Letters in Perspectives from AHA members noting the omission of certain categories of persons from AHA offices and committees caused me to reflect on the problem as a former member and then chair of the Nominating Committee. Based on my experiences, now a decade old, I would offer the following advice to members hoping to change current practices.
Since the Nominating Committee and the Committee on Committees, in the case of appointive positions, make the key selections, it is important to make an impact on those two bodies. There are two ways to accomplish that feat. First, the chair of each committee is always delighted to receive well-reasoned letters nominating or self-nominating persons for pa1ticulnr positions. A letter that proposes a specific person for an office appropriate to that person’s interests and expertise is taken very seriously, especially if the writer has already ascertained that the person would be willing to serve in the suggested post and supplies a CV. For example, if a faculty member at a state university has been working closely with local public school teachers to improve instruction in history at the secondary or elementary level, such a person might well be an ideal candidate fora position on the Teaching Division committee. Or, if an instructor at a small college has been active in faculty development programs or in an AAUP chapter that has dealt systematically with professional issues, the Professional Division committee is certainly a possibility. The Research Division committee needs members with wide-ranging archival or bibliographical experience, Many historians at smaller or more geographically isolated institutions have precisely these skills but never come to the attention of the Nominating Committee because no one ever submits their names for consideration, and they are not personally known to members of the committee.
This brings me to the second strategy: try to get someone reflecting your concerns on the Nominating Committee and on the Committee on Committees. Each year new members are elected to each. If one of them is committed to the goal of broadening representation in AHA offices in the desired way and persuasively advances that goal at the annual committee meeting, much can be accomplished. (I know my goal a decade ago was to increase the number of women holding AHA offices. After a year in which the president and two of the three vice presidents have been female, that goal seems laughably anachronistic but only be cause it has subsequently been so completely attained through the efforts of many other Nominating Committee members.)
What qualifications must Nominating Committee and Committee on Committees members have? Quite simply, they must know a lot of other historians-that means they should have been active in regional or topical professional associations, or have regularly attended conventions like the AHA, OAH, and SHA. A letter suggesting a member for either committee, in other words, should stress that person’s wide professional acquaintance network, built up through activities in (for example) regional Conferences on British Studies, the Great Lakes College Association. the American Society for Legal History, or equivalent groups.
In short, the Nominating Committee and the Committee on Committees are constantly looking for good people to fill AHA offices and careful thought in suggesting names to them will pay off.
