Dear AHA Members,

The AHA Nominating Committee for 2008 will meet February 2–3, 2008, in Washington, D.C., to recommend two candidates for each of the following positions:

• President-Elect (by rotation, Europe or fields other than Europe and U.S.).
• Vice President of the Research Division.
• Two places on the AHA Council, which governs the Association. A graduate student traditionally has held one position.
• A member of the Professional Division, which deals with the rights and responsibilities of historians, professional conduct, the job market, data collection, and professional service prizes.
• A member of the Research Division, which promotes research and new research tools, governs relationships with fellow professional organizations, establishes and awards research grants and fellowships, oversees the American Historical Review and the annual meeting.
• A member of the Teaching Division, which supervises AHA educational activities and the Association's educational publications, promotes history education, and encourages new methods of instruction and cooperation in the development of curricula and other teaching activities. A K–12 teacher traditionally has held this position.
• Two members of the Committee on Committees, which names members to appointive committees, including book prize committees, standing committees, and grant and fellowship committees. It also appoints AHA delegates to learned and professional societies.
• Three places on the Nominating Committee, which nominates candidates for all the elective offices and elective committee positions.

Recommending nominees to the Nominating Committee is one of the most significant ways members can affect AHA policy and administration. The process is open. When making nominations, the committee tries to secure representation of all viewpoints, backgrounds, academic interests, all kinds of institutional affiliations as well as unaffiliated historians, and teachers at all levels of the educational system. In short, the committee aspires to have the Association governed by members as diverse as our profession.

To accomplish this goal, we need your help. Please propose yourself or any friends and colleagues who you believe can serve the Association in any of these positions. If you think the AHA has not adequately represented some constituencies—as defined by type of institution, type of history studies, or personal characteristics—then please make a special effort to bring potential candidates who will do so to our attention. If possible, send a potential candidate's c.v. and ask others to write in support. But even if you cannot find time to do so, the committee will take every recommendation very seriously and secure information itself. To help us do so, please send us the e-mail address of the person you are recommending, if you can. Since the current Nominating Committee (listed below) consists entirely of faculty from four-year institutions, we are particularly grateful for recommendations of people in areas of the profession where we have fewer connections of our own: public historians, community college teachers, K–12 teachers, etc. The same is true of recommendations for the graduate student slot on the AHA Council, since the grad students we know best—those at our own institutions—cannot serve as long as we ourselves continue to do so.

The only restrictions are these:

A nominee must be a member of the Association. If you know good citizens in the profession who you hope will serve the AHA at some point, encourage them to join. You need not check on a potential candidate's membership yourself; the committee can do so.

The AHA wants to avoid concentrating leadership positions in a few institutions. Therefore we will not nominate candidates from institutions that are already represented among officers and on elective committees. A list of those institutions follows. However, we maintain files of potential candidates recommended to us, so don't let this stand in the way of recommending someone for future consideration.

List of currently "blocked" institutions: Univ. of Arkansas at Little Rock, Univ. of California at Berkeley, Univ. of California at San Diego, Univ. of California at Santa Barbara, Central Oregon Community Coll., Univ. of Chicago, Claremont McKenna Coll., Columbia Univ., Harvard Univ., Univ. of Houston, Johns Hopkins Univ., Martin Luther King, Jr. Research & Education Institute, Univ. of Mississippi, Univ. of New Hampshire, NYU, Sacramento City Coll., Smith Coll., Univ. of Southern California, Southern Methodist Univ., U.S. Dept. of State, Virginia Commonwealth Univ., and Coll. of William & Mary.

Please forward your suggestions as soon as possible, with any supporting material you can provide, to the AHA Nominating Committee, c/o Sharon K. Tune, 400 A Street SE, Washington, DC 20003-3889; you may fax to the same addressee at (202) 544-8307; or e-mail, with supporting material as attachments, to any of the committee members. Please feel free to send general comments and make general recommendations about the Nominating Committee's responsibilities to any of its members (see below for names of committee members and their e-mail addresses).

Sincerely,

2008 AHA Nominating Committee

Jane Gilmer Landers, chair
Vanderbilt Univ.
E-mail: jane.landers@vanderbilt.edu

Lisa Forman Cody
Claremont McKenna College
E-mail: lisa.cody@claremontmckenna.edu

Jan Golinski
Univ. of New Hampshire
E-mail:jan.golinski@unh.edu

Susan R. Grayzel
Univ. of Mississippi
E-mail: sgrayzel@olemiss.edu

David G. Gutiérrez
Univ. of California at San Diego
E-mail: dggutierrez@ucsd.edu

Steven H. Mintz
Univ. of Houston
E-mail: smintz@uh.edu

David S. Newbury
Smith College
E-mail: dnewbury@smith.edu

Evelyn Rawski
Univ. of Pittsburgh
E-mail: esrx@pitt.edu

Laura Ackerman Smoller
Univ. of Arkansas, Little Rock
E-mail: lasmoller@ualr.edu