Letter from the President

Dear Fellow Members,

As I near the end of my term as president of our Association, I wanted to take a few minutes of your time to reflect on the past year and to bring to your attention some pressing matters pertaining to the health and future of the ACHA.

This has been a year of changes for the Association.  Moving the “home office” to Fordham after so many years at Catholic University was a major undertaking.  We can all be grateful to Bentley Anderson for effecting the transition smoothly and efficiently.  While I do not know everything that Bentley knows, I can assure you that it was a big job.  I also take great satisfaction  in the help and support shown to the ACHA by Fordham University.

When Bentley assumed office, membership recording was in disarray—we did not know how many active members we had and we had a large number of lapsed members.  Working with his dedicated office assistants, Bentley straightened out the records and, in the process, regained a good many lapsed members.  I am pleased to report that our membership level is the highest it has been in some years.

We now have electronic membership renewal and balloting in our elections down to a smooth running system.  Accomplishing these important tasks electronically is more efficient than the old mail-and-paper system and allows for significant cost savings.

Working with our financial advisers, your officers have streamlined the investment policies governing our endowment and we are now realizing an enhanced annual revenue stream.

I wish the news were all good.  The Association has run a net deficit year after year.  In plain terms, for nearly twenty years, we have had to withdraw money from the principal of our endowment to meet annual operating expenses.  We have already made all feasible cuts to the operating expenses of the Association.

If we are to reverse this situation, we need to make a change with regard to the significant subsidies that we send to the Catholic University of America Press to support publication of The Catholic Historical Review and to provide copies of the Review to all members of the Association.

On behalf of the Executive Council and my fellow officers, I made good-faith representation to the Press to see if we could arrange a more satisfactory financial arrangement with respect to the journal.  In fact, the Press receives our subsidy, substantial revenues from institutional subscriptions, and, we believe, significant cash-flow from Project Muse and JStor.  Since 1921 the Catholic Historical Review has been “the Official Organ of the American Catholic Historical Association.”  This might have had some real meaning in the past but I was informed in October in unambiguous terms that the Press owns the journal, has exclusive rights to all revenues generated by the journal, and has complete editorial authority over the journal.  In other words, ACHA members pay for their “Official Organ” but have, otherwise, absolutely nothing to do with the journal.  There does not seem to be any way to ameliorate this untenable situation.

Accordingly, you will find a very brief survey attached to this letter.  In effect, we are asking you to express your opinions on a series of unattractive choices.  Believe me that I, and the other officers and the members of the Executive Council, wish we had more attractive choices to present to our membership;  indeed we wish that we did not now find ourselves in the position of having to take steps that none of us desired or anticipated.  The issues pertaining to the relationship—or, actually, the non-relationship—between the ACHA and the CHR will be aired fully at the Association’s business meeting in New Orleans in January.  We hope that as many of you as possible will be there to help us think through the complicated and contentious issues.

The survey will ask you to decide whether:

(1) You would prefer formally to sever the relationship between the ACHA and the CHR, with a concomitant reduction in annual dues at all levels of membership (the exact amounts to be determined before the New Orleans meeting);

(2) Or, make receipt of the CHR optional for members (with those receiving the journal paying higher dues and those opting not to receive the journal paying lower dues;  amounts, again, to be proposed at the New Orleans meeting);

(3) Or, continue to provide all members with a paper copy of the journal and, as a consequence, raise dues for all members in all categories (regular members would probably have to pay on the order of $90.00 per year).

As you reflect on these options you might also weigh whether or not your institution’s library has access to Project Muse.  If it does, you have immediate access to the Review whether or not you personally have a subscription.

But let me not end on a worrisome note.  We have received applications from wonderful and inspiring young colleagues for the President’s Travel Grants to attend the annual meeting.  Our three honorees this year—Teaching, Service to Catholic Scholarship, and Lifetime Scholarly Achievement—will make us all proud.  Our book, dissertation, and article prize committees have worked hard and their labors have produced an impressive set of winners.  And on top of all that, we have an impressive program and a superlative venue for our annual meeting.  What is more, our Association’s luncheon at Antoine’s promises to be a real treat and to cost significantly less than what the big-city hotels have charged us in recent years.

I hope to see many of you in New Orleans.

 

Sincerely,
Thomas F. X. Noble
President