OAH Executive Board

Spring Meeting, Washington DC

At its spring 2002 meeting, the OAH Executive Board took the following actions:

  • Approved, with two minor changes, the minutes from the fall 2001 board meeting in Chicago.
  • Approved the executive director's recommendation that the executive office, on behalf of the President-Elect, make appointments to the Membership Committee.
  • Adopted the following statement on honesty and integrity:
    • Honesty and integrity should undergird the work of all historians. Historians seek truth about the past in an effort to better understand historical developments and how they relate to the present and future.
    • When students encounter historians in the precollegiate, community college, and university classroom, there is an implicit trust on the part of the student that the history teacher or professor will convey a truthful representation of the past when s/he is discussing historical themes, events, places, or individuals. The OAH categorically condemns lying as well as falsification and deliberate distortion in the teaching of history. Such mendacity is an ethical violation of the principle of truth on which the historical profession is based.
    • Similarly, plagiarism also undermines the search for truth. Stealing another writer's work and offering it as one's own is not only a violation of law that can result in legal action, but it is an attack on the credibility of the historical profession as a whole. The OAH endorses the American Historical Association Statement on Plagiarism, amended in January 2002, and its conclusion that "All historians share responsibility for maintenance of the highest standards of intellectual integrity. . . . Scholarship flourishes in an atmosphere of openness and candor, which should include the scrutiny and discussion of academic deception.
  • Fixed the Huggins-Quarles prize amount at $2,000 each year and agreed to award two $1,000 prizes to students each year.
  • Approved continuing the publications exchange with the National Council for History Education (NCHE) for another year so that OAH members receive NCHE's History Matters! and NCHE members receive the OAH Magazine of History.
  • Authorized the executive office to proceed in selecting a partner institution for the summer 2004 regional meeting.
  • Approved the annual award of one Merle Curti Prize in social, intellectual, and cultural history, unless the prize committee in a given year deems that two awards are necessary.
  • Agreed to offer a monetary prize for the 1999 Foreign Language book award.
  • Approved working with the Rockefeller Archive Center to create a conference on resources in American archives that document American international activities.
  • Approved unanimously the $1,714,850 operating budget for FY2003.
  • Adopted two resolutions presented by the Committee on Research and Access to Historical Documentation:
    • 1. Resolved that the Organization of American Historians recommends to the appropriation committee of the United States House and Senate, that the National Historical Publications and Records Commission receive $10 million, the level of its authorization for fiscal year 2003, and that the additional amount of $5 million be added to the amount of the president's recommended budget and not taken from the president's recommended budget for the National Archives and Records Administration; and,
    • 2. Resolved that the Organization of American Historians recommends to the President of the United States and to the Head of the Information and Security oversight Office that any changes to Executive Order 12958 (President Clinton's order on national security classification of government documents) be published in the Federal Register to permit public consideration and comment.
  • Approved making the following statement in response to the threat of loss of funding for the University of Minnesota Press for publishing a controversial book about children and sex:
    • OAH supports the right of the University of Minnesota Press to make its own editorial decisions, and opposes the efforts of those who would infringe on that right.
  • Approved paying travel for the two OAH part-time/adjunct members of the OAH and American Historical Association Joint Committee on Part-time and Adjunct Employment to attend that committee's meetings at the annual conferences of OAH and AHA.
  • Approved the following new mission statement of the Committee on Community Colleges:
    • The committee will be comprised of eight members. Service on the committee is for four years. New members will be added on a staggered yearly basis and the executive director of the Community College Humanities Association will serve as an ex-officio member. The committee will meet once a year at the OAH annual meeting and communicate throughout the year. Its objectives are to advocate for an inclusive profession by representing the interests and concerns of community college historians; to promote a full range of scholarship and teaching at all academic levels; and, to work with other OAH committees in the promotion of the goals and objectives of the organization. Activities of the committee include recommending community college historians for service on OAH committees; organizing sessions at the OAH annual meeting, sponsoring and hosting an annual reception for community college historians, and encouraging the participation of community college historians located in the area of the annual meeting; and, developing projects that promote the aims of the Committee on Community Colleges.
  • Approved the appointment of Jean H. Baker (Goucher College), Philip Deloria (University of Michigan), and Matthew Frye Jacobson (Yale University), to the JAH Editorial Board.
  • Agreed to accept the fund raising report presented by Marc Hilton of Campbell & Company and approved the use of $60,000 of general Endowment funds to implement the strategy it recommends for the next three years of philanthropic planning.
  • Authorized President Ira Berlin to appoint an OAH leadership council of past presidents and other members to advance the organization's fund raising program.
  • As part of the new philanthropic planning, agreed that the organization should not accept new Life or Patron memberships as a way of building the endowment.
  • Accepted the Public History Committee's recommendations that President Ira Berlin and Executive Director Lee Formwalt write to the chair of the Smithsonian Board of Regents stressing the need to hire a director for the National Museum of American History who has a proven track record of work in American history; write in support of H.R. 3201, which will make the home of Carter G. Woodson, pioneer in developing and shaping the field of African American history, eligible for assistance from the National Park Service; and write in support of legislation which will require the National Park Service to prepare a special resource study to consider suitability and feasibility of establishing a new unit of the NPS that would focus on Reconstruction and be located in Beaufort County, South Carolina.
  • Authorized President Ira Berlin and Executive Director Lee Formwalt to write a letter urging the National Park Service to consider candidates with experience in cultural properties management when selecting the new superintendent of Independence National Historical Park.