Judi Freeman
Judi Freeman joined the World History Association as Executive Director in December 2025. She is an art historian by training, working as a museum curator and educator focused on modern and contemporary European and American art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Portland Museum of Art. She is the editor/author of The Dada and Surrealist Word-Image (1989), The Fauve Landscape (1990), Mark Tansey (1993), and Picasso and the Weeping Woman (1994). She shifted her career to education and served for 24 years as the Seevak Chair in History at Boston Latin School, the oldest public school in the United States, where she was teaching modern global history, the history of art, and co-creating the school's first Senior Capstone program and course. Judi is currently completing a biography of 20th century American journalist Dorothy Thompson.
Session
The WHA Annual Meeting asks, “how can we write, teach, and think about world history in a moment characterized both by global entanglement and anti-globalist politics?” This roundtable is envisioned as a chance to bring together secondary and college-level educators who come from training in various regions and specializations to reflect on how we teach world history today. The goal for this roundtable is to prioritize conversation, pedagogical exchange, and practical insight on the shared challenges instructors at both the secondary and undergraduate levels face in an increasingly politicized classroom. We will explore how the current social, political, and economic environment of the U.S. is influencing our teaching of world history, as well as how we negotiate our own political/ideological position in the classroom. Responding directly to the conference theme, “Closed Borders and Global Connections: Being Global after Globalization,” participants will examine how anti-globalist rhetoric, culture-war politics, post-truth narratives fueled by social media/AI, and ideological polarization are shaping classroom dynamics, curricular design, and student engagement. By bridging secondary and higher education perspectives, this roundtable aims to produce practical insights for navigating politicized classrooms while sustaining the intellectual integrity and global scope of world history.