It is a fact of life that in many institutions the academic year comes to an end by mid-May to the equal pleasure of students and faculty. A generation ago the agony was often prolonged until the end of the month or into June. In order to catch our member-readers on campuses before they pack up for the summer, we are trying to get Perspectives into your mailbox as early as we can. That means that many mid- and late-April events cannot be reported until the September issue, but the principle of a continued story is a tried-and-true device of other suspense magazines.
The two most important events to be reported are the March meetings of the Professional Division and Research Division Committees. Each dealt with a single major topic extensively, but found the time to dispatch some other items of business as well.
The Professional Division Committee met on March 20 in Washington. It carefully went over the draft text of the Statement on Standards of Professional Conduct, which has absorbed so much of its attention over the past two years. A number of textual refinements were introduced, based on letters from members and on comments made at the session in Chicago during the December Annual Meeting. The Division’s final text will be on the agenda of the Council at its late-May meeting and, if approved, will be printed in a fall issue of Perspectives.
The Committee reviewed the status of two different cases of plagiarism against members and found that its actions over the fall and winter had been efficacious in limiting damage inflicted and preventing future injury to scholars’ work. It again noted that copyrighting scholarly work is the most effective defense measure of all. That little “brand” of a C in the circle, @, is the best way of all of keeping off rustlers. On a separate case of a complaint involving an editor’s refusal to print a review commissioned by the journal, the Committee decided to seek advice from our affiliate, the Conference of Historical Journals.
The Committee decided to follow up the suggestions of a member deploring the paucity of AHA membership among community and junior college faculties, seeking ideas for corrective action by the Association. It also decided to express the AHA’s concern, which is shared by the AAUP, over the concept of performance contracts for individual teaching members, being tried by some institutions. The danger that such at tempts to quantify the art of teaching (and research) might pose to tenure principles is a matter of concern to the Association.
An extensive discussion by the Committee related to the application of dis criminatory affirmative action in the recruitment of teaching faculty. Recent Supreme Court decisions on mandatory action to rectify racial proportions of the Alabama State Troopers and on voluntary action in a California case involving preference for women made the subject timely. A specific case of a university history department’s targeted recruitment effort was discussed. Since that case is stated to have been mandated by court order, the Committee decided that its dislike of less than equal opportunity should not be expressed. The guidelines for employment notices in Perspectives, however, will not be changed from their present antidiscriminatory emphasis.
The single, great issue for the Re search Division Committee was its project to prepare a new edition of the Guide to Historical Literature. Matters that were extensively discussed were the names of a possible general editor, of members of an editorial board, of an institutional home for the project, and of funding sources; as well as a series of actions taken, to be referred to the Council for approval.
The Committee devoted a late-night session to difficult decisions awarding small grants for research in Western hemisphere subjects from the Beveridge Fund, the Littleton-Griswold Fund, and the Kraus Fund. Just over $22,000 was awarded to thirty-two applicants from a total of ninety applying.
The Division deferred a number of other matters on which further study is necessary until its fall session. It reviewed and rejected a suggestion that the time of the Annual Meeting be changed to commence on the afternoon of December 27, so that all sessions could be completed before noon on the 30th. It preferred rather to urge Program Committees to schedule very strong sessions for the last time slot, as means of improving attendance. It approved a slight change in the ground rules for the Corey Prize, suggested by the joint AHA-Canadian Historical Association Committee.
In other events, headquarters representatives participated in an important meeting with the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities together with the director of the National Humanities Alliance. The AHA actively participates in the Alliance, a lobbying activity on behalf of NEH. Al though not all the lobbying goals of the Alliance on behalf of NEH are necessarily shared by the chairman, particularly when they are in opposition to official Administration positions, both sides agreed on a number of policy issues and on the importance of keeping in close touch.
Since this is the last issue of Perspectives for the 1986-87 academic year, we want to provide a “Prevue of Coming Attractions,” on headquarters activities.
In mid-April here in Washington, there will be a meeting of the Joint Committee on Historians and Archivists of the Organization of American Historians, Society of American Archivists, and the AHA to discuss matters relating to government records and access. Later in the month, the Teaching Division Committee will hold its spring meeting. We will be attending a National Science Foundation meeting in late April to discuss improving the history of science content in the history program in the schools and colleges. The Truman Library Institute and Board, on which the AHA is represented, meets in Independence, Missouri on May 9–10.
In mid-June, the finals of the National History Day contests will be held at the University of Maryland, College Park, and in mid-August on the margin of the annual meeting of our Pacific Coast Branch, an important conference of Japanese and American specialists in medieval and early modern Chinese his tory will be held. In later August, the second conference on Russian America, of which the Association is one of the er sponsors, will take place in Sitka with an anticipated gathering of American, Canadian, Russian, and European scholars. You’ll see us next in September!
