The annual meetings of the Association are always bracketed by two sessions of our governing Council, on December 27 and December 30, and New York was no exception to the rule. The Council had an all-day meeting on Friday, before the opening of the annual meeting, with the newly elected officers of the Association sitting in as guest observers. On Monday morning the 30th, the newcomers took seats, still warm from the departure of those members whose terms expired at some constitutionally undefined hour between the two meetings.
Much important business was transacted. The AHA’s President for 1985, William H. McNeill, reported on the Finance Committee’s meeting with the Trustees in mid-November and on the complete divestiture of Association-owned stocks and bonds in companies doing business through subsidiaries in South Africa. Although a very substantial capital gain results on paper, the AHA is foregoing future gains in some of these same companies; virtue therefore is not being rewarded financially on a continuing basis. Happily, our trustees are such astute businessmen that they have found other promising areas of investment without the moral stigma attached to overseas investments in the area subject to the policies of the regime in South Africa.
The Council approved the recommendation of the Committee on Committees for a large number of appointments to the standing and ad hoc committees of the Association. (A complete list of the committee memberships will be carried in the March issue of Perspectives, after acceptances have been received from the appointees.) The Council also approved the recommendation of the Committee on Affiliated Societies to accept affiliation by the Association for the Publication of African Historical Sources. This growing body, which now includes dozens of distinguished American Africanists, is the American correspondent of the important international Fontes Historiae Africanae.
On the recommendations of the Research Division Committee, the Council took a number of actions. A resolution deploring the decline in clearances of classified documents, the reduction in volume of declassification reviews of foreign relations documents, and the lessened priority on systematic declassification review by the federal government, was approved (see p. 4). The Council reiterated the need for a statutory basis for federal classification policy, which now can be modified by the executive branch, according to the doctrine of the moment. A slight change in policy for the Herbert Baxter Adams prize was approved for the future, to open eligibility to authors who are citizens or permanent residents of the US and Canada.
The Council also discussed a problem brought to its attention by the American Military Institute, one of our affiliated organizations, about the attempted disruption of its joint session with the AHA in December 1984 in Chicago. The Council condemned such disruptive, publicity-seeking incidents and charged the executive director to continue close cooperation with hotel security officials to prevent interference with the exchange of scholarly information.
The Professional Division Committee brought to the Council for review a draft statement on plagiarism in the historical profession. The Council made several suggestions for the paper’s improvement and endorsed the efforts of the Committee to produce an overall revision of the Association’s code of ethics during 1986. The Division recommended approval of the American Association of University Professors’ statement condemning the so-called Accuracy in Academia movement and the Council agreed (see p. 3). The Council also emphasized the importance it attaches to involving public historians and the American Association for State and Local History in the growing History Teaching Alliance. The Council was clearly enthusiastic about these local collaboratives of secondary and post-secondary history faculties, sponsored by the OAH, the National Council for the Social Studies, and the AHA. Finally, at the Division’s recommendation, Council endorsed a statement by the American Federation of Teachers, protesting the massive state governmental intervention in university governance in Poland.
The Teaching Division’s outgoing Vice-President, Jack Garraty, reported on the understanding with Harcourt Brace Jovanovich to adopt the Division’s proposed new pamphlet series for secondary school teachers on major American history topics and pledged to continue working on a parallel project on non-American topics. The Teaching Division also recommended, and the Council approved, the continued Association subsidy to National History Day Inc., which will qualify for federal matching funds.
The Editor of the AHR and the Vice President for the Research Division recommended to the Council two appointments to fill vacancies on the Board of Editors of the Review. The Council named Professor James J. Sheehan (Stanford) and Professor Susanna I. Barrows (UC Berkeley) to fill the vacancies.
The Council appointed Professor Albert Erlebacher, DePaul University, to be chair of the Local Arrangements Committee for the I986 annual meeting in Chicago. The Council also weighed very carefully a number of able candidates willing to accept the weighty responsibility of chairing the 1987 annual meeting Program Committee. Noting that 1987 will be the bicentennial year of the Constitution, the Council decided that an Americanist should chair the committee and appointed Professor Lewis C. Perry (Vanderbilt) to the position. The other candidates were held over for future years’ consideration.
Lastly, the Council in executive session voted unanimously to reappoint the executive director for an additional term of five years, when his current appointment expires June 30 next.
