News of the Organization

Fall 2004 OAH Executive Board
Meeting, San Francisco

At its 2004 fall meeting at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco the OAH board took the following actions:

• Approved the minutes of the March 25-28, 2004, Executive Board meeting in Boston, Massachusetts, as well as the minutes of actions taken by the board subsequent to the meeting.
• Approved the updated Organization of American Historians Staff Handbook.
• Accepted and approved the Auditor’s Report for FY 2004.
• Thanked eighty-seven OAH members who graciously gave of their time to deliver one hundred-five lectures from July 2003 through June 2004; and, especially, to Kenneth W. Goings who presented three OAH Distinguished lectures, and to Thomas Bender, David W. Blight, Alan Brinkley, Edward Countryman, John D’Emilio, David Goldfield, Peter Kolchin, Edith P. Mayo, Sally G. McMillen, Jeffrey E. Mirel, Peter S. Onuf, George C. Rable, Jack N. Rakove, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Francille Rusan Wilson, and Judy Yung, who each gave two lectures during the last fiscal year.
• Agreed to review and consider signing on to an amicus brief on the history of marriage and discrimination within the institution of marriage for a case on gay marriage that will be heard by the Maryland Court of Appeals in 2005.
• Voted unanimously to present the OAH Distinguished Service Award to Dwight Pitcaithley, Chief Historian of the National Park Service, and the OAH Friend of History Award to the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and to Sy Sternberg, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of New York Life.
• Approved a report on Public Relations and the OAH, and charged the executive director to report on how it should be implemented.
• Approved an increase in Contributing Member dues from $150 to $200.
• Approved the executive office proposal for eventually transforming the OAH Newsletter into an electronic publication.
• Endorsed the following recommendations of the Centennial Committee for celebrating the 100th anniversary of OAH in 2007: a series of traditional panels and sessions on OAH and the history of the profession since 1907; an evening celebration; and a cruise on the Mississippi River from New Orleans or St. Louis to Minneapolis, site of the centennial convention.
• Approved the establishment of a new Finance Committee of the Executive Board to review the organizations’ financial condition on a quarterly basis.
• Approved and authorized the OAH executive office to open a credit card account with Wells Fargo for conducting the business of the organization.
• Accepted the final report of the OAH Ad Hoc Committee on Intellectual Integrity and approved the committee’s recommendations:
  • to appoint a standing committee on ethics and professional standards;
  • to review the new American Historical Association standards for professional integrity as soon as that organization adopts them and decide whether OAH should adopt them;
  • to work with the AHA and other organizations in discussing and promoting best practices in intellectual integrity;
  • and to establish procedures for revoking an OAH prize in the rare cases of egregious violation of professional standards.
• Approved an increase in History Educator Member dues from $40 to $50 in 2005 upon expansion of the OAH Magazine of History from a quarterly to a bimonthly publication.
• Approved publication of the joint OAH-AP U.S. History essay series, “America on the World Stage,” in one volume upon completion in 2006 of the serial publication of the essays in the OAH Magazine of History and on the College Board’s AP Central web site.
• Approved the following resolution after discussion of a resolution on collective bargaining rights of graduate student teaching and research assistants passed by the American Sociological Association:
  • When teaching and research graduate assistants are part of the higher educational instructional workforce, the Organization of American Historians affirms their right to bargain collectively.
• Approved the following resolution after discussion of a resolution on labor and OAH conventions submitted by OAH members and Yale history graduate students Jay Driskell and Lisabeth Pimentel:
  • WHEREAS hotel union representation raises wages, supplies benefits, and protects worker dignity, thereby insuring that economic growth benefits a workforce often composed of people of color, and particularly women of color;
  • WHEREAS the Organization of American Historians’ decision to hold meetings in union or non-union hotels strengthens or weakens the ability of these workers and their unions to secure better working conditions and contribute to equitable urban growth;
  • THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Organization of American Historians will continue its practice of union preference in negotiating hotel and service contracts for the Annual Meeting and for any other meetings organized by the Organization of American Historians; and
  • THEREFORE BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that those responsible for negotiating and administering said contracts shall, in accordance with this policy of union preference, add labor disputes to the standard escape clause in any OAH contract for convention hotels and meetings.
• Enjoined the executive director to meet with other directors of learned societies at the ACLS CAO meeting in Cleveland (Nov. 4-7, 2004) in an effort to develop a resolution to the unsettling impact of labor disputes on hotel arrangements for annual meetings.
• Approved the idea of merging the National Coalition for History and the National Humanities Alliance.
• Approved a proposed joint meeting of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History annual meeting and the OAH Southern Regional Conference to be held in 2010 in the South on or near a historically black college or university campus.