Reflections on the AHA

I have really enjoyed myself at this conference. In case you missed it, I twittered during several of the sessions. You can find and follow me at twitter through my blog name. My own session was exciting. I think I wasn't the best presenter, seeing how I switched from reading my paper to summarizing it half way through. But there were some good questions. What was disappointing, though, was that only about two people out of a room of more than a hundred read the precirculated papers for our session. And of course Rob Townsend was ever the gentleman, never criticizing my points that conflicted with his own views.

Townsend was not the only AHA leader or employee that I met over the last couple of days. Almost without exception they struck me as very sincere and fair-minded individuals. And I think they deserve a fair amount of credit for pulling off this conference with hardly a hitch. I was impressed also by their oppenness to suggestions. I think it would be great if the AHA could inspire more members to make recommendations. One model they might want to consider is the ask a question feature at change.gov that allows users to submit and vote on questions.

It seems to me that one of the things that draws so many historians to the AHA conference is that it gives them a chance to feel like stakeholders in the profession. I saw this in action at the business meeting as members joined in the democratic process and voted on whether to change the hotel for next year's conference. This same spirit of getting involved and looking to the AHA for leadership was also evident in the meeting for graduate students and early career professionals. But maybe I am just being overly optimistic. There was probably than a hundred individuals at each of these meetings.

There are some other things that could have gotten me down at this meeting. None of the open searches I put in for yielded any positive results. The one tenure track position I applied for at George Mason never materialized. In fact it almost seems like the search has dropped off the face of the earth. I heard from several people that search committees were informing their candidates that hiring freezes could be in the pipeline and the search could be canceled at any time. I really feel for those historians who are facing economic hard times and possible unemployment during 2009. I really hope we can start fixing some of the problems in the job market that I talked about in my paper today. In case you missed it, Townsend and I may be combining our papers and coauthoring an article in the near future.

Long time readers of this blog will know that I have sometimes been a fierce critic of the AHA. But I hope I have been a loyal one too. The AHA will have several opportunities to prove itself in the months and years ahead. It could be lobbying Obama's transition team about selecting new leaders for the NEH, NSF, Department of Education, NPS, Library of Congress, and so forth. It should be talking to congressional leaders about the role historians will play when millions of jobs are created in this country for digital and physical infrastructure projects. It will be important to promote the study of history as federal officials overhaul NCLB and make college more accessible and affordable for millions of new and returning students. These are just a few of the ways that the AHA might be able to make the case for its continuing relevance, especially when large numbers of younger historians seem to be questioning why they should belong to the AHA.