Through e-mail conversation from June 8, 2015, to December 23, 2015, and at meetings on January 7 and 10, 2016, the Council of the American Historical Association made the following decisions or took the following actions:

• Approved a statement protesting proposals pending in the Wisconsin state legislature that threaten to undermine several long-standing features of the state’s higher education system: shared governance, tenure, and academic freedom.
• Approved the appointment of Professor Claudio Saunt (Univ. of Georgia) to the board of editors of the American Historical Review.
• Approved the expansion of the Digital History Working Group from five to eight members.
• Approved the following members of the 2017 Annual Meeting Program Committee: Carl Ashley (US Dept. of State), John L. Brooke (Ohio State Univ.), Kate Brown (Univ. of Maryland, Baltimore County), Erika Bsumek (Univ. of Texas at Austin), Zephyr Frank (Stanford Univ.), Katherine French (Univ. of Michigan), Robert Hardmond (Brooklyn Tech High Sch.), Dina Khoury (George Washington Univ.), Joy Schulz (Metropolitan Comm. Coll.), Jonathan Skaff (Shippensburg Univ.), Valentina Tikoff (DePaul Univ.), and Kerry Ward (Rice Univ.).
• Approved signing on to a letter from NDD United to members of Congress urging them not to cut funding for nondefense discretionary programs.
• Approved revisions to the Annual Meeting Guidelines to accommodate a shift to 90-minute sessions beginning with the 2017 annual meeting, including giving priority to sessions that foster discussion, requiring organizers of each session to devote at least 30 minutes to discussion, and limiting panels to a maximum of four participants in addition to a chair.
• Approved the recommendation of the American Historical Review search committee.
• Approved joining with other scholarly societies in signing a revised version of the American Political Science Association’s statement of concern regarding the Texas Campus Carry law, which introduces serious safety threats on college campuses with a resulting harmful effect on professors and students. (See the statement at www.politicalsciencenow.com/apsa-statement-on-campus-carry/.)
• Approved the AHA endorsement of the World History Institute, to be held July 18–22, 2016, at California State University, Long Beach, sponsored by the Alliance for Learning in World History.
• Approved establishing the Palmegiano Prize in the History of Journalism.
• Approved the June 2015 Council meeting minutes.
• Approved the June–December 2015 interim Council meeting minutes and ratified Council actions and decisions made during online voting.
• Approved nominations from the Committee on Committees, including the 2016 appointments to various AHA prize and other committees.
• Approved the appointment of William Philpott (Univ. of Denver) and Miriam L. Kingsberg (Univ. of Colorado, Boulder) to co-chair the Local Arrangements Committee for the 2017 annual meeting in Denver.
• Approved the appointments of Antoinette Burton (Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) and Rick Halpern (Univ. of Toronto, Scarborough) as the 2018 Program >Committee chair and co-chair, respectively.
• Extended the term of AHA parliamentarian Michael Les Benedict (Ohio State Univ.) through January 2017.
• Approved the AHA sponsorship of a roundtable concerning Title IX at the Western Historical Association’s October 2016 meeting in St. Paul, MN.
• Approved the AHA sponsorship of the South Texas Regional Conference on Dual Enrollment at the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley, Edinburg, TX, in February 2016.
• Approved amending the AHA Policy on Prizes to clarify that only one individual or group should receive an award. The change deletes the phrase “except under exceptional circumstances” from “Prizes and awards should be conferred on only one individual or group, and there will be no honorable mentions, except in the case of the Asher Teaching Award.”
• Eliminated the “seconding” or “endorsement” requirement from the O’Connor Prize nomination procedures.
• Approved a change to the letters policy of Perspectives on History shortening the maximum length of a letter to the editor to 500 words.
• Approved the selection of the 2016 Honorary Foreign Member (to be announced at a later date).
• For the January 9, 2016, Business Meeting of the American Historical Association: authorized AHA president Vicki Ruiz to set time limits, extend debate at her discretion, ask for all amendments at one time at the beginning of the meeting, and grant the proposer and selected opposing organization of the Resolution on Protecting the Right to Education in the Occupied Palestinian Territories five minutes each to speak before debate begins.
• Issued the following statement: “The AHA recognizes that many of our colleagues around the world encounter obstacles to engaging in the teaching and research activities that lie at the heart of what it means to be a historian. Therefore, the Association will undertake an initiative to facilitate the donation of books and other research and teaching materials by our members to college and university libraries that lack the resources to build collections adequate for research and teaching in history.”
• Added “Journalism” as a thematic category in the AHA member taxonomy.
• Authorized outgoing Council member Josh Reid (Univ. of Washington) to explore establishment of a book prize for American indigenous history.
• Authorized outgoing Teaching Division vice president Elaine Carey (St. John’s Univ.) to represent the AHA in the realm of dual enrollment for a period of three years.
• Approved continued collaboration with the Social Science Research Council’s Measuring College Learning initiative.
• Accepted the report of the AHA Ad Hoc Committee on Contingent Faculty.
• Accepted the organizational priorities outlined in the AHA executive director’s Road Map: digital technology opportunities, reconceptualizing employment opportunities and structures for historians, broadening our engagement as historians with public culture, professional development for historians, fundraising for the Association, advocacy, international activities, and the affiliates program.
• Received the AHA Fiscal Year 2014 Audit.
• Authorized a letter from the AHA presidents to the French minister of culture to encourage the ministry to keep the holdings of the Lyon Textile Museum accessible to the public.

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