NEH and National Archives Appointments Still Uncertain. As we go to press, the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee has not voted on the nomination of Edward Curran to be Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the White House has not forwarded to the Senate the name of a nominee for Archivist of the United States. Following the October 2 NEH confirmation hearing on Curran, the Committee tentatively scheduled votes for October 30 and then November 7. In both cases the votes were postponed. (See November “NCC News” for a full report on the issues raised during the hearing). The White House Personnel Office has continued interviewing possible candidates for US Archivist, and the announcement of a nominee is expected soon. However, since Congress will be adjourning soon, it now appears likely that it will be 1986 before a new NEH Chairman and Archivist are in place.
Hearing Held to Consider Historic Presidential Sites. On October 29, the Subcommittee on National Parks of the House of Representatives held a hearing on H.R. 235, a bill to authorize the establishment of the Jimmy Carter National Site and to consider which tangible resources in Plains, Georgia should be preserved. While the topic for the hearing was Carter, the hearing dealt with issues that will be crucial for establishing broad policy guidelines for the National Park Service which will affect all former presidents. Joan Hoff-Wilson, the Executive Secretary of the OAH and a scholar of the presidencies of Hoover and Nixon, stressed the need to interpret presidents in their social contexts. “In the case of the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site,” she noted, “this would mean that the property in Plains, Georgia should broadly represent small-town southern culture.” She added “it should become a kind of twentieth-century West Branch, Iowa—the midwestern birth place of Herbert Hoover, which so simply, but forcefully, represents that part of the country at the turn of this century.”
Another witness, Leo Ribuffo, a history professor at George Washington University who is writing on the Carter presidency, noted the contributions that historians can make to the determination of policies regarding presidential sites. “A historian can provide a warning about the fallibility of memory, a dose of detachment,” and he stated “an antidote to partisanship.” Questions raised during the hearing also addressed various cost alternatives and the appropriate timing for acquiring presidential sites properties. The witnesses pointed out the trade offs of distance and objectivity with the need to acquire properties early in order to assure their preservation. The National Park Service currently maintains thirty sites of former presidents. In addition to consideration of the Carter site, the National Park Service will soon be presented with Ford and Nixon proposals.
NHPRC Commission. Three times a year—October, February, and June—the Commission of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission meets both to award grants and to establish policy for the Commission. At the October 24-25 meeting, the Commission recommended $700,000 for twenty-one publications projects and $525,000 for twenty-five records projects. The Commission also approved a report that calls for the development of new guidelines and directions for the network of state advisory boards. The report included a section on the need for a national historical records program that will delineate specific program emphases which have a broad, national impact on archival work.
New Guidelines Proposed for the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. On October 15 the Federal Register included proposed revisions and requests for comments on a draft of new guidelines to be used by the Advisory Council for Historic Preservation in implementing section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act. Historians have expressed concern that the revisions would greatly reduce the importance of the consultation process by which the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation works with federal agencies to reduce or avoid the damaging effects of federal projects on cultural resources. Federal policy on cultural resource management is grounded in the National Historic Preservation Act, which states in Section 106 that the head of any federal agency shall, prior to any federal or federally assisted undertakings, “take into account the effect of the undertaking on any district, site, building, structure, or object that is included in or eligible for inclusion in the National Register. The head of any such Federal agency shall afford the Advisory Council . . . a reasonable opportunity to comment with regard to such undertakings.”
For over five years the Office of Management and Budget has been pressing the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation to eliminate or greatly cut back on provisions for consultation and agreements with federal agencies regarding specific projects. Joseph Wright, acting director of OMB, wrote in August to Representative John Seiberling, who chairs the Subcommittee on Public Lands, that “the current process for considering the effect of Federal actions on historic properties is inefficient, causes unnecessary delays, and can be unnecessarily adversarial.” Seiberling responded to Wright stating that “contrary to your statement, we have found this to be an exemplary system for accommodating the needs of Federal projects with the interests of the public, and State, and local governments, in protecting their unique and irreplaceable cultural heritage.” OMB and Congressional leaders appear prepared to go to battle on this issue. The public, and historians particularly, are requested to register their comments. Contact the NCC for more information.
NCC Welcomes New Members and Announces Meeting Dates. A welcome is extended to the American Studies Association and the Community College Humanities Association—two new additions to the list of NCC member organizations.
Several NCC meetings will be held in New York on December 28 and 29 in conjunction with the AHA Annual Meeting. On Saturday, December 28, representatives of NCC member organizations will meet at 8 a.m. for breakfast and the semiannual NCC meeting. On Sunday, December 29, at 11 a.m. there will be an NCC strategy meeting on federal cultural resource management policy and at 3 p.m. a meeting of representatives of state committees. All of the NCC meetings will be held in the Conference Room on the 9th Floor of the Marriott Marquis Hotel, the headquarters hotel for the AHA meeting.
