Why I am Not Renewing my Membership in the Organization of American Historians

Today I received a mass email from David Hollinger, current president of the Organization of American Historians. It was an email to lapsed OAH members such as myself, asking us to renew. The tone of the email was fairly dire: "Since 2006, more than 1,000 colleagues with academic affiliations have allowed their membership in the OAH to lapse," Hollinger writes. "This continued decline in what has long been considered our core membership constitutes a serious threat to the viability of our organization."

I explained my decision not to renew with an email that I had first sent in reply to a similar plea from OAH Executive Director Katherine M. Finley, which I offer (slightly edited) to the public below. Yet I am feeling a twinge of email remorse. Am I doing the right thing here? Should I rejoin the OAH? Help me out, dear readers. Review my reasons and let me know in the comments if you agree.

Dear David Hollinger:

I will not be renewing my OAH membership. Here is why:

1. The OAH offers no lobbying or leadership in history-related public policy. When the stimulus bill was being created, the OAH and AHA made no efforts that I am aware of to secure funding for history. I blogged about the opportunity (1, 2, 3, 4) and also contacted your organization and the American Historical Association. I was told by the executive leadership of both organizations that the National Coalition for History does their lobbying for them--but the NCH did nothing either so far as I know. A once-in-two-lifetimes opportunity passed us by due to a lack of leadership from your organization. Now it looks like the Obama administration is about to eliminate the Teaching American History grants, which have pumped almost a billion dollars into history education. I have received no communication from the OAH about this, and there is not a word about it on your new website.

2. The OAH is largely unresponsive to the changing nature of the profession. I sent a long critique of the OAH Draft Strategic Plan and posted a version of it here on my blog. After the report was finalized I asked what changes had been made in response to member feedback and was told that there was no record of what had been changed. I can't see that anything was changed.

3. The committee that was supposed to issue guidelines for tenuring public historians (3 years ago?)  has not completed its work and even the draft report is no longer available. Some of us are going up for tenure and could use the voice of the OAH to convince our more traditional colleagues that our work should count in this process.

I am sorry if this is all too blunt, but I thought it would be better to explain my departure than just to drift away. When I think of the OAH I think of an uneven annual conference and--well, that is it. The conference is the tail that seems to wag the dog. I don't see where the OAH has any voice at all in the digital history world of blogs and news feeds and such, and I don't see where it does any meaningful advocacy for the profession. If I am not going to the conference, I can't see why I would join.

Cordially,

Larry

Historians Must Organize to Take Advantage of a Second Stimulus

Calls Grow for More Relief: "WASHINGTON – Eight months after enacting a massive economic stimulus package, the Obama administration is facing rising pressure from some congressional Democrats to move more aggressively to jump-start the moribund job market and try to spur a housing recovery."

If there is another stimulus, will history miss the boat again?

The last stimulus was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity--and we blew it. Some of us on the fringes of the profession called for a new federal writers project. We noted that history was scanner ready. We envisioned hundreds of millions (of the hundreds of billions) of stimulus dollars flowing into oral history, digitization, historic preservation, and history education. Stimulus money spent on history would not need a year to eighteen months to hit the economy--we are ready to go. Give us a sack of dollars and a stack of unfunded NEH proposals from the past five years and we will get people to work by Christmas.

Why did we get nothing? Because our professional organizations failed us. So far as I know there was no effort by the OAH, the AHA, the NCPH, or any other history organization to rally its members for a major push for a share of the stimulus. They sat on their hands while lobbyists from the other sectors of the economy elbowed their way to the trough. (I apologize if I am mischaracterizing anyone here and welcome correction.)

It looks like we might be about to get a second chance. Will we sit on the sidelines again? I invite ideas on how to mobilize the historians, genealogists (who are legion after all), preservationists, and teachers to channel some stimulus money into history. How do we do this?

New Perspectives Issue Focused on Digital History

The May issue of Perspectives, the monthly magazine of the American Historical Association, is titled Intersections: History and New Media. It is a nice, accessible round-up of brief articles on topics such as blogs, teaching with digital objects, narrative challenges of online exhibits, etc. Many of the articles are of the "hey look at what I am doing" genre, but still very useful.

Off to the AHA

I leave in the morning for the 122nd Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association in DC. Being an Americanist I have never attended the AHA before, but I thought it was high time I became less provincial. And there are some terrific sessions on digital and public history.

Perhaps I will blog some of the sessions!