NEW YORK, NY.- A half-dozen scholarly groups, including the nation’s two largest associations of professional historians, have criticized the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia for renting space to Moms for Liberty, calling it a dangerous normalization of an organization that supports book bans and restrictions on teaching about race and gender.

In a letter to the museum on Monday, the American Historical Association called on the museum to find a legal way to cancel the rental.

“Moms for Liberty is an organization that has vigorously advocated censorship and harassment of history teachers, banning history books from libraries and classrooms, and legislation that renders it impossible for historians to teach with professional integrity without risking job loss and other penalties,” the letter said.

The letter recognized the group’s right to argue for its preferred approach to history education. “However, Moms for Liberty has crossed a boundary in its attempts to silence and harass teachers, rather than participate in legitimate controversy,” it said.

Other groups issuing statements condemning the event include the Organization of American Historians, the National Council on Public History, the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians and the Committee on LGBTQ History.

The controversy became public in early June, when it was reported that dozens of museum employees were calling on the museum to cancel the rental to Moms for Liberty, on the grounds that it undermined the museum’s reputation and mission.

The rental was for a reception during its four-day “Joyful Warriors National Summit,” which begins on Thursday. The summit will feature several dozen prominent speakers, including former President Donald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, both of whom have championed the teaching of “patriotic history” and opposition to “wokeness.”

In a statement, the museum, a private nonprofit, acknowledged the legitimacy of the employees’ concerns, but said it could not discriminate on the basis of a group’s political beliefs, which it called “antithetical to our purpose.”

“The Museum of the American Revolution strives to create an inclusive and accessible museum experience for visitors with a wide range of viewpoints and beliefs,” the statement said. “Consistent with this mission, we make available after-hours and private rentals to groups that organize legally and safely, including federally recognized 501(c)(4) nonprofit organizations.”

In an interview, the museum’s president and chief executive, R. Scott Stephenson, called the museum, which opened in 2017, a place where people of “very broad political differences” can engage in “an exploration of American history that embraces diversity and inclusion, but also gives room for people to feel gratitude and pride in the nation and hope for the future.”




“Man, I think we need more, not less of that,” he said.

Moms for Liberty has objected to negative characterizations of the group, which the Southern Poverty Law Center recently labeled “extremist.”

In a statement to The New York Times, the organization’s co-founders, Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich, said: “We expect our national summit in Philadelphia to be a time of training and empowerment for parents to be more active in their child’s school system. We stand for the rights of parents and against anyone trying to silent parents who want to speak up on behalf of their child’s needs.”

In recent years, historians have increasingly been pulled into escalating political battles over the teaching of American history, which has turned the date “1776” itself into a partisan rallying cry. Scholarly groups have mobilized against the rapid spread of so-called “divisive concepts” laws limiting teaching on race and gender, which have been passed or proposed in at least three dozen states.

Moms for Liberty, founded in 2021, originally focused on opposition to pandemic-era restrictions in schools, but has since expanded to supporting parents’ rights to ban books they deem inappropriate from classrooms and school libraries. The group has also become a force in Republican politics — the scheduled speakers at the summit include several presidential candidates.

The Museum of the American Revolution is not the first institution to draw fire for a rental to groups or figures deemed contradictory to its mission. In 2019, the annual gala of the Brazilian Chamber of Commerce was moved from the American Museum of Natural History, after news that the group was honoring Jair Bolsonaro, then the Brazilian president, caused an outcry.

The controversy over the Moms for Liberty event also highlights the complexities of free speech, and the line between opposing censorship and engaging in it. In their statements, the historical groups did not speak entirely with one voice.

The Committee on LGBTQ History called on the museum to cancel the rental, finding it “shocking that an organization dedicated to documenting and preserving American history would enter into any relationship with an organization that is so intent upon distorting the American experience.”

But the letter from the Organization of American Historians stopped short of condemning the museum, or calling on it to cancel the rental.

Instead, it reiterated support for those working to give a full accounting of the past to the general public at “a particularly fraught moment in our civic life.”

“This work and gains that have been made in this space are in many respects fragile, and must be vigorously defended,” it said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.