Washington Notes, January 1986

This issue of Perspectives is being put to bed during the first week of December, so the decks can be cleared for the culmination of the AHA year­ the annual meeting December 27-30. Our next issue will carry a full account of the major items of business transact­ed during two meetings of the govern­ing council of the Association at the beginning and at the end of the annual meeting. This issue’s report is devoted to the two subjects that regularly occupy most of the headquarters staff’s atten­tion during the year—items of Associa­tion business, and items in which the AHA has a collateral interest, frequent­ly in the form of meetings with other education organizations.

One of the key events of the gover­nance of this or any association is the selection of members to staff our multi­ple activities. Our constitution decrees that certain positions will be filled by the membership expressing its will through the annual election, making choices be­ tween candidates nominated by the elected Nominating Committee (or nominated by petition). These elective positions are the presidency, the three vice-presidents, the six members of the governing Council, the nine members of the Nominating Committee and the four members of the Committee on Committees, and nine members of the three Divisional committees.

There are currently 120 members serving on the Association’s special, ad hoc and standing committees, and as delegates to other bodies. They are nominated by the Committee on Com­mittees and appointed by the Council. Owing to the large number of prize committees for quinquennial prizes be­ing awarded in 1986, the conference of the Committee on Committees this No­vember was a marathon effort; sixty-one nominations were agreed on by the committee, which is chaired by the pres­ident-elect. They will be acted on by the Council on December 27. Just as the Nominating Committee must be con­cerned with both a geographic and a field of specialization balance, with gen­der ratios as well as with the merits of individuals considered, the Committee on Committees wrestles with the same problems. After the Council acts on its nominations, the names of the new com­mittee members will be carried in Per­spectives. Members may be interested, however, in the statistics of the Commit­tee on Committees’ slate. Including al­ternates recommended in case principal nominees decline, there were sixty-four males and twenty-eight females nomi­nated. From institutions or residences in the East and mid-Atlantic states there were thirty-eight nominees; from the traditional Southern states, nineteen; from the Far West and Mountain states, twenty-two; and from the Midwest and old Northwest, thirteen. There were five public historians nominated.

Another November Association busi­ness matter was the (constitutionally de­creed) annual meeting of the Finance Committee of the Council with the Trustees. The five trustees are the cus­todians of our modest portfolio of gen­eral and special endowment funds. All of them are expert Wall Street invest­ment specialists, who generously give of their time to direct the Fiduciary Trust Company of New York, our investment bankers for over half a century, in the management of our investments. The principal business of the Finance Committee and Trustees meeting November 18, was implementation of the Council’s directive that the Association’s funds be divested of stocks and bonds of compa­nies operating directly in South Africa with all prudent speed. Some invest­ments have already been sold and rein­vested, and others will have been simi­larly converted by the time members read this issue. The remainder will fol­low as soon as prudent financial consid­erations permit.

Headquarters staff attended a num­ber of meetings in November as part of its continuing responsibility to represent the Association at various occasions or events of concern to the profession. In early November, the American Associa­tion of University Professors hosted a series of stimulating presentations on the threat of the so-called Accuracy in Academia organization.

This meeting took place the day after the AAUP’s Committee A meeting. The AHA’s Professional Division has recom­mended to the Council endorsement of the AAUP’s condemnatory statement on Accuracy in Academia, and the issue will be discussed at the Council meeting December 27. While desirous of con­demning this self-appointed group of witch-hunters, the Division does not wish to feed the group’s thirst for pub­licity.

On another front, the Association’s president, William H. McNeill, was the featured speaker at the General Session of the  National Council for the Social Studies, holding its annual meeting in Chicago during November. McNeill spoke of the long historical relationship between the AHA and the NCSS and called for the reenforcement of the re­cently neglected ties. He also called for strengthening of history in the school curriculum and the rethinking of cur­ricula so as to promote coherence in history education across the grades (and including the first two years of college). McNeill, after his address, met with the officers of the NCSS to discuss ways of improving history teaching.

On November 1 and 2, the joint His­tory Teaching Alliance Oversight Com­mittee, in which we participate with the National Council for the Social Studies and the Organization of American His­torians, held its first major review of the progress of this important initiative. As members recall, the three organizations have banded together with strong foun­dation support to sponsor the creation of community collaboratives of second­ary and post-secondary teachers of his­tory. Initially the field of joint study and discussion will be the US Constitution. The first five collaboratives have been launched and are markedly successful, while the committee approved seventeen new collaboratives for 1986, with modest launching subsidies going to most of them.

We are very excited about the results of the first five collaboratives launched under this program and with the ongo­ing activities of two groups launched earlier under OAH auspices. The prin­ciple of vertical faculty integration, in­corporating the schools’ and the col­leges’ teachers, is attracting much atten­tion. The foreign languages collaborative is the earliest in the field, and their groups’ experience has been freely shared with us. We understand that the physicists are planning to launch similar activities and that other disciplines are showing interest. The American Council of Learned Societies is looking at a proposal to sponsor a conference on the concept next year, and the staff has been in touch with ACLS supporting the proposal.

Two years ago we began giving friendly advice and support to another scholarly group. With our encourage­ment, the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs devel­oped a successful grant proposal for a study of their members’ curricula de­signed to strengthen the historical con­tent of their programs. In early Novem­ber the APSIA group met in Washing­ton, and we were delighted to be instrumental in arranging for our for­mer president, Professor Gordon Craig, to be principal speaker at their dinner meeting.