Michael J. Galgano, Editor
James Madison University

The Council of History Department Chairs Newsletter is pleased to begin publication by addressing a fundamental issue in higher education today: the status of minorities. Our purpose is to provide information from various perspectives to supplement the recent Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Minority Historians prepared by Nell Irvin Painter, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Darlene Clark Hine of Michigan State University, and Eric Foner of Columbia University. We hope these articles will assist chairs in stimulating an ongoing dialogue within the departments to better understand the Report, address its recommen- dations, and extend its findings. We solicit written responses to particular articles or to the overall theme raised in the Newsletter, as well as any thoughts or ideas originating in any department to increase our appreciation of the topic.

This inaugural issue features the presentation by Darlene Clark Hine to the OAH Council of Department Chairs at the AHA annual meeting in Washington, and includes a response to the OAH Report from Jacqueline B. Walker of James Madison University, a report from Sucheng Chan of the University of California, San Diego on the activities and plans of the OAH Committee on the Status of Minority Historians and Minority History, and a discussion of recruitment from William D. Barnard of the University of Alabama. Although most of the articles describe Afro-Americans, the points made apply in the main to other minority historians also.

Following Professor Hine's presentation last December, the assembled department chairs discussed the subject informally and one of the participants, Noralee Frankel of the AHA, took and arranged detailed notes. Her notes include several topics for further deliberation and possible action by departments, universities, and professional organizations. I am grateful for her clarity and meticulous organization and will try to summarize the salient points from the luncheon conversation.

In the category of potential activities at the departmental level, the group offered seven suggestions.

1. Target promising undergraduate history majors or even survey students, establish mentoring relationship and encourage them to consider history graduate work.
2. Establish relationships with area high schools to recruit minority students into undergraduate history programs.
3. Underwrite travel costs for minority students to accompany faculty mentors to professional history meetings.
4. Work to gain community support for minority scholars.
5. Balance community service with publishing in tenure decisions for minority scholars who are called upon to do more mentoring or community service. Also, those with heavy community commitments in the service of the department or institution merit reduced teaching loads.
6. Urge minority department members to limit committee work if tenure has not been achieved.
7. Strive to grant early leaves or reduced teaching loads to promote completion of significant research projects.

At the university level, the only idea came from the Big 10 schools and the University of Chicago. They have proposed a plan to guarantee employment for six years to minority graduate students who have completed the degree.

With respect to actions from historical associations, three recommendations were made.

1. Publish lists of agencies and universities where monies are available for minority graduate students in history. The lists would be helpful to individuals and departments.
2. Examine immigration and naturalization policies which discourage history departments from hiring qualified international minority candidates.
3. Underwrite travel costs to allow minority students to accompany a faculty mentor to professional meetings of historians.

These ideas are intended as a starting point for individual departmental discourse. The subject might be explored in formal department meetings and less structured conversations between colleagues. Let us know what strategies have been adopted, or are under consideration, in your department or institution. What successes have you enjoyed? What activities have not worked? Please address all comments to me at the Department of History, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA 22807.

Finally, the second issue of the Newsletter, scheduled to appear in late April, will look at public history; while the third, in late June, will explore assessment. If any of you wish to contribute to either discussion, contact me as soon as possible.

Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Status of Minorities in the Historical Profession

A report presented to the OAH Council of Department Chairs Session on December 30, 1987, at the American Historical Association Convention, Washington, D.C.

Darlene Clark Hine
John A. Hannah Professor of History
Michigan State University

In 1985 the Organization of American Historians created an ad hoc Committee to investigate the status of minorities in the historical profession. The ad hoc Committee was comprised of the fol- lowing members: Nell Irvin Painter, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chair; Darlene Clark Hine, Michigan State University; and Eric Foner, Columbia University.

In the spring of that year the OAH headquarters mailed 1,795 questionnaires to department chairs and minority faculty. The response rate was low, only 297 or 17 percent returned the questionnaires.

The data generated from the questionnaire were massaged and became the basis for the report published in the August, 1987 issue of the OAH Newsletter.

The Minorities in the Historical Profession Report ended with several recommendations. While it is too soon to expect these recommendations to be implemented, it is encouraging to note that Executive Secretary Joan Hoff-Wilson has, by arranging a luncheon of Department Chairs at the AHA meeting in Washington, D. C., signaled an organizational commitment to making the issues concerning the representation and development of minority historians a priority. Moreover, a word or two of praise is in order for former OAH President, Leon Litwack, for making the Ad Hoc Committee on the Status of Minorities in the Historical Profession a permanent Committee.

The six recommendations suggested by the Committee, for the record are as follows.

1. OAH elected officials should encourage program committees to be sensitive to the need to represent minority historians on convention programs and to appoint them to standing committees within the organi- zation. In other words the Committee wished to see Minority historians more completely integrated into the profession.
2. The editor of the Journal of American History should consider publishing a special issue of the Journal focused specifically on minority history.
3. The OAH should investigate the attrition of male minority historians.
4. The OAH should compile a job registry of minority historians and make it available to all department chairs.
5. The OAH should compile, in cooperation with the American Historical Association, a directory of minority historians.
6. The OAH should create an annual book prize in minority history, perhaps, named after W.E.B. DuBois.

The logic informing these recommendations will be made clear in subsequent remarks.

Before I review for you the salient features of the Ad Hoc Committee's Report, I must place the OAH's effort in the context of other projects and meetings in which I have participated during the last twelve months.

The OAH is no longer alone in its concern over the underrepresentation of minority faculty members in history departments, and within professional organizations. The American Historical Association has also begun to devote attention to minority profes- sional developmental issues and problems.

In October 1987, I participated in a special symposium sponsored by the Teaching Division of the AHA, held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of the Life and History of Afro-Americans (ASALH) at its annual meeting in Durham, North Carolina.

The AHA meeting addressed specifically the declining representation of minorities, especially Afro-Americans, in graduate histo- ry programs around the country. Again, the purpose of that meeting was to determine the reasons for this decline, and to identi- fy strategies, in cooperation with various funding agencies, which may encourage more black students to pursue graduate study.

Additionally, for several months I served as a special consultant for the Ford Foundation assigned the task of investigating the status of Black Studies Departments, Programs, Institutes, and Centers at select universities around the country. While serving in this capacity, I spent six weeks of the past summer travelling and interviewing countless directors of Black Studies and vice presidents, provosts, and deans.

One refrain echoed repeatedly by all with whom I came into contact, was, what I refer to as The Pipeline Problem.

According to the exponents of the "pipeline problem," there are too few black undergraduates and graduate students attending schools today, and consequently there are even fewer black faculty. The numbers are declining steadily in all of these catego- ries. Blacks represents 11.7 percent of the American population. Hispanics are 6.4 percent. Blacks, however only make up one percent of academic faculty, and one half of these are teaching at predominantly white institutions. Hispanics are even more underrepresented. While Hispanics are 6.4 of the total population, they comprise only 2.2 percent of graduate enrollment, Blacks make up 5.5 percent. In short, the pipeline is drying up.

Academic administrators, foundation officials, minority faculty, and the leaders of professional historical organizations are speaking in one voice. Something needs to be done immediately, for nothing short of the future presence, or rather absence, of blacks and hispanics on predominantly white campuses is at state.

The Report commented on another disturbing fact. If these data collected by the Ad Hoc committee are accurate, the number of minority male history faculty fell 20.6 percent between the fall of 1979 and the fall of 1982 and the number of tenured minority male historians fell by 22.9 percent, from 524 to 404. This trend will undoubted be exacerbated by the increasing preference black male undergraduates evidence for professional rather than graduate study.

Although the purpose of this OAH luncheon for Department Chairs was to discuss the status of minority historians, the plight of minority undergraduates and graduate students is inextricably connected and warrants equal attention. For minority students, I believe the chief deterrent to pursuing graduate study in history is the lack of adequate financial aid.

Then too excessive reliance on GRE scores, instead of other indicators of talent such as written work, letters of recommenda- tion, levels of motivation and maturity lead many graduate committees to reject promising applicants who may need, to be sure, a little extra nurturing and encouragement.

Finally, in a somewhat circular fashion it must be underscored that there is a direct correlation between the successful recruitment and retention of graduate students and the existence on the faculty of minorities who serve as recruiters, mentors, advisors, and role models. None of this however, is a substitute for a caring and inviting institutional culture. Academic administrators must still work unceasingly to rid their departments of latent racism.

In the remainder of these remarks I will focus on how department heads and minority faculty defined the problems confronting minority scholars and the kinds of remedies they employed or imag- ined would redress, at least, the problem of declining representation.

Problems from the perspective of departmental chairs.

1. Minority historians are too heavily concentrated in the fields of minority history and the areas in which they are able to or interested in teaching are limited.
2. Minority historians take longer to complete, and many do not, their Ph.D. degrees. There are also the problems of low scholarly productivity, perhaps as a result of too many competing demands made on their time by ethnic studies programs and by the larger historical profession.
3. The community environment, and indeed the campus community, tend to be somewhat "less than hospitable to minority historians."
4. It is exceedingly difficult to retain minority historians, especially the more productive ones. The competition for them is keen. Some chairs feel stressed by the market conditions which strain a department's ability to pay the salaries some minority historians command.

The problem becomes more acute when a minority faculty member does not receive tenure, often the Department is unable to meet market imperatives sufficient to replace that position with another minority historian.

As observed in the Report, "Several chairs seem to feel that minority historians are a luxury that only wealthy institutions can afford."

Suggested ameliorative measures proposed by department chairs.

• Encourage minority graduate students to diversify.
• Develop annual compilation of vitas of minority historians seeking employment. A job registry for minority Ph.D.s "A list of minority candidates and doctoral candidates is what the majority of chairs would like to have at hand."
• Make more money available to enable departments to offer competitive or more attractive fellowships.

Problems from the perspective of minority faculty.

1. Non-minority colleagues tend to devalue any intellectual undertaking connected with minority studies. This undervaluation is reflected in the inclination of appointment and tenure committees to make subjective, negative judgments about the work done by scholars in such fields.
2. Although financial support may be available the most harmful lack is the absence of intellectual and moral support for minority history scholarship.
3. In addition to the lack of positive recognition and encouragement from their peers, minority historians express dissatisfaction with the added demands made on their time by others within the academy. They have to be, or rather, are expected to be "the minority" on every committee and to do public relations work and serve as role models. Yet these contributions are seldom recognized or acknowledged.
4. The lack of respect for their opinions and views, and a tendency of non minority colleagues to ignore or close ears to their concerns.

Ameliorative measures proposed by minority historians.

• Increase the numbers of minority undergraduates, graduate students, and hire more non minority faculty members. Give special attention to non-traditional applicants for graduate study and more financial aid.
• Eradicate the persistent racism and discrimination in the academic world, this includes the universities and colleges as well as within the larger departments that have "impeded" minority hiring.
• Recognize the extra-curricular contributions of minority faculty.
• The OAH should encourage departments to become less racist and more sensitive to concerns of minority faculty and students.
• The OAH should include minority historians more prominently in its committees and annual meetings.
• The OAH should sponsor or encourage funding agencies to give fellowships for minority graduate students. Funds should be made available to junior faculty to allow for release time for research and publication.

The Report ended on a disturbing, perhaps frustrating, note: "Minority historians are disturbed by the condescension with which their non-minority colleagues address minority studies and minority concerns. Minority historians see the shrinking numbers of minority graduate students as cause for alarm, just as they are distressed by the attrition in the ranks of minority faculty. They suspect that the academic world knows full well what steps need be taken to attract and keep minority graduate students and faculty but lacks the will to do so."

Report of OAH Committee on the Status of Minority Historians and Minority History

Sucheng Chan
University of California, Irvine

At its first meeting in 1986, members of the newly-formed Committee on the Status of Minority Historians and Minority History discussed the recommendations of the ad hoc committee chaired by Professor Nell Painter and decided that all the recommendations except one should be implemented. The exception involves an investigation of the apparent decline in the number of black male historians. To understand this issue in depth, the Committee would have to carry out a study requiring a substantial research support. So, we thought it best to focus first on what can be done with the resources we have available.

At the forthcoming conference in Reno, the Committee is hosting two events: a panel discussion on the present state of minority history and a reception at which the problems faced by minority historians will be discussed in an informal way. Panelists will acquaint our colleagues with recent developments in the historical study of Afro Americans, Asian Americans, Latino Americans, and Native Americans; we shall also point out the gaps in these fields and suggest ways to fill them. The reception will provide a pleasant setting in which minority historians can talk about the obstacles we encounter in our work and career advancement and how our colleagues can help to minimize some of the existing barriers. A candid exchange of views will, we hope, lead to efforts by everyone to make the history profession more hospitable to undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty of color.

In this effort, the Committee and the OAH can only act as a catalyst. If we wish to entice more minority students to become historians, then every institution with a history department must bear some responsibility for recruiting, training, and supporting such students. There are many known cases where good minority students are discouraged by their advisors from pursuing studies of their own groups because it is alleged that such work will not be considered serious intellectual efforts. Yet, it is the very desire to unearth and understand the dynamics of our own past that impels many of us to become historians in the first place. Therefore, to say that certain kinds of history are not worth studying because they have so far been denigrated is a form of academic racism. White colleagues must not only recognize that fact but help to change the existing (and rather widespread) perception that the study of minority U.S. history is politically motivated and therefore not entirely legitimate. Only when these subfields of history are taken seriously will it become possible for other historians to engage in critical and constructive dialogues with those of us who specialize in them.

If minority graduate students and junior faculty are to be made welcome in the profession--particularly if we are to feel we have a stake in shaping the future direction of historical studies in the United States--it is crucial that we participate actively in the affairs of professional organizations such as these at an early stage of our careers. The Committee on the Status of Minority Historians and Minority History urges every department chair to find funds to pay for the travel and other expenses of at least one minority graduate student at the Reno conference. We also invite as many colleagues as possible to attend the two events we have scheduled. We hope these will be occasions during which we shall learn much from each other.

Recruiting Minority Faculty

William D. Barnard
University of Alabama

The Department of History at the University of Alabama has grown over the last decade--from 16 tenured or tenure track faculty in 1979 to 23 in 1987. The Department has aggressively taken advantage of the job market and is proud of its record in recruiting both young and established scholars. We cannot take pride, however, in our record of attracting black faculty members.

To be sure, the Department's difficulty in recruiting black faculty is shared by departments throughout the land, though a few have been notably more successful. The reasons for the difficulty are well known. Some are systemic (the lack of sufficient numbers of black Ph.D.'s), some are more particular (the past reputation of a university, a state, or a locality in racial matters). Even when efforts have been sustained and creative, results have often been disappointing.

It is true that two of our 23 faculty are officially classified as "minority," but neither is black--and this in a state 25% black and a university 10% black. l make no brief for our record. As a look at the figures will make clear, the sheer magni- tude of the problem is daunting, however.

In the past nine years, we conducted fifteen searches, nine for permanent positions, six for prestigious post-doctoral fellowships. The lack of black applicants is striking. In ten of the fifteen searches, there were no black applicants, including five searches for U. S. position, three for European, and two for "other" positions.

In five of the searches (four for permanent positions and one for a post-doctoral position in European history), a total of six black candidates applied. In one of the five (a search for a senior U. S. position), the single black accepted another position before the conclusion of our search. Of the other four searches, two were filled by non-minority candidates who had already attained the publications requirements for our next higher rank (one with two books published, the other with three). They were available to us only because (given the realities of the job market over the past decade and a half), they had not achieved the kind of appointments their accomplishments clearly merited. A third position--a post-doctoral fellowship--was filled by a young woman now at Stanford, and in the fourth, the one minority candidate's credentials did not fit the position we were seeking to fill.

In total numbers, there were 1,083 applicants for the fifteen positions. Some of the positions were in fields that drew very few applicants, Asian history for example. The largest number of applicants for one position was 189. That was also the only position for which there was more than one minority applicant--2. Of the 1,083 total applicants, six were black. Another six represented other minorities.

Continued efforts, more creative approaches, greater determination and follow-through--all are needed. But they will avail us little unless we also work to enlarge the available pool.

"Where's the beef?" A Response to the OAH Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Minority Historians

Jacqueline B. Walker
James Madison University

In my American History survey classes, I have often told my students that in a political system in which the majority rules, the interests of the minority are more often neglected. Although I was discussing the dilemma faced by the South in trying to protect its interests in a nation in which public opinion was becom- ing increasingly hostile to the institution of slavery, the observation could easily be contracted to apply the situation of minority historians on the faculties of predominantly white in- stitutions.

Being black and female, I read the OAH Report of the ad hoc Committee on Minority Historians with consuming interest, nodding in silent agreement and true empathy with many of the responses made in Part B of the document by other minority faculty members at other predominantly white institutions. I agree that minority faculty members must confront problems that are not shared (or even perceived) by their white colleagues; yet, they must fully shoulder the burdens of academic life borne by all teaching historians [pp. 8-9]. I agree that there is an irritating tendency of predominantly white institutions to "over-appoint" minority faculty to committees which (even remotely) touch upon "minority issues"; yet, they are virtually ignored when assignments to the "choice" university committees are made [pp. 7-8]. And I agree that the problem that is most galling to black faculty (in particular) is having their "qualifications" implicitly questioned whenever conversations center on Affirmative Action, while simultaneously being asked to help recruit others to fulfill the institution's goals for minority employment [pp. 10-11].

However, when all of the problems that vex minority faculty are expressed and duly recorded (as they are in the OAH Report), there remains a single question that begs an answer from minority historians: Since NONE OF THEM WERE FORCED to accept positions at predominantly white institutions, where's the beef?

While it is true, that none of us were forced to accept positions at the institutions which have employed us, it is also true that none of us were hired simply because of our hue. Positions in history departments have been so scarce that a search committee is likely to be besieged with scores of applications in response to an advertised vacancy. Moreover, based upon my own experiences, searches are very time-consuming and expensive; and since the success of the candidate selected reflects on the committee that recruited him or her, committees work conscientiously to select the best candidate in the applicant pool. Consequently, to hire a candidate who is "under-qualified, but a minority" not only is clearly counter-productive to the needs of the institution, but impugns the integrity of the search committee and grossly defies logic.

Nor did any of us accept our positions because of the "color" of the institution. Although the presence of minority historians on white campuses has been enhanced, to some extent, through effective recruitment efforts to fulfill the goals of the institution, our decisions have been based upon the same hard-headed considerations that our white colleagues have used in weighing their offers. Minority historians, too, consider: opportunities to teach advanced courses; the level of institutional support for research interests; the institution's resources and facilities; the institution's reputation for academic excellence; opportunities for tenure and promotion; the quality of the student body; faculty collegiality; and, of course, salaries. If we accept offers to practice our profession at predominantly white institutions, we do so because we believe our professional aspirations to be compatible with the needs of the departments that hired us. For historians "of color" to base critical career decisions simply upon racial considerations (because of or in spite of) would be utterly contrary to self- and professional interest. And we expect to be treated with the same level of professional regard accorded to our fellow historians. The "beef" arises, therefore, whenever minority historians discern the presence of "double-standards" or "hidden agendas" that negatively isolate them as minority faculty and that devalue their professional contributions.

Unfortunately, some will view the OAH Report and this response with disinterest, persist in the belief that the "minority beef" has no relevance to the needs of the institution or its educational mission, and ignore its findings. To do so, however, also ignores the fact that students learn more about our profession through example than by lecture. The scarcity and devaluation of minority historians (counter-balanced by over-representation of minorities in physical education departments) at predominantly white institutions perpetuates the myth that minorities have little to contribute to the enrichment of the intellectual/academic environment, but guarantee the success of the ath- letic programs. All of the lectures delivered in history classes that emphasize "multi-cultural" themes and discuss the value of the "ethnic/racial" perspective in historical analysis will not rectify the implicit messages delivered to students (including minority students!) by the example of academe, which is "93 percent white, 70 percent male, and 3/4 middle class" [p. 13].

As history departments on predominantly white campuses attempt to resolve this dilemma by recognizing the inherent value of cultural diversity and accepting, as does James Madison University, that "a university which seeks to educate its students broadly cannot ignore the need to make its faculty diverse" [JMU Faculty Diversity Committee, Final Report (1987), p. l], the most devastating impact of the "minority beef" is manifested. Not only has the number of minority historians decreased substantially since 1979 [OAH Report, p. 15], but the number will continue to drop precipitously as more minority college graduates seek admission to professional schools rather than graduate programs of study *[p. 16; Higher Education & National Affairs (Oct. 14, 1985), p. 1].

In view of the accelerating crisis, the concerns expressed by minority historians must be addressed, and the modest proposals offered by the OAH Report to "improve the status of minority studies and minority historians" [pp. 16-18], must be implemented by professional organizations and history departments on predominantly white campuses. To do otherwise would not only perpetuate the minority beef, but contribute the consequences predicted by the American Council on Education's Office of Minority Concerns: "Allowing declines in minority participation to continue unchecked will return society to an elitist system of a highly educated upper and middle class, mostly white, and a seriously undereducated working and poor class, mostly nonwhite--in other words, educational and, consequently, economic apartheid" [quoted in Higher Education & National Affairs, ibid., p. 5].