At a meeting on the evening of Friday, January 3, 2003, at the 117^th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association in Chicago, historians from more than forty colleges and universities agreed to form a new national network, "Historians Against the War." A committee was appointed to draft the following statement:

We historians call for a halt to the march towards war against Iraq. We are deeply concerned about the needless destruction of human life, the undermining of constitutional government in the U.S., the egregious curtailment of civil liberties and human rights at home and abroad, and the obstruction of world peace for the indefinite future.