The AHA staff and Council are grateful to our nearly 3,000 participants in San Francisco for making the Association’s 137th annual meeting (yes, we keep track) a success. In an era when media depict academia and other venues of teaching and scholarship as unwilling to encourage disagreement over important issues, we had many sessions that included historians bringing different angles of vision to the table. Our Program Committee, affiliated societies, staff, and others responsible for building panels took seriously not only this goal, but also the continuing imperative to innovate formats. The AHA is committed to broadening not only the scope of historical scholarship but also its venues, formats, and publics. Our mission is to promote historical work and the importance of historical thinking in public life, and the annual meeting provides opportunities for conversation about the histories we create and debate, and the ways in which we can disseminate that scholarship.
In that spirit, I look forward to seeing many of you in New York next January. Hotel rooms will be $209 and $214. You are not likely to find those rates at the NYC Hilton and Sheraton anytime again. Nor are you likely to find the diversity and range of the AHA program at any other historical gathering.
-Jim Grossman