Activist Association Needed
Dear Editor:
It is my hope that leaders of the AHA will take to heart and mind the cry from the Lamar wilderness of Professor Walter A. Sutton (Perspectives, April 1987). While my situation and attitudes are far removed from those expressed by Sutton (despite the similarities in our universities), I fully concur with his assessment of professional organizations in general and the AHA in particular.
The Association ought to represent the whole of its constituency. Proof of Sutton’s contention that it does not appears on the front page of the April Perspectives. Every one of the nominees for office (except those representing high schools) are affiliated with major research institutions. Is there no one from such colleges as Morgan State, Allegheny, or New Mexico State willing to hold office?
For nearly twenty years it has been apparent that the Association has no interest in serious political or economic action to improve the circumstances in which a large proportion of its members practice their profession. Surely, the AHA, in cooperation with other professional organizations, could afford to hire lobbyists to represent its members in each state legislature. Surely, the AHA could establish basic, and substantial, salary levels that colleges must pay its members.
Historians are, by nature, a docile group. We tend to be independent of each other and everyone else; we see events in detached, and comforting, perspective; and we accept the fact that our reward is in the approval of our peers. There is nothing wrong with this. These are, however, precisely the reasons that we need an activist association; an association that will function, in Sutton’s words, as “an instrument of power.”
Sincerely,
Ronald K. Huch
Dickinson State University
The AHA President Responds
Dear Editor:
Writing in the April issue of Perspectives, Walter A. Sutton called sharp attention to the economic plight of history professors and history teaching in Texas. Libraries, teachers’ salaries, and courses have all suffered at the hands of a legislature unwilling, so he re ports, to commit adequate funds to higher education. He also worries about declining enrollments in advanced history courses and about the job prospects for young historians. Especially, he feels let down on these matters by the American Historical Association, by the leaders of the profession, with their “election platitudes,” who he feels are indifferent to the issues of “mere livelihood and survival” faced by the many teachers at the public colleges across our land.
Writing from North Dakota in this present issue of Perspectives, Ronald K. Huch gives a strong second to Professor Sutton’s estimate of the inactivity of the Association in regard to the economic circumstances of historians. Both colleagues urge us to forms of collective action which can guarantee that our demands, as historians and educators, be taken seriously.
Readers of these letters will appreciate their vehemence—either personally or through colleagues, we have all experienced the disasterous effects of budget restrictions. Professors Sutton and Huch serve us well in shaking us perhaps not so much from indifference as from preoccupation with other causes, be they scholarly, professional, or political.
I would like to react to their “what is to be done?” by considering the activities of the Association, past and current, to protect historians’ economic interest and promote history and by underscoring new elements in the national scene. Rather than declining enrollments, the next challenge we face may be galloping public interest and the question of who is going to harness it.
From its early decades, the AHA has focused its efforts on promoting the highest standards of research and teaching. Within that broad mission, priorities have shifted from time to time, but the Association has maintained this basic commitment for over a century. Concern with employment and economic compensation did not, however, become part of the AHA’s agenda until much later. In the early years, some of the aura of the classical and medieval purveyors of the liberal arts still clung to history teachers: they were to be rewarded by gifts and honoraria, not just paid wages like mechanical laborers worthy of their hire. Moreover, a significant number of early members were “amateurs” with sources of income outside colleges and universities.
After World War II, the picture changed with the upsurge in the number of historians and history departments, with the changing demands—up and down—for history professors, and with the increase in federal funding and federal decisions that affected historians. The AHA standing committees multiplied beyond the usual prize committees to include, among others, a Committee on the Historian and the Federal Government. By 1960, the Job Register had been created under the supervision of a special committee. Then in 1974, the AHA revised its constitution and established three divisions, including a Professional Division “to collect and disseminate information about employment opportunities,” to expand opportunities for all historians, and to protect historians’ rights.
Nor was the Professional Division the end of the story. In 1977, as a further response to the employment crisis, the National Coordinating Committee for the Promotion of His tory was founded, primarily at the initiative and funding of the American Historical Association. As its activities moved increasingly toward lobbying, it was restructured in 1982 as the advocacy arm of historians and our major liaison with the federal government. Today, under the capable leadership of Dr. Page Putnam Miller, it is supported by the AHA, the Organization of American Historians, the Society of American Archivists, and forty five other national and regional historical organizations.
But what difference has this made? What specific actions has the AHA undertaken in the past dozen years to enhance the “mere livelihood and survival” of historians and to promote historical activity?
On matters of salary, the response has been primarily informational, as in an article in Perspectives of October 1986, reporting on salaries and salary increases in history and in all other fields, comparing those salaries at public and private institutions (historians’ salaries were higher at the former), and comparing salaries at public institutions with and without collective bargaining agreements (salaries were absolutely higher at the former, though last year’s rate of increase was higher at the latter). Such informational activity is vital and could surely expand. For example, the annual meeting could provide a forum for assessing the economic situation of the profession.
Already in place and attuned to such issues is the Professional Division, which spends much of its time on employment-related concerns, including fair compensation for part-time instructors. The problems so clearly articulated by Professors Sutton and Huch will surely have high priority on the Division’s agenda.
But it seems unwise for the AHA to set basic salary levels for all history teachers, as Professor Huch suggests. Quite apart from the practical difficulties—reconciling the considerable differences in cost of living, teaching duties, and the like—there are strategic difficulties. The problems with academic salaries are not discipline specific, and we do not want to alienate our colleagues by pleading a special case for historians. The institutions and organizations to which we turn on these economic matters may vary—faculty associations, teachers’ unions, local consultative committees—but in every case the key is working with colleagues on our campuses to address specific situations. While comparative salary data and support from national organizations can certainly buttress such efforts, the leadership should come from the campus and embrace all disciplines. We will get nowhere on salaries and employment conditions if we stand separate as a discipline.
The situation is quite different with the promotion of history and the protection of historians’ interests. Here the AHA and its associated organizations and projects have appropriately focused on the discipline and have successfully demonstrated the value of the historian’s craft to diverse publics.
Take the History Teaching Alliance, founded in 1984 jointly by the AHA, the OAH, and the National Council for the Social Studies and just now moved from AHA headquarters to a new home at the University of Florida, Gainesville. Under it project director Dr. Deborah Welch, year-long collaborative seminars between university and secondary school teachers have been set up in at least twenty states. Support has been won not only from Rockefeller, Exxon, and the Ford Motor Company for Alliance work in big urban centers like Detroit and Dearborn and from the Brown Foundation, among others, for projects in San Antonio, Texas, but also from community groups in smaller towns such as Clemson, South Carolina. In several areas, regional school districts have paid for released time for high school teachers and for other services. Simultaneously, the AHA and its Teaching Division are involved in a long-term collaborative effort with the National Council for the Social Studies and other groups to reassess the role of history in the school curriculum. We all stand to benefit from these efforts to improve the teaching of history at the secondary level—the problem of declining interest and enrollment in history does not begin with college but must be dealt with at the pre-college level.
Or take the National Coordinating Committee for the Promotion of History. Through letters to and appearances before Congressional committees, Page Miller has successfully addressed precisely the kinds of issues raised by Professors Sutton and Huch: adequate funding for the National Archives, the Library of Congress, and other federally supported research institutions; continued funding for documentary editing projects; federal grants to the states for historic preservation; and appropriate technology for preserving and cataloguing materials in the Library of Congress.
But what about the states and local lobbying? In my “Candidate’s Response” in the Newsletter of the Coordinating Committee on Women in the Historical Profession (all AHA candidates are given considerable space there; some AHA members wish the same were possible in Perspectives), I urged that the work of the NCCPH be extended to the state level “partly because I see the possibility of expanding historical education and activity most readily there and partly because it would help to create the most new jobs there.”
Last December at the AHA annual meeting, representatives of the member organizations of the NCCPH met with Page Miller, and I made the recommendation that, wherever possible, information about state legislation be circulated and that local advocacy be encouraged. It was agreed that this was a good idea, and indeed a skeleton structure is already in place: twenty-eight states, including Texas and North Dakota, have State Coordinating Committees. They choose their own focus and organizational style, but all are committed “to promote a greater awareness of and appreciation for history and archival management in the community at large.”
For instance, the Texas Committee has worked especially on strengthening teaching on the secondary level; its representatives frequently appear before the Texas State Board of Education to make the case for history. Commitment from members, time, and money will determine the extent of these state activities. In the meantime, with OAH sponsorship, the NCCPH has published a report that covers state-by-state the list of all history courses required for graduation.
When we look beyond the portals of our federal and state legislatures, how is history doing? On some campuses there have been upsurges in undergraduate enrollment in history (at my own university over the past two years, the number of history majors increased by 50 percent), and the growing interest in upgrading history in the high school curriculum (both the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Federation of Teachers are active in this as well) should increase numbers in future years.
Even more noticeable is the growing public interest in learning about and representing the past. Families are researching their origins, whether they passed through Plymouth Rock, a slave market, or Ellis Island. Popular history books are selling outside of university circles, and the public has an insatiable appetite for novels with “historical” settings. More and more television series are being planned on historical themes, and history films pick up Academy Awards and prizes at foreign competitions.
How are we historians going to respond to this interest in the past? Let it be said, to begin with, that we have no monopoly over the forms and places in which history is recounted or the past memorialized. Furthermore, many historians are not concerned and need not be concerned with these popular recitals; they will best serve their fields and their own intellectual delight by publishing in scholarly settings. But as a profession, we should not ignore this growth. (Nor has the AHA done so in the past. Back in the “radio days” of the 1930s, there was an AHA radio series called “Behind the Headlines.”)
Do we want the past remade by people who think they have done their duty when the costumes are taken from the right painting or woodcut? Do we want historical memory to be managed simply by investors and producers? We have an interest in deepening the quality and complexity of these public representations—or to use Christopher Collier’s phrase from Perspectives of this past April, “in bringing better grounded and less fanciful depictions of the past to the general public.” He speaks from experience: a professor at the University of Connecticut and state historian of Connecticut, he is also coauthor of widely selling yet still carefully researched and conceptualized historical novels for young people.
Historians are making links with new audiences in many different ways, as the impressive growth in numbers and activities of our public historians attests. Let me take film work as an example. Some new PhDs are going directly into television production, determined to produce programs of which the profession can be proud. Some historians, impatient with pro forma “consultation” by filmmakers, are becoming their own directors and producers; others are withholding their services till they find filmmakers willing to work on a basis of equality.
Meanwhile, the new AHA Ad Hoc Committee on History and Film is now drawing up a statement on the responsibilities and rights of historians working on the moving image. Among other things, we will address ourselves to the rights of historians to be consulted on all matters pertaining to the historical meaning of a film and to have historians’ work be properly acknowledged and remunerated. What sanctions will support such efforts—what “instruments of power,” to use Walter Sutton’s phrase—remains to be seen, though clearly the film reviews in Perspectives, Film and History, the Journal of American History, and perhaps to be started in the American Historical Review will help.
In sum, the AHA is not indifferent to the concerns raised in these letters from our colleagues. We have initiated efforts to address these problems but recognize that we must do more. I thank Professors Sutton and Huch for writing to us—we depend on our members to let us know whenever we are not addressing their needs.
Sincerely,
Natalie Zemon Davis
AHA President
