Council News, February 1985

The annual meeting of the Associa­tion provides the opportunity for two sessions of the elected governing Council. On December 27, before the opening of the annual meeting, the Council every year has an all-day meet­ing with a very full agenda. Then on the morning of December 30, members of the Council meet again for about two hours. The second meeting is the occa­sion for newly elected members of the Council to take their seats, and the out­going President turns over the ceremo­nial gavel to the new President.

The  Council, under the constitution of 1974, consists of the President, the past President, and the President-elect, three Vice Presidents (Teaching, Professional and Research Divisions) and six Councillors, all elected by the mem­bership. Members of the Council  serve for three years.

Much of the Council’s agenda in Chicago concerned recommendations com­ing from the three divisional commit­tees of the Association. These are re­ported below.

The Research Division’s outgoing Vice President, Gerhard Weinberg, brought a large number of items to the Council’s attention. The Council ap­proved his division’s recommendation that the editor of the American Historical Review attend all future sessions of the Council as an ex officio member, in or­der to be kept more closely informed about Association activities and inter­ests. It authorized the AHA to co-spon­sor a research conference to be held by Syracuse University next fall on Leopold von Ranke and the Shaping of the Historical Discipline on the centenary of Ranke’s death. The Council again en­dorsed the institution of a prize to be supported by the Littleton-Griswold Fund on American Law and Society, and it approved the naming of the new annual prize in any field of history prior to 1000 AD after our 1928 president James H. Breasted.

The Council approved resolutions dealing with the decline in systematic declassification of federal records (see below), with the need for more detailed statistical analysis of NEH grant proposals to provide a more informative “cat-scan” of research activity in the profession and the degree of support of the various subfields, and with inconsistencies in the application of classification standards by the National Security Agency (see below). The Council approved of the division’s activity working with the National Archives to try to reduce the costs of copying documents below their present high levels. Finally, the Council expressed great interest in broadening the program of small re­ search grants the Association has been making in American history to include other fields and discussed ways of rais­ing the necessary funds.

The Teaching Division, through its Vice President, John A. Garraty, re­viewed for the Council its plan for a new series of pamphlets on history for teach­ers’ use and obtained the Council’s ap­proval in principle to seek support from a commercial publisher.

The Professional Division had several difficult problems to present to the Council. Its Vice President, Richard S. Kirkendall, obtained the Council’s full support for continued activity concern­ ing part-time and temporary history faculty members and concerning the question of equity in salaries for minor­ities and women faculty. The Council also approved a vigorous reminder to departments of the importance of open advertising of job vacancies, even when university leadership is directly involved in search-committee decisions. The Council heard from the Division of the satisfactory resolution of an ethics case involving inadequate attribution by one scholar to another scholar’s work. It approved Professional and Teaching Division’s recommendations to seek foundation support for a  program of history teaching collaboratives (in con­junction with OAH and the NCSS) to engage secondary and post-secondary history teachers in more meaningful as­ sociation, initially to be focused around the teaching of constitutional history as a lead-up to the bicentennial.

Certainly the most difficult matter the division brought to the Council was what has become known as the David Abraham case. It was also a matter which attracted media attention. Mem­bers will recall that the October 1983 AHR carried an exchange of correspondence between Professor Abraham and his critics. Those members who keep up with the Chronicle of Higher Education, Time, and the New York Times will have seen other accounts of the matter. The Professional Division had been asked by a group of members, who believed that improper efforts had been made by some histo1ians to intervene in recruit­ing operations of institutions consider­ing Professor Abraham for employ­ment, to look into the ethical implica­tions of such actions. Conversely the critics of Professor Abraham’s book and his use of sources also appealed to the Association to focus on the problems so apparent to them.

The Council discussed the matter at length on December 27, and at its meet­ing on the morning of December 30, also devoted some time to it. At the request of the Professional Division, the Council supplied the following guid­ance. It found that the question of shortcomings in the book has been am­ply aired in learned journals including the AHR and that a forthcoming issue of a European historical journal will con­tain extended treatments in which Pro­fessor Abraham will have an opportunity to respond. It therefore concluded that “the profession’s method of review evaluation and response works as it should.” Concerning letters intervening injob opportunity matters, the Council observed that many, if not most, letters are supportive, although even letters solicited by job-seekers may contain de­rogatory or critical comments. The Council stated that the “Association can not and does not wish to regulate corre­spondence among historians or com­mentary in the public press.” It believes that individual historians must be re­sponsible for their own actions. Later discussion with representative department chairs reenforced the belief that malevolent or “poison pen” interven­tions are readily identifiable for what they are and appropriately dismissed.

The Council also dealt with a number of general matters. It approved the ap­pointment of an ad hoc committee to maintain and coordinate the Associa­tion’s interest in the planning for the 1992 Columbus Quincentennial, selecting Helen Nader of Indiana University, the Associate Editor of the American Historical  Review as chair. It selected Marjorie Lightman of the Institute for Research in History to chair the Local Arrangements Committee for the 1985 annual meeting in New York City. It selected Margaret C. Jacob of the Graduate Center, City University of New York and Baruch College to be program committee chair for 1986.

The Council approved the short list of foundation grants received or being sought for various projects of the Asso­ciation, and it gave its approval in prin­ciple to soliciting a modest challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to strengthen the AHA’s small endowment and to enable it to expand its program of small re­search grants to areas of history outside the Western hemisphere. Members will be hearing more—a great deal more­—about that subject!

 

Resolution on the Findings of Recent ISOO Annual Report

Passed unanimously by the Council of the American Historical Association, December 30, 1984

WHEREAS the Annual Report of the Information Security Oversight Office reveals that there has been a significant decline in systematic review of documents during the last four years with a drop from 90.3 million pages reviewed in 1980 to 12.4 million in 1983;

And WHEREAS the number of docu­ments declassified in the systematic review process has dropped from 91 percent in 1981 to 63 percent in 1983;

And WHEREAS there is a marked increase in the percentage of request­ed documents that are only partially granted with all but two or three lines at the top deleted;

And WHEREAS the Department of Defense declassified only 54 percent of reviewed documents in 1983 as compared with 96 percent of pages in 1982;

RESOLVED that the AHA headquar­ters office and the National Coordinat­ing Committee continue to monitor developments on the issue of classifica­tion and bring to the attention of ISOO and other appropriate authori­ties the deep concern of the historical profession over the above develop­ments. The situation reflected in the ISOO report and the government atti­tude thereto both underline the wis­dom of the AHA’s 1983 call for amendment of the Federal  Records Act to establish a legislative framework for the federal government’s classifica­tion system.

Resolution on the National Security Agency and the Marshall Library

Passed unanimously by the Council of the American Historical Association, December 30, 1984

WHEREAS the National Security Agency (NSA) has repeatedly sent spe­cial classification teams between 1971 and 1984 to the Marshall Library to review the papers of William F. Friedman; these documents and publica­tions being held in a private archive to which they had been donated by Mr. Friedman with the  express intention of making them accessible to the pub­lic;

And WHEREAS these teams have closed a large number of  records which subsequent teams have opened;

And WHEREAS these teams have opened records which on subsequent visits have been closed;

And WHEREAS, in summary, out of 398 records closed, 364 are now open;

And WHEREAS these actions show that about 90 percent of the records closed were closed in error by NSA’s own criteria and are now open;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the NSA’s own demonstration of inconsistency on the part of its classifi­cation teams be called to the attention of the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO); and be it further

RESOLVED that ISOO is hereby urged to conduct a thorough review of the classification procedures of the NSA to determine whether rates of errors similar to those applied to the Friedman papers affect other classifi­cation actions in the NSA and thus impede the rightful access of scholars and other citizens to archival material within the government; and be it fur­ther

RESOLVED that ISOO is hereby urged to examine the training pro­gram for classification specialists in the NSA to discover the causes for such an extraordinary proportion of erroneous decisions and to assist the NSA in devising training procedures which will reduce the proportion of mistakes made to a minimal figure; and be it further

RESOLVED that the American His­torical Association reaffirms its sup­port of our legal contention and suit maintaining the principle that private papers deposited by individuals in li­braries or archives are not properly subject to subsequent classification ac­tions by government agencies.