Two successive Presidents of the United States have based their political campaigns on running “against the government.” We therefore may assume that our colleagues “outside the Beltway” share at least a little schadenfreude in learning that the summer of 1987 in DC has been the hottest in meteorological history!
Unlike the last two Septembers’ Perspectives, this issue does NOT contain your AHA ballot and election materials. Ballot and campaign literature have been separately mailed to you during the first week of September. Experience proved that while “piggybacking” saved money, it also reduced the voter response, We urge all members this year to vote and mail their ballots promptly to get us above the 33 percent participation level from which we slid.
The summer academic recess is paralleled by the interruption in the monthly issuance of Perspectives. The result is that we have many activities to report in this first fall issue. First of all we wish to inform our members about the meeting of the Teaching Division Committee the end of April. The last of the three divisional committees to hold its spring meeting, the Teaching Division reviewed several projects in which the AHA is interested.
The National Commission for the Social Studies was reported on; two other foundation projects, also focused on the role of history in the schools, were discussed; and a Council of Chief State School Officers project to test a pilot course in American Citizenship was considered at its request and suggestions made. The Society for History Education (SHE) representative reported on SHE activities and worked with the committee on developing Teaching Division committee sessions for the Annual Meeting. Committee member Marjorie Bingham described the activities of a new group being created by K–12 history teachers to cooperate with the AHA and other affiliated and sister societies. The Division Committee undertook to give modest support to these organizing activities both financially and in kind.
The Teaching Division discussed the Alabama textbook case in which a number of textbooks were condemned by the court as exemplars of a newly identified, although as yet imperfectly defined, cult of secular humanism, and resolved to follow the future progress of this court case closely. The committee also discussed in detail its plans for a fall meeting in Durham, North Carolina in early October in conjunction with the annual meeting of the sister organization, the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History, to focus on the urgent need to increase the number of minority graduate students in history. Graduate students constitute the resource pool for future teachers at both secondary and post-secondary levels, and the projected needs and the prospective output are dangerously divergent.
The Joint Committee of Historians and Archivists, chaired by Deborah Gardner, and made up of representatives of the AHA, the Organization of American Historians, and the Society of American Archivists (SAA) met in Washington in April. The joint Committee’s task consists in harnessing the joint energies of historians and archivists in the service of improved access to documents and the other interests of the two closely allied professions. The committee was briefed in depth by Page Miller on advocacy concerns. It recommended to the three organizations a strong policy statement on the Freedom of Information Act and government classification policy. It discussed the SAA’s continuing activity on regularizing and institutionalizing archivists’ accreditation, and adopted a joint session at the AHA annual meeting with the Research Division.
In the March “Washington Notes” we reported on a meeting between headquarters staff and National Science Foundation (NSF) staff regarding the lamentable inattention to the history of science and technology in his tory survey courses. As a follow-up to that discussion, NSF funded a special conference on curricular reform at Georgetown University on April 27–28. At that meeting, representatives of the AHA, the History of Science Society, and the Society for the History of Technology agreed to a plan of action to enhance the role of the history of science and technology in precollege history courses. Substantial NSF financial support for the History Teaching Alliance and other projects now appears likely, and we hope to announce soon a special NSF solicitation for proposals. As always in the activities of headquarters staff, much time and energy was devoted to various meetings of importance to historians. A representative (but incomplete) selection may be of interest. The American Council of Learned Societies, of which the AHA is a charter member, held its spring meeting in Washington under the leadership of President Stan Katz. The AHA’s delegate, Professor Philip D. Curtin represented us, while the executive director attended the concurrent conference of secretaries of ACLS member societies.
The executive director also attended the annual board meeting of the Truman Library and Institute as an ex officio member. President Truman, one of the most history minded Presidents, designated both the OAH and the AHA directors to be board members of “his” library and institute.
Several headquarters staff members attended the finals of the National History Day competition held June 7–11 at the University of Maryland, College Park; as always we were deeply impressed by the enthusiasm and vigor of both junior and senior competitors and gave renewed thanks to long-time member and former Vice President for Teaching, David Van Tassel, for his inspiration and energy in bringing this splendid national organization into being. The sight of so many eager and dedicated young history buffs gives us confidence for the vigor of history in America and for the coming generations of AHA members.
Near the end of the spring term, our President, Professor Natalie Zemon Davis, and the executive director met with NEH Chairman Lynne Cheney in a fruitful exchange of views on history and the humanities. Chairman Cheney followed with interest Professor Davis’s description of the newer fields of historical research and shared with us her plans for the Endowment’s growing outreach programs to bring the humanities to a wider public.
Two conferences of importance were held in August, and will be reported in a future issue. In conjunction with the annual meeting of the Pacific Coast Branch (PCB) at Occidental College, a second conference with Japanese historians was held, aided by generous funding from the Luce Foundation. The initial conference was held in Japan in 1982 on the subject of European history and the worldwide industrial revolution, and a strong US delegation (including three presidents of the AHA) was warmly received by our Japanese historical colleagues. This summer’s conference’s topic dealt with Chinese and Korean history from 1000 to 1700 A.D. and was organized by K.C. Liu, President of the PCB, assisted by AHA president-elect Akira Iriye, among others.
The other conference, the second of a series, was cosponsored by the Association. It was the second international conference on Russian America, held in Sitka, Alaska, Au gust 19–22. The first conference was held there in 1979, and the 1987 meeting was expected to draw a distinguished representation of historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists; more on that later.
