The Association’s governing Council held its regular spring meeting on May 8–9 in Washington to adopt a budget for the 1988–89 fiscal year and transact other business.
The Council’s Finance Committee met, as is its custom, just before the Council convened to review and study the proposed budget in detail. The Council unanimously adopted the Committee’s recommended budget anticipating an infinitesimal deficit of $5,062.00. (The 1987–88 budget when adopted estimated a shortfall of $15,582 but on June 30 at the fiscal year-end the bottom line proved to $8,446 in the black.)
The Council acted upon a number of personnel matters. It approved the search procedures for selecting a new Controller; it decided to honor the memory of Council Member John F. Benton, who passed away last February, by keeping his name on the rolls until the expiration of his term rather than appointing a successor; it approved three distinguished historians to receive the Association’s Award for Scholarly Distinction (to be announced at the Cincinnati annual meeting in December) and two distinguished foreign historians to become Honorary Members of the AHA (also to be announced in December).
The Council approved the appointment of Michael Les Benedict, Ohio State University, to succeed Paul Conkin as Parliamentarian for the annual meeting, and it agreed to a recommendation from the Nominating Committee to permit candidates for president-elect and for vice-presidencies of the AHA to prepare longer campaign statements in the material accompanying ballots in the annual election.
President Akira Iriye proposed, and the Council welcomed the idea of establishing with the Organization of American Historians and the American Studies Association a joint committee on international scholarly exchanges.
The Council heard a report from the ad hoc committee on long range planning for the Association’s future and discussed it at some length.
On the recommendations of the Research Division and the editor of the American Historical Review, the Council agreed to change the timing of nominating members of the Reuiew’s Board of Editors, in order to permit newly approved members to attend the immediately ensuing annual meeting in that capacity at the beginning of their term of service. It also approved the Research Division’s suggestion that the Committee on Committees select archival-user historians rather than archivist-historians to serve on the joint AHA-OAH-Society of American Archivists Committee, on the assumption that SAA will ensure adequate representation for the latter constituency.
The Council approved the report of the Professional Division Committee on its actions in the field of defining scholarly ethics and in investigating questionable practices. It encouraged the Committee to pursue further the problem of retroactive correction of acknowledged plagiarisms found in already printed materials.
The Teaching Division’s recommendation that the Association express its support for resolutions adopted by the Bradley Commission on History in Schools was enthusiastically approved by the Council. The Council also endorsed cooperating with the Commission in future dissemination of those resolutions. It also approved the Division’s plan to name the first Teaching Award, to be made this December, in honor of the late Eugene Asher for his distinguished contributions to history teaching through the years.
The Council heard a report from Professor Timothy Tackett, chair of the 1989 Program Committee, and approved the committee members he proposed. It decided to authorize an additional position on the committee to provide better coverage of the non-US fields of history. Finally, the Council approved in principle the idea of holding the 1991 annual meeting in Washington DC, but it asked that the staff survey members regarding interest in one of two possible alternate times of the year for our annual meetings.
