News of the Organization

OAH Members Now Receive History Matters! Newsletter from the National Council for History Education

In an ongoing effort to promote the teaching of American history, the OAH has joined forces with the decade-old National Council for History Education (NCHE), which has devoted its energies to improving history instruction, especially at the precollegiate level. NCHE and OAH decided this year to share our important history teaching publications with each other's membership. In June, all OAH members began receiving a complimentary one-year subscription to the monthly NCHE newsletter, History Matters! And starting with this summer's issue, all NCHE members will receive issues of the quarterly OAH Magazine of History. We know the Magazine has been a great resource for our members teaching at both the precollegiate and undergraduate survey levels. We ask our regular subscribers as well as our three thousand new NCHE readers to let us know how we can make the Magazine even more useful for their history classrooms.

OAH / National Park Service Announce
Jamestown Scholars

The National Park Service (NPS), in conjunction with the Organization of American Historians (OAH) announces the first two Jamestown Scholars: Michele Marie Hinton and Karen Bellinger Wehner.

Hinton's dissertation, "Jamestown Medicine: Old World Practices in a New World Environment, 1607-1666," will examine the sociocultural adaptations of medicine as a way of understanding cultural retention and change. This approach, argues Hinton, will lead to a better understanding of the reasons why Jamestown had such a high mortality rate. Hinton is a Ph.D. candidate at Saint Louis University.

Wehner's dissertation, entitled "Craft Production, Economy, and Society in Early Seventeenth-Century Jamestown," suggests that "Chesapeake scholars, focused on tobacco, have underestimated the economic and social importance of town-based manufacturing." Wehner is a Ph.D. candidate at New York University.

OAH Executive Director Lee Formwalt thanked the selection committee for its careful consideration of all the applications and noted, "The OAH always wants to encourage works by emerging scholars." The Jamestown Scholarship, established in 2000, provides support for Ph.D. candidates writing dissertations on Jamestown-related topics. Such research will assist as Jamestown, Virginia, the first successful English colony in the Western Hemisphere, prepares for its 400th birthday in 2007. The NPS and its partner at Jamestown, the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, have already conducted extensive research in preparation for 2007. Archaeological, scientific, documentary and museum collections research have all contributed to the emerging new understandings of Jamestown as a complex cultural meeting place. "As a historic site, Jamestown continues to challenge us to understand its story. As it is an original place, a primary document written on and in the land, Jamestown's story continues to give tantalizing clues about peoples so close to us and utterly foreign from us."

Applications for two more Jamestown Scholars are due 15 December. For further information, see the announcement on page 10 or visit <http://www.oah.org/activities/awards/jamestown/index.html>.

Fall 2001 OAH Executive Board Meeting: 
Chicago, Illinois


At its 2001 fall board meeting at the Chicago Historical Society the OAH Executive Board took the following actions:

  • Approved the minutes of the 26-29 April 2001 Executive Board meeting in Los Angeles.
  • Agreed to develop a statement reaffirming OAH's commitment to the teaching of history and the importance of truth, honesty, and integrity in the classroom, and condemning lying and deception by professors and teachers as a serious violation of the ethics of the historical profession.
  • Adopted unanimously the following statement:
    • In response to recent harassment of Michael A. Bellesiles for his work, Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture, and in conjunction with the statement made by the Council of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the Council of the American Historical Association, the Executive Board of the Organization of American Historians endorses the following statement in support of academic freedom:
    • Although it is appropriate to subject all scholarly work to criticism and to evaluate that work's arguments and its sources, the Executive Board of the Organization of American Historians considers personal attacks upon or harassment of an author, as we have seen directed at Michael A. Bellesiles following publication of Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture, to be inappropriate and damaging to a tradition of free exchange of ideas and the advancement of our knowledge of the past.
    • Moreover, in light of the intimidation faced by Laurence M. Hauptman, a history professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, because of his testimony on behalf of the Cayuga Indians against the State of New York regarding alleged land treaty violations, the OAH Executive Board asserts that historians must be free: to conduct their research; to disseminate that research in publications and in the classroom; and to publicly express conclusions based on that research, whether it be in the courtroom or media.
    • In addition, government-employed historians should have the right to testify for compensation in local, state, and federal court cases to which the state may be a party.
  • Approved unanimously continuing the planning process for a proposal to create an OAH/Oxford Encyclopedia of American History and authorized the president to appoint a committee to select an editor(s)-in-chief who together with Oxford would appoint a 15-member Board of Associate Editors who would develop a proposal for the encyclopedia, a tentative list of entries, and a description of the publication by the end of 2002.
  • Approved unanimously the following criteria for the OAH Distinguished Service Award:
  • The OAH Distinguished Service Award is given each year to an individual or individuals whose contributions have significantly enriched our understanding and appreciation of American history. Those eligible for this award include scholars, teachers, writers, public historians and officeholders who have shaped or deepened our sensitivity to the past. Ordinarily, recipients of this award will be members of the OAH with long service to the profession, but in exceptional cases this expectation may be waived.
  • Authorized the executive director to negotiate terms for restoration of the OAH/Indiana University Minority Fellowship Program.
  • Directed the executive office to work with the National Coordinating Committee for the Promotion of History and others to analyze the sixty projects that received Teaching American History Grants from the Department of Education this year and to disseminate information, using the OAH Newsletter and the 2002 Annual Meeting, that will help OAH members seeking similar grants in 2002.
  • Approved the request for OAH to become an official partner of Declaration of Independence, Inc., a project by TV producer Norman Lear and Internet pioneer David Hayden to raise civic consciousness in America by getting citizens engaged in community life and ultimately taking part in the political process through voting.
  • Approved the establishment of a three-year term of service for OAH Distinguished Lecturers.
  • Endorsed a joint initiative with the American Council of Learned Societies and Oxford University Press to make the American National Biography available online free to OAH members for a limited time so that OAH members can use this resource while offering advice to the editors about adding new figures, correcting errors, and modifying assessments of the past.
  • Authorized the president to appoint an investment committee whose first task will be to examine various proposals for handling OAH investments and determine which bank or firm should be selected to do so.
  • Approved proceeding with a philanthropic market study and removing $10,000 from the general endowment to cover the fees of the fundraising consulting firm, Campbell & Company.
  • Approved the San Diego Marriott Hotel and Marina as the site for the 2005 annual meeting in San Diego.
  • Directed the executive director to write NCC executive director Bruce Craig and the OAH Committee on Research and Access to Historical Documentation expressing its concern about the Bush Administration's efforts to delay the release of papers from the Reagan Administration which appear to violate the spirit if not the legislative language of the Presidential Records Act of 1978.
  • Authorized the OAH president to appoint two adjunct or part-time faculty who are OAH members to the joint AHA/OAH Committee on Part-time and Adjunct Employment.
  • Requested the Committee on the Status of Minority Historians and Minority History to consider and recommend a new name for the committee.
  • Changed the Merle Curti Award in American Intellectual History and the Merle Curti Award in American Social History from biennial to annual prizes so that each one will be awarded every year.
  • Decided that books written by an eligible historian and one who is not eligible, would be eligible for OAH prizes.
  • Authorized the executive office to work with the White House Historical Association, as requested by that organization, in establishing new joint fellowships for teachers, public historians, and academic historians studying life and work in the White House.
  • Requested the executive office to bring to the next board meeting a proposal for improving the appointment process for the Membership Committee.