The UK's future relationship with the US

We are pleased to offer this evidence on behalf of the British Association for American Studies and its publication the Journal of American Studies. It addresses the following areas of interest: the nature and history of the special relationship (1 and 1a); its current state (2); and future opportunities and frictions (5), the latter two in relation to research and higher education.

Founded in 1955, the British Association for American Studies (BAAS) is one of Europe’s leading scholarly organisations for the interdisciplinary study of the United States. BAAS promotes, supports and encourages the study of the US in the UK through conferences, publications, awards, research and pedagogy support, and schools outreach. Its members are academics and postgraduate students, with expertise ranging chronologically from pre-colonial North America to the contemporary United States, and across art, economics, film, history, literature, media, music, sociology and politics.

Published continuously since 1966 and currently published by Cambridge University Press, the Journal of American Studies (JAS) is a peer-reviewed journal. JAS publishes scholarship from all over the world on American literature, history, institutions, politics, economics, film, popular culture, geography and related subjects in domestic, continental, hemispheric, and global contexts. JAS is BAAS’s flagship publication, but it maintains editorial independence.

We make this submission of evidence for the following reasons:

BAAS, and American Studies as a field, are products of the special relationship. But more importantly, the interdisciplinary lens of American Studies allows an understanding of the ways in which contemporary issues in US politics and culture emerge from deeply embedded hierarchies of race, class, and gender and enduring debates over the origins, identity, purpose, and future of the United States, both of which emerge within internal regional and national contexts, but also in hemispheric, transnational and global contexts. The research and scholarship produced in American Studies in the UK is essential to shaping the future of the UK’s relationship with the US. But it is also under considerable threat from shrinkage in the higher education sector, a lack of investment in humanities research, and the policies of the new Trump administration, which are hostile to the field’s priorities and methods, and dismissive of its findings.

The executive committee and members of BAAS and the editors and board members of JAS are experts in US history, politics, and culture, who are well-placed to comment on the historic development of the special relationship.

Both organisations see close and productive relations between the UK and US as crucial for: a) researching and teaching on the US from the UK, b) establishing research and pedagogical collaborations between UK and US scholars in all disciplines, and c) continuing the higher educational exchanges that underpinned the special relationship in the twentieth century.

These relations must emerge from shared beliefs in the value of strong democratic institutions and the rule of law, and from joint efforts to reduce structural inequalities and increase opportunities for all.

Our relationship with the US and its institutions must not involve compromising the above values. Historically, the special relationship evolved and deepened through the UK functioning as a critical friend to the US, and being a space from which Americans who sought to make their nation more democratic could voice their dissent.

We appreciate the Lords undertaking this inquiry at a moment when the special relationship is under considerable strain and hope that this evidence will be of assistance.

Yours sincerely,

Dr Lydia Plath (Associate Professor in American History, University of Warwick), Chair of BAAS

Dr Katie McGettigan (Senior Lecturer in American Literature, Royal Holloway University of London), Co-Editor of JAS

Dr Will Norman (Reader in American Literature, University of Kent), Co-Editor of JAS

13 March 2025