Over the past decade – and most recently in the context of the 2024 American election and the second Trump presidency – the term “fascism” has reclaimed a central position in the political lexicon and in the preoccupations of liberal democracies across the globe. Historians have featured prominently in debates over the applicability of the concept to present-day contexts, as well as the value of comparisons between historical fascists and contemporary leaders, movements, and governments. However, these discussions have focused almost exclusively on definitional and typological issues, and on the implications of applying – or rejecting – the fascist label. They have made fruitful contributions to wider discourse over the present and future of democracy, and have provided a timely reminder of the importance of publicly-engaged scholarship; however, they have also proved inconclusive, and resulted in the term itself becoming yet another “fighting word” in today’s culture wars.

This roundtable proposes a novel approach to the “fascism debate” by shifting the focus from punditry and prognostication to a setting that historians more regularly inhabit but seldom foreground in their intellectual work: the classroom. The participants represent a diverse range of institutional settings (public and private, small and large), North American regions (New England, the Southwest, the South, Canada), and chronological and regional specializations (Fascist Italy, interwar Japan, postwar Germany, Cold War-era South Korea). These perspectives will inform our critical exploration of the challenges and opportunities involved in teaching about fascism today. What are our goals and strategies when teaching its histories, and what materials do we employ? Has our approach remained consistent over the years, or evolved in response to changing contexts and audiences? How do we respond to new imperatives in the field, like the call to transcend “classic” cases from interwar Europe and engage with global histories, or to broaden the temporal scope beyond Ernst Nolte’s “era of fascism” (1919-45), incorporating both earlier and later periods? How do we navigate the ever more insistent and contested question of contemporary resonances and comparisons? What, in essence, do we want our students to know about fascism? Through these discussions, the roundtable hopes not only to exchange insights on this question, but to reflect more broadly on the challenges and rewards of teaching highly charged topics in the contemporary classroom; the public role of historians; and the value of history education in promoting civic engagement.