PHILADELPHIA — Seven groups of historians have now denounced an upcoming welcome reception at the Museum of the American Revolution for “parental rights” group Moms for Liberty. They’ve written their members, the museum, and one group has canceled an event they had planned at the Old City institution.
Moms for Liberty, or M4L, has made national headlines since its founding in 2021 for its efforts to lift pandemic precautions, ban books and limit conversations about race, sexuality and gender identity in classrooms. Earlier this month, the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled the group an “anti-government extremist organization.”
The group is scheduled to hold a four-day sold-out summit in Philadelphia starting Thursday where aspiring school board candidates can receive training and hear from guests, including former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The group says Pennsylvania has one of its largest membership bases, second only to Florida.
The museum has defended its decision to host the controversial group, arguing its mission is to share diverse and inclusive stories about the country’s history with as broad of an audience as possible and that it hopes to strengthen democracy through dialogue.
But dozens of the museum’s staffers have pushed back. The historian groups are the latest to repudiate the museum’s rationale for hosting the event, acknowledging it’s unusual for them to try to intervene in what’s essentially a space rental. Still, the groups said Moms for Liberty was not a group simply espousing different points of view. They said it has encouraged the harassment of teachers and librarians.
“This organization consistently spreads harmful, hateful rhetoric about the LGBTQIA+ community, including popularizing the use of the term ‘groomer’ to refer to queer people and attacking the mere existence of trans youth,” read a statement from The Committee on LGBT History, the first historian affinity group to condemn the museum.
The Organization of American Historians, the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, and the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians published similar statements, encouraging the museum to reconsider.
The groups said they worry the museum is lending legitimacy to Moms for Liberty by hosting.
The groups argued Moms for Liberty and their campaigns are antithetical to the complete, contextualized and factual accounts historians try to provide through research. Moms for Liberty’s work has even fueled attacks on historians’ work, according to the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, which spoke out Monday.
In its letter to museum CEO R. Scott Stephenson, the American Historical Association said it understood that legally, it might be difficult to cancel the rental agreement, but urged the museum to try. The McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania added discriminatory behavior should not be protected under the guise of free speech and academic freedom.
What’s more, the National Council on Public History worried hosting Moms for Liberty marred some of the work the museum was doing, including the recent “Black Founders” exhibit that highlights Black Revolutionary War-era abolitionist James Forten.
“The staff have worked to create relationships with the Black community in authentic ways; by hosting M4L, the museum is undermining those relationships and jeopardizing the staff’s ability to conduct future work in these crucial areas,” read a statement from the council.
Though museum staffers don’t have to work that night if they feel unsafe, some LGBTQ workers have already expressed feeling that the museum doesn’t have their back.
Asked if the letters from historian groups could sway their decisions, a museum spokesperson said their previous statement remained unchanged.
“We welcome all visitors and pride ourselves on a museum experience that reflects our mission to uncover and share the stories of diverse people and complex events that sparked the ongoing American experiment in liberty, equality and self-government,” read the statement.
Protests against Moms for Liberty are planned throughout the summit. In addition to their statement, the Philly-based Society for Historians of the Early American Republic moved a July 15 awards reception to the Doubletree Hotel from the Museum of American Revolution. LGBTQ advocates have also called on the Philadelphia Marriott, which is hosting the group, to cancel the event.
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