A Fully Involved Office

John R. Dichtl

In 1991-1992, the same year I entered graduate school and began working at the OAH, a blue ribbon panel (Mary Frances Berry, John Bodnar, Eric Foner, Lawrence Levine, and Jamil Zainaldin) studied the expanding role of the OAH executive office and made a series of recommendations.

At issue for the committee was the matter of moving from a half- or three-quarters-time executive secretary to one with a full-time appointment. The group also examined OAH's affiliation with Indiana University and the possibility of moving the organization to Washington, D.C., to be more "politically central."

To frame these questions properly and to understand where the OAH was headed in 1991, the committee recounted various trends in the profession, organization, and executive office. It noted, for example, that "historians come from a far wider variety of groups" than they had before the 1960s. Women in 1991 constituted 25 percent of the OAH membership (up from less than 20 percent in 1981). Today, this number is 33 percent and likely to increase rapidly in the near future. (Women already make up 37 percent of new doctorates in U.S. history alone). Precollegiate teachers in 1991 were 6 percent of the membership and are more than 8 percent ten years later.

The key question underlying the entire report, however, was whether or not the OAH needed "to become more active on the national public scene." What would be the effect on the executive office if the OAH became "more of an action organization"? The review committee ultimately recommended the OAH should stay at Indiana University and continue to move in the direction set by past executive secretaries Joan Hoff (1981-1989), Richard Kirkendall (1973-1981), and Thomas Clark (1970-1973). The OAH had a long way to go to become what Kirkendall called "an action agency." If it wanted to make itself "a greater factor in determining the conditions in which historians work and the attitudes people have to history and the nature of historical education," suggested the committee, OAH would need a "more fully involved" executive secretary.

Shortly after the committee's report, Arnita Jones (1989-1999) became the OAH's first full-time executive secretary, and then its first executive director. Under her leadership in the 1990s, while fulfilling its traditional responsibilities to the membership, the OAH found new ways to reach historians and teachers--as our 1998 mission statement puts it--"at all levels and in all settings." The OAH in the 1990s strengthened its ties to precollegiate educators, historians outside the United States, and, especially, public historians. With Jones's leadership, it also energetically built relationships with other national organizations and across disciplines, resulting in a stronger national voice for American historians.

In 2001, with a full-time executive director and a full-time deputy director, the OAH is working harder--as the 1991 review committee, and successive executive boards suggested--to "shape its own future and the future of the profession." Lee Formwalt and I have begun with the basics by strengthening the OAH's links to smaller state, regional, and thematic historical associations. We too are emphasizing the role of public historians and teachers within the organization.

Meanwhile, the OAH's array of functions continues to grow. The OAH has more committees, more prizes and awards, many more ad hoc and outreach programs to improve the practice of history (e.g., almost twenty projects in conjunction with the National Park Service in 2000 and 2001) than ever before. The Lectureship Program has expanded almost 20 percent in size since last year. In fact, the program was launched exactly 20 years ago this summer as a means generating funds to "provide more opportunities for the Executive Secretary to represent the historical profession in Washington and enlarge the staff of the Executive Secretary's office."

In addition to the Journal of American History, the Magazine of History, and the Newsletter, the OAH produces supplementary publications, maintains an immense web site, cosponsors a weekly radio program, and is pioneering new ground with the AHA and several partners in The History Cooperative. Concerted efforts at internationalization, first launched ten years ago, also have added new dimensions of complexity. Foreign membership has tripled since 1981, from less than 2 percent to 6 percent in 2001. And despite challenges such as the Adam's Mark situation last year, the OAH annual meeting, as evidenced in Los Angeles this spring, is more vibrant than ever.

In the summer of 1981, when Joan Hoff took over from Richard Kirkendall, the office staff numbered between five and six full-time employees. Ten years later that number had risen to the equivalent of more than ten full-time staff members. Today the OAH executive office does a substantial amount of additional work with the same size staff. Indeed, the cost to the organization for administration of its many programs, publications, and services continues to drop as a relative portion of the overall OAH budget. Twenty-five years ago administration accounted for more than 40 percent of annual disbursements; ten years ago that part of the overall budget was 34 percent; today it has dropped to 32 percent.

We are able to attend to our growing agenda and remain "active on the national public scene" with a relatively small executive staff for several reasons. The dedication and abilities of our personnel are outstanding. As an office, our experience runs deep. Six of the staff members have been at OAH for between 9 and 19 years. We have developed a collaborative working style that, bolstered by an impulse for adaptation and improvement, has led us continually to reevaluate and adjust our procedures. Intensive use of email, listservs, the web--not available, of course, in 1991--has streamlined our work as well. More than half of all new members, for instance, now join on the web site. As a staff, we also have benefitted from the expertise of graduate students from the Indiana University history department. In 1991 we employed two such students, of which I was the second. Ten years later, on a daily basis, we depend on four graduate students. Those who pass through the halls of Raintree House, even those who do not stay for a decade, will acquire a unique perspective on the profession.

It has been ten years since the OAH decided to appoint a full-time executive secretary and to remain on the campus of Indiana University. From a modest, brick, nineteenth-century house in Bloomington, the executive office continues to voice the local, national, and international concerns of American historians.