Every year the headquarters staff of the Association optimistically looks for the onset of a summer lull in our activities. As a learned society with the majority of its membership in academia, our cycle of activity is naturally keyed to the academic year. We therefore reserve a certain number of activities to the summer “long vacation” period. A summer lull is therefore something of a will-o-the-wisp, and never more so than in 1986.
Among our regular summer tasks is the arduous assemblage of the program for the annual meeting. The Program Committee makes the choice of events, but putting it together, getting it in draft to the printers, checking the galleys carefully, and shepherding it through to completion for an early fall mailing is the task of headquarters staff. We are also annually at grips with the preparation of a new edition of the Guide to Departments of History, which is a very useful tool for member institutions and other subscribers. Since many years ago we had to give up, for financial reasons, the preparation of an annual list of members, the Guide serves as an effective locator file of some 550 major post-secondary departments of history, and of the specialties and provenance of department members. We must also make arrangements for the ballot material for our annual election of officers, which you will find featured in this issue of Perspectives. Do vote promptly!
This summer we have also been occupied with a search for a new deputy executive director. Our previous deputy, Dr. Jamil Zainaldin, after four-and-a-half highly productive years with the AHA, has moved on to become the executive director of the National Federation of State Humanities Councils. A large number of able candidates have applied, and the Association should have a new deputy executive director in place during September. A feature will appear in the next issue.
As members are aware, our advocacy efforts revolve around a number of important, continuing issues. We lobby for the welfare and adequate funding of the National Archives and Records Administration and the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, for a more restrained use of government authority to classify and withhold documents from public access and for greater access to records by scholars and the public. We are also attentive to the needs and the health of the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Our actual lobbying is done through a number of channels. The AHA is the largest contributor to the key historians’ advocate, the National Coordinating Committee for the Promotion of History. We are also a participant in the Consortium of Social Science Associations and the National Humanities Alliance; the executive director is on the board of both organizations and currently president of the latter. All three organizations collaborated to testify for the Library of Congress when it was hit by unbearable appropriations cuts this spring, and we are pleased to report that a supplemental appropriation for the Library has undone the gravest damage inflicted; the Library has re turned to its previous hours of operation and has supplemented its acquisition and cataloging programs.
We have also participated in meetings with the new Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Dr. Lynne Cheney, during June and July. Early indications are that she will be a strong and successful leader for this most important body. Retaining many of her predecessor’s interests in core humanities disciplines, including history, she is also anxious to improve NEH’s outreach to a wider public. We look forward to working with her.
As always, summer travel schedules have brought a steady stream of distinguished foreign historians to the AHA for visits. In May and June we received or otherwise entertained visitors from the Soviet Union, the Federal Republic of Germany, France, Italy, Paraguay, and the United Kingdom.
Also on the international scene, we have finalized plans for a major conference sponsored by the International Re search and Exchanges Board involving US and Soviet historians. On September 24-26 in Washington, the Sixth Colloquium of Soviet and American Historians will be held at the Smithsonian Institution and at Meridian House. An active program of papers by eight historians from each side has been scheduled on the topic “The Effects on Society of World War II.” Four historians from each country will comment on the topic relating to the United States and four from each side will present papers on the War and Soviet society, with discussion and commentary from the floor. We expect to accommodate twenty to twenty-five observers as well. We have also been moving ahead with planning for a major conference of Japanese and American historians at the annual meeting of the Pacific Coast Branch of the Association in August 1987. The topic will be “Society, Commerce; and Power in China 1000-1700 AD.” This is the second in a series of Japanese-American conferences to bring together historians from the two countries specializing in fields of history outside the history of Japan and the US.
Farewell
After four years as Deputy Executive Director of the AHA, Dr. Jamil S. Zainaldin has taken up the position of Executive Director of the National Federation of State Humanities Councils. While at the AHA, he oversaw the creation of a variety of programs and was re sponsible for the implementation of Association policies, all of which he did with grace and good hu mor. He will be missed by all, and we wish him well in his new endeavour.
