education and Employment Committee. As a volunteer commentator rather than an invited speaker, Hanley was allotted just sixty seconds. But in his brief time, he did everything he could to argue against the adoption of the HB 7 ‘stop WOKE act’, which called for new educational protocols, especially regarding how race be taught in US classrooms.1 Hanley is not an Americanist; he does not teach on the subjects the HB 7 law affects, such as the Declaration of Independence, the US constitution, or the Federalist Papers. Nonetheless, this specialist on Islamic naming practices and Ottoman-Egyptian nationalisms stepped up and risked his career at a publicly funded institution because he knew that the reach of the US culture wars is much greater than American history, affecting all historians and all the students they teach – in the United States and beyond.2 In this essay, I want to explain why Hanley's actions should serve as a model for us all. To do this, I focus on how the US culture wars – as waged by both the right and the left – are triggering a global reconceptualisation of European history that will have dangerous consequences for students, researchers, teachers, and the profession at large. I start with Florida – the state where both Hanley and I work – because it is an extreme case of how the new culture wars have taken aim at history education, a template unfortunately being replicated with similar interventions in other US states.
1 Volunteer testimonies in response to HB 7 can be heard at https://www.myfloridahouse.gov/VideoPlayer.aspx?eventID=7878 starting at 1:31:30. Hanley's statement is at 1:33:50. He focused on the bill's requirement that only ‘factual’, uncontested American history be taught in schools. His statement was published in local newspapers throughout Florida. For example, see: Ana Ceballos, ‘Bill Targeting Discomfort or Guilt in School, Work Discussions Ready for House Floor’, Miami Herald, 8 Feb. 2022.
2 Hanley's decision to speak out while working for a Florida public institution could have led (and still can) to severe encroachments on his professional career, not just in terms of pay rises, teaching schedule and administrative responsibilities. The Florida state system does not guarantee sabbaticals, and those few sabbaticals awarded are determined by extra-departmental committees and the upper administration, which is ever more dependent on the governor's pleasure. Tenure is also no longer secure, as post-tenure review laws have just been passed in Florida, as I discuss later.
3 Taken from 2021 job ad for a position in Nineteenth-Century European History at Illinois State University. https://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=61762.
4 For the full HB 7 bill, see: https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/7/BillText/er/PDF.
5 For the full HB 1557 bill, see: https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/1557/BillText/er/PDF.
6 For the full HB 395 bill, see: https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/395/BillText/er/PDF.
7 For the full HB 1467 bill, see: https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/1467/BillText/er/PDF.
8 For more on the textbook bans, see Dana Goldstein and Stephanie Saul, ‘A Look Inside the Textbooks That Florida Rejected’, New York Times, 7 May 2022. For more on how Florida's attack on ‘critical race theory’ signals a nation-wide movement, see: Wyatt Msykow, ‘Legislation to Limit Critical Race Theory at Colleges Has Reached Fever Pitch’, The Chronicle for Higher Education, 8 June 2022.
9 For the full SB 7044 bill, see: https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/7044/BillText/er/PDF. For DeSantis's quote from the bill signing, see: Colleen Flaherty, ‘Florida Passes Posttenure-Review Law’, Inside Higher Ed, 20 Apr. 2022.
10 Renzo Downey, ‘Gov. DeSantis Signs “Stop W.O.K.E. Act” as Legal Challenge Looms’, Florida Politics, 23 Apr. 2022.
11 Dylan Ruediger, ‘The 2021 AHA Jobs Report: 2019–2020 Data Show Relative Stability in the Year before COVID’, Perspectives on History, 20 Jan. 2021.
12 Denning, Andrew, ‘Modern European History in Its Institutional Contexts: How We Got Here and What Comes Next’, Central European History, 54 (2021), 682–6Google Scholar.
13 HB 7 bill, https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/7/BillText/er/PDF, 13–14.
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