Love America? Teach the Truth! (10 January 2026)

On Saturday, January 10, 2026, the American Historical Association hosted its Annual Conference in Chicago, Illinois, featuring a panel of distinguished educators featuring Jessica Ellison (National Council for History Education), Jennifer Baniewicz (Amos Alonzo Stagg High School), Julian Maxwell Hayter (University of Richmond), and Amy Godfrey Powers (Waubonsee Community College), and Annie Evans (New American History, University of Richmond).

Each contributor emphasized innovative ways to teach history and social studies, especially in the context of contested narratives and evidence about the past. Since January 2021, school boards and local administrators have faced unprecedented public pressure to censor lessons, units, and whole curricula in favor of dysfunctional standards that disrespect the expertise of professional instructors. These actions often rely on threats to school district funding and have sometimes invoked physical intimidation or violence against teachers and students. The American Historical Association has taken these actions very seriously and sustained a constant conversation about the need for truth and integrity in the history and social studies classrooms.

Professor Walter Greason, Wallace Professor of History at Macalester College (Minnesota), offered comments about the state of education in the United States with specific reference to each of the contributions made by the presenters. His work expanded the boundaries of professional history over the last two decades with his award-winning books on suburban expansion, economic history, historic preservation, Afrofuturist design, and graphic history. The most recent product of these projects is the groundbreaking history and public policy proposal, For Such a Time as This: The Nowness of Reparations for Black People in New Jersey (2025). It is available for free, online, through the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice. Greason has led thousands of conversations about history, education, and professional standards through the cultivation of professional history on social media since 2012. His two signature projects were the Racial Violence Syllabus (2017), published as a book titled Industrial Segregation (2018), and the Wakanda Syllabus (2016), published as a book titled Cities Imagined (2018). The combination of traditional, historical scholarship in addition to the innovations in digital media and the global impact of these projects offers a promising horizon for historians and educators over the next decade.