• Approved recommendations from the Task Force on Prizes to revise the AHA policy on administration and establishment of AHA prizes.

• Directed the Research Division to develop guidelines for administration of new research grants, made possible by growth of the several prize endowments.

• Approved nominees for the 2002 Award for Scholarly Distinction.

• Approved the budget for fiscal 2002-03.

• Approved the new guidelines for cooperation between the Council and the Program Committee. The president-elect will serve as a liaison between the two bodies and work with the committee chair to select a cochair and committee members, and to shape the program to reflect the president-elect's research interests.

• Approved changing the terms of the J. Franklin Jameson Fellowship, decreasing the residency at the Library of Congress from three to two months.

• Requested the Professional Division to develop a policy on management of the AHA's records.

• Requested the Professional Division to develop the idea of an honorific prize for the promotion of history to be given to people outside of the profession.

• Approved appointment of the following four members to the Board of Editors of the American Historical Review (AHR):

Edward Alpers (UCLA), precolonial East and Central Africa, African economic and social, Portuguese Africa;

Martha Howell (Columbia U.), early modern Europe;

Susan Deans-Smith (U. of Texas, Austin), colonial Latin America;

Daniel T. Rodgers (Princeton U.), American cultural and intellectual.

• Granted the AHR's request for funding for a Middle East book review initiative.

• Approved the AHR's recommendation to make archival material from the Review available to researchers after 15 years. This policy will begin with volume 108, which begins in February 2003. The Council also agreed that older archival materials, gathered before 1988, would also be open to researchers.

• Modified guidelines on the reviewing of edited collections in the AHR. (see box on page 56 for the new guidelines).

• Approved the creation of an emeritus category on membership form.

• Approved a short list of Indianapolis and Atlanta as possible sites for the 2007 annual meeting.

• Approved Washington, D.C., as a possible site for the 2008 annual meeting.

• Approved New York as a possible site for the 2009 annual meeting. If a successful package is submitted, the Council also agreed to hold the meeting from the morning of Friday, January 2 to the evening of Sunday, January 4, 2009, due to the timing of the holidays and the beginning of the school semesters.

• Approved the appointment of Leon Fink (Univ. of Illinois, Chicago) as the Local Arrangements Committee chair for the Chicago 2003 annual meeting.

• Approved Parliamentarian Michael Les Benedict's recommendation to amend Bylaw 7 (5) of the Association's constitution to add the following sentence to the paragraph pertaining to the quorum at the annual Business Meeting of the Association: "a quorum of twenty-five members in good standing shall be sufficient for all other purposes."

• Agreed to explore the possibility of electronic voting in future AHA elections.