Through e-mail conversation from June 7, 2016, to December 1, 2016, and at meetings on January 5 and 8, 2017, the Council of the American Historical Association made the following decisions or actions:

• Approved signing onto a letter from the Coalition for International Education to the House Committee on Appropriations urging them to oppose the proposed cuts to the Title VI/Fulbright-Hays International education programs in the FY17 budget.

• Approved the name change of the Committee on LGBTQ History and Historians to the Committee on LGBTQ Status in the Profession.

• Approved the appointment of 2018 Program Committee members: James Carter, St. Joseph’s University (modern China); Rita Chin, University of Michigan (modern Europe); Purnima Dhavan, University of Washington, Seattle (South Asia, intellectual, religious); Trevor Getz, San Francisco State University (modern Africa); Kristina Giannotta, Naval Heritage and History Command (ancient, public); Toby Jones, Rutgers University (Middle East, environmental); Jennifer Morgan, New York University (Colonial US, slavery); José Moya, Barnard College, Columbia University (Latin America, migration); Craig Perrier, Fairfax County Public Schools (K-12, US, education, historiography); Andres Tijerina, Austin Community College (US, borderlands, Chicano/Latino); Kathryn Tomasek, Wheaton College (19th-century US, digital, women); and David Whitford, Baylor University (early modern Europe, Reformation, religion).

• Endorsed the statement issued by Scholars at Risk calling for an ongoing dialogue about the restoration of legal rights to academics in Turkey.

• Approved signing onto a statement of concern from the Middle Eastern Studies Association regarding moves by the Turkish government to dismantle much of the structure of Turkish higher education through purges, restrictions, and assertions of central control.

• Appointed Alex Lichtenstein as the editor of the American Historical Review for a four-year term.

• Approved the charge to the AHA Committee on LGBTQ Status in the Profession.

• Approved the revisions to the Guidelines for the Preparation of Teachers of History.

• Approved a statement expressing concern to the Texas State Board of Education about the content of a recent draft of a textbook that has been submitted for approval for a Texas’s Mexican American Studies course.

• Approved the recommendation of the Committee on Affiliated Societies to accept the affiliate application of the Midwestern Historical Association.

• Approved guidelines for the doctoral dissertation process.

• Appointed Edna Greene Medford, Howard University, and Aaron O’Connell, director of defense policy and strategy, National Security Council, White House, to co-chair the Local Arrangements Committee for the 2018 annual meeting in Washington, DC.

• Appointed Kenneth Ledford, Case Western Reserve University, to serve as AHA parliamentarian for a three-year term beginning in January 2017.

• Approved the following change to the Marraro Prize: from “. . . the best book on Italy . . .” to “. . . the best book on Italian history, Italian cultural history, or Italo-American cultural relations . . .” to more clearly reflect the intent of the prize fund bequest.

• Approved a letter to Polish President Andrzej Duda expressing concern about potential legal proceedings against historian Jan Tomasz Gross (Princeton Univ.) due to his historical work ascribing the responsibility for crimes against humanity during World War II.

• Approved a letter to the US Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell recommending the designation of a National Monument to Reconstruction in the Beaufort, South Carolina, area.

• Approved the following order of locations for upcoming AHA annual meetings: Seattle (2021), New Orleans (2022), Philadelphia (2023), San Francisco (2024), and New York (2025).

• Approved the June 2016 meeting minutes, the December 2016 meeting minutes, the 2017 committee appointments, and the 2019 program committee chairs appointments.

• Approved the nominee for the 2017 Honorary Foreign Member (to be announced at a later date).

• Approved the Statement on the Right to Nonviolent Political Action, which condemns all efforts to intimidate those expressing their views.

• Approved revisions to the Statement on Standards of Professional Conduct and to several professional guidelines issued previously by the AHA.

• Approved a Statement on the Right to Engage in Collective Bargaining.

• Granted approval to members of the Teaching Division to explore the feasibility of the Measuring College Learning project.

• Approved changes to the Statement on Excellent Classroom Teaching.

• Approved a process for Association members to propose late-breaking sessions for the annual meeting, which will be announced in fall 2017.

• Approved nondiscrimination language to be incorporated into all applicable AHA policy statements and best practices documents to refer consistently and comprehensively to “sex, gender, gender expression, gender identity, sexual orientation, and marital status.”

• Approved the nomination of William Wechsler to the Investment Subcommittee.

• Received the Fiscal Year 2015–16 Audit.

This post first appeared on AHA Today.