Publication Date

July 27, 2018

Perspectives Section

AHA Activities

Through email conversation from January 12, 2018, to May 10, 2018, and at meetings on June 2 and 3, 2018, the Council of the American Historical Association took the following actions:

  • Appointed Elaine Carey (Purdue Univ. Northwest) to serve as co-chair of the Local Arrangements Committee for the 2019 annual meeting in Chicago.
  • Issued a letter of concern from President Mary Beth Norton to administrators at the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point regarding the announced plan to eliminate many humanities majors, including history.
  • Signed on to a letter from the Coalition for International Education to the US House and Senate Appropriations Committees urging them to reject the Trump administration’s FY19 proposal to eliminate funding for the US Department of Education’s International Education and Foreign Language Studies programs.
  • Authorized Mary Beth Norton, as a representative of the AHA, to sign on to a letter organized by 2020 Census Counts protesting the potential inclusion of a citizenship question on the 2020 US census.
  • Appointed Craig Perrier (Fairfax County, Virginia, Public Schools) as Councilor, Teaching Division, to complete the term of Matt Cone, who had resigned from the AHA Council for personal reasons.
  • Approved signing on to a letter from the United States National Committee of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (US/ICOMOS) to Representatives Ken Calvert (R-Calif.) and Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) requesting additional funding for the National Park Service Office of International Affairs on behalf of its efforts for World Heritage site designation and preservation.
  • Approved the minutes of the January 2018 Council meeting.
  • Approved the interim minutes of the Council from January through May 2018.
  • Approved the dissolution of the Archives Wiki Advisory Board.
  • Approved the nominations of the 2018 Awards for Scholarly Distinction (to be announced in December 2018).
  • Approved the AHA Sexual Harassment Policy pending consultation with the AHA general counsel.
  • Directed staff to include the Guidelines for the Hiring Process, the Statement of Standards of Professional Conduct, and the AHA Sexual Harassment Policy in annual meeting registration materials and to distribute them to departments advertising with the AHA and/or reserving space for interviews at the annual meeting. The AHA expects departments to send the guidelines and statement to all job candidates invited for an interview (whether in person or via electronic means) and to distribute the AHA Sexual Harassment Policy if the interview will be conducted at the AHA annual meeting.
  • Approved an Ad Hoc Advisory Committee on Equity and Inclusion and the AHR, which will advise the American Historical Review editor on the best ways to pursue the mandate that “the AHR must take concrete steps to ensure that journal practices and content better reflect the diverse nature of the historical profession, and be open to the many voices that constitute historical scholarship and professional dialogue today.” The Advisory Committee will serve from August 2018 through August 2021 and will consist of two members of the AHR Board of Editors, one member of the Research Division, and one additional member of Council. Committee members can continue to serve even after the expiration of their elected and/or nominated Council positions.
  • Approved the addition of up to two additional editors to the AHR Board of Editors in order to diversify coverage by specialty and field and alleviate the workload of the current board.
  • Approved the following nominations to the AHR Board of Editors for three-year terms beginning July 1, 2018: Jordanna Bailkin (Univ. of Washington); Wen-Hsin Yeh (Univ. of California, Berkeley); Johann Neem (Univ. of Western Washington); Carla Pestana (Univ. of California, Los Angeles); and Nicholas Paul (Fordham Univ.).
  • Approved the AHA’s participation in the program committee and sponsorship of the keynote speaker at the International Federation for Public History conference in Berlin in 2020.
  • Approved the capital and operating budgets for FY 2019, which include a major renovation to AHA headquarters.
  • Approved changes to the “Shared Values of Historians” section of the Statement on Standards of Professional Conduct to better reflect an appreciation for the varying backgrounds historians bring to the discipline and how this variety influences the way historians approach scholarship.
  • Approved revisions to the Statement on Dual Enrollment/Concurrent Enrollment to specify that colleges and universities must appoint a full-time history faculty member who has departmental responsibility for overseeing local/regional dual and concurrent enrollment programs in history.
  • Approved the following statement: “The AHA strongly supports the right of international history students to pursue skills-based employment in the US and encourages university administrators to make such opportunities known.”
  • Approved the affiliation of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts.
  • Rescinded the affiliations of the American Association for History and Computing, the Public Works Historical Society, and the Study Group on International Labor History.
  • Approved changes to Section 4.2.e of the Annual Meeting Guidelines to strengthen the language about diversity on sessions at the annual meeting.
  • Approved the Council Committee on the Annual Meeting’s recommendation to begin contracting space for the 2026 meeting in Chicago and for the 2027 annual meeting in Washington, DC.

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