ACLS Survey of Scholars
The ACLS Office of Scholarly Communication and Technology has released the results of its “Survey of Scholars,” an analysis of the opinions and attitudes of humanities scholars concerning their work, their colleagues, and their working environment.
A stratified random sample consisting of 5,385 individuals was selected from the membership lists of eight professional associations representing seven disciplines—AHA and Organization of American Historians (history), Linguistic Society of America (linguistics), Modern Language Association (literature), American Philosophical Association (philosophy), American Philological Association (classics), American Political Science Association (political science), and American Sociological Association (sociology). Each was sent a questionnaire that included sections on library resources, professional reading, research and publications, and computer resources and use. A total of 3,835 us able questionnaires were returned, a response rate of 71 percent.
An overview of the findings was published in the Summer 1986 issue of Scholarly Communication, followed by the publication of more than 200 cross-tabulations that give the raw data and allow detailed comparisons between academic respondents with different career and personal characteristics. A final report will be published by the Office of Scholarly Communication and Technology in the spring. This short report focuses on the responses of historians, using the cross-tabulations to compare historians with scholars in the other six disciplines surveyed.
Foremost among the findings is the historians’ continuing resistance to the computer onslaught. The survey found that whereas 53 percent of the historians responding do not use a computer professionally, only 39 percent of the respondents in the other six disciplines similarly eschew computerization. Even when historians do use computers, they do so mainly for word processing. Of those historians who admitted to using computers, 97 percent agree that word processing is very or somewhat important (compared to 94 percent in the other disciplines) while only 10 percent consider computers very or somewhat important as teaching tools (19 percent elsewhere).
Another point of contention between historians and other scholars is peer review. Fewer historians feel that peer review needs reform (36 percent compared to 43 percent in the other disciplines) or agree that the peer review system frequently favors established scholars (43 percent in history and 52 percent elsewhere) or scholars using fashionable approaches (38 percent against 51 percent), although 14 percent of the historians and only 9 percent of the others believe peer review frequently favors white scholars.
The survey also demonstrates that historians are unlikely to collaborate with other members of their profession or even to exchange information, which can be traced in part to the small number of individuals with shared research interests in any one department (in history 32 percent of the respondents have no departmental peers who share their research interests while that figure for the other six disciplines combined is 24 percent). Historians are also less likely to co-author articles or books than other scholars (57 percent against 74 percent). For more information, contact the Office of Scholarly Communication and Technology, 1717 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Suite 401, Washington, DC 20036.
Fulbright Distinguished Fellows Named
Thirty-seven scholars, writers, and performing artists have been named Fulbright Distinguished Fellows as part of this year’s celebration of the fortieth anniversary of the Fulbright Program. Among those named were six members of the AHA. The fellows will lecture and give master classes all over the world in the coming months. The following is a list of our members and the place and subject of their lectures: Philip D. Curtin, professor of history, Johns Hopkins University, Barbados, Jamaica, and Trinidad/Tobago on Caribbean-African history; John Hope Franklin, professor emeritus of history, Duke University, Zimbabwe on Afro-American history; John Higham, professor of history, Johns Hopkins University, Argentina on American history; Harold M. Hyman, professor of history, Rice University, Israel on American constitutionalism; Michael Kammen, professor of history, Cornell University, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Philippines on American constitutionalism; Arthur S. Link, professor of American history, Princeton University, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Netherlands on American history.
Howard D. Mehlinger
The United States and the Soviet Union are in the process of analyzing what each says about one another in their textbooks. Howard D. Mehlinger, dean of the School of Education at Indiana University at Bloomington, is directing a group of American scholars who are examining seven history or geography books that students use in Soviet schools. Soviet scholars are examining twenty-five of the books in those subjects that students use in American schools.
The program began in 1977, was put on hold following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and was revived late last year. A preliminary report issued during the hiatus said that textbooks tended to glorify the country in which they were written and to undervalue the contributions of other nations.
1987 Jefferson Lecturer
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has named Forrest McDonald, a noted historian of the Constitution and professor of history at the University of Alabama, to be the 1987 Jefferson Lecturer in the Humanities.
The announcement was made by NEH Chairman Lynne V. Cheney after the quarterly meeting of the National Council on the Humanities, the twenty six-member advisory body of the NEH, which selects each year’s lecturer. The Council, in support of NEH plans to recognize the 200th anniversary of the US Constitution, chose the 1987 Lecturer from a distinguished group of constitutional scholars.
The annual NEH Jefferson Lectureship, which carries a stipend of $10,000, is the highest honor the federal government confers for outstanding achievement in the humanities.
In early May, McDonald will present his lecture on “The Intellectual World of the Founding Fathers,” in Washington, DC and at the University of Kansas in Lawrence.
Professor McDonald received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in 1949 and his PhD in 1955 from the University of Texas, all in American history. He has a long list of distinguished honors anti book awards.
New Book by Former AHA President
Two important scholarly essays by renowned historian Frederick Jackson Turner, and one biographical essay on Turner’s Wisconsin roots, have been published under the title Frederick Jackson Turner: Wisconsin’s Historian of the Frontier by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. The book was edited by Martin Ridge of the Huntington Library.
Professor Turner was born and reared in Portage, Wisconsin, attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, then went on to become one of its most distinguished faculty members before leaving to teach American history at Harvard University. He was president of the AHA in 1910. His ideas about how the existence of a western frontier shaped the character and ideology of the American people were considered revolutionary.
For information, write the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 816 State Street, Madison, WI 53706.
