The OAH MeetingLee W. Formwalt |
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 Formwalt |
The two most important things that the Organization of American Historians does for its members and for the profession are to publish the Journal of American History and hold an annual meeting. You may recall that last February as a result of the continued labor boycott of the Hilton San Francisco, the OAH executive board voted to move the annual meeting to San José in order to have as normal a convention as possible. An OAH executive office poll of convention participants and preregistrants indicated that close to 75 percent of those polled would not cross a picket line. If the OAH had gone ahead with the meeting at the Hilton San Francisco, we could have faced losses of up to $412,000 in attrition charges (for sleeping rooms not rented) and $99,000 in revenue from registration fees. If we had canceled the convention entirely, we could have lost in excess of $700,000 in revenue and penalties. Although we knew that moving to San José would entail likely financial risks, we were confident that the risks would be less than those we would face in San Francisco, and in the end we were right. The actual cost of moving the meeting to San José (including rental of the convention center, shuttle transportation, additional meeting space, etc.) resulted in an unbudgeted expense of over $100,000. In addition Hilton San Francisco claimed that OAH owed it liquidated damages of $390,000 and attrition charges at the related Doubletree San José, of $42,000 (for sleeping rooms not rented), for a total of $432,000. With legal advice, OAH challenged these claims and the dispute has been resolved pursuant to a confidential agreement that included a cash payment by OAH and a commitment to future OAH events with Hilton. Although we were unhappy about signing a confidentiality agreement, we reluctantly concluded to accept this standard and customary requirement. As of September, OAH members and others have contributed $23,500 to the special San José Fund. As you consider your fall contribution to OAH, you can apply your donation to the San José Fund to further reduce the cost of the move. At its fall 2004 meeting the OAH executive board passed a resolution requiring all future contracts to include labor disputes in its escape clause. This will eliminate paying any penalties to hotels for canceling contracts due to a labor strike or similar situation. With San José behind us, we look ahead to our next three meetings, all of which are connected to the OAH centennial in 2007—Washington, DC (April 19-22, 2006); Lincoln, NE (July 6-8, 2006); and Minneapolis, MN (March 29-April 1, 2007). We will launch the centennial year at the Washington convention next spring. The summer regional meeting in Lincoln will be a major centennial event that takes place in the longtime hometown of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association. The culminating events of the centennial year will happen at the 2007 meeting in Minneapolis at the head of navigation on the Mississippi River. The program committee cochairs for the Washington gathering, our regular quadrennial joint meeting with the National Council on Public History, are Matthew Garcia (OAH) and Martin Blatt (NCPH). The convention's theme is "Our America/Nuestra América" and will feature four plenaries including one with folksinger Tom Paxton. Additional features include a panel on assassinations marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan at the convention hotel, a luncheon session featuring Archivist of the U.S. Allan Weinstein, and more than a dozen tours in the nation's capital.
The 2007 Program Committee, cochaired by John Mack Faragher and Peggy Pascoe, has for its theme, "American Values, American Practices." A special Centennial Committee also is preparing sessions and events devoted specifically to the OAH's one-hundredth anniversary. In addition to celebrating, American historians in Minneapolis will be reflecting on the changes in the scholarship, teaching and practice of American history over the last century. Special centennial panels will examine traditional histories (political, diplomatic, economic, and military), new histories (environmental, race and ethnicity, and women), history teaching at all levels, public history, editing the Mississippi Valley Historical Review and Journal of American History, and the institution and political history of the MVHA-OAH. Past presidents of OAH will gather to reflect on the changes they have witnessed in MVHA and OAH over the years. Let me conclude by marking an important staff change at the OAH executive office. This month is Deputy Director John R. Dichtl's last at OAH. In the new year, John will be taking over the helm as Executive Director of the National Council on Public History in nearby Indianapolis. NCPH's gain is indeed OAH's loss. John began his tenure here as a graduate assistant in 1992; seven years later, he was serving as interim executive director. In 2000, he was appointed deputy director and has been my partner in leading OAH the last six years. All of us will miss his talents, advice, and wisdom and we wish him well at NCPH. |
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We now have a new permanent editor of the JAH in the person of Edward T. Linenthal and we are most confident of that publication's future. We have recently emerged from a difficult situation with our last annual meeting and I thought I would discuss that as well as our 
The Cornhusker Hotel, near the campus of the University of Nebraska in Lincoln will host the OAH Midwest Regional Conference next summer. The conference will provide an opportunity to celebrate the Midwestern roots of the OAH and to allow historians in and of the Midwest to share their work. Considerable attention at this conference will also be paid to professional development and the practice of history both in classrooms and in public settings in the Midwest.