President’s Spring Message

I would first of all like to thank Fr. Terence Fay and the wonderful people of St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto for hosting our joint spring meeting in April.  Despite some challenging weather, the panels were stimulating and very well attended.  Special thanks go to the CCHA for their work in making the meeting a success!

As many of you know, Fr. Paul Robichaud will be retiring as Executive Secretary and Treasurer as of October 1, 2011. In a post to come we will announce Fr. Paul’s future plans. Please join me in thanking him for his service to the ACHA.

After the Executive Committee sought nominations and reviewed different candidates, R. Bentley Anderson was selected unanimously by the committee. Anderson, Associate Professor in the Department of African & African-American Studies at Fordham University, has been a member of the ACHA since 1989 and presently serves on the Executive Council.

A southerner, Anderson joined the New Orleans Province of the Society of Jesus in 1986 and was ordained to the priesthood in 1996. His academic experiences have taken him from Clinton, South Carolina, where he earned his B.A., to Toronto, Ontario, for his Masters in Divinity, to Boston College for his doctorate, which he received in 2001.

Anderson brings to the office a variety of administrative experiences, having served as aide-de-camp to the commanding general of the U.S. Army Communications and Electronics Command at Ft. Monmouth, New Jersey; leading the student body at Presbyterian College as president of the Student Government Association; and directing the local chapter of Phi Alpha Theta, the national history honor society, at Saint Louis University. He will continue his teaching responsibilities and research agenda at Fordham. He is the author of Black, White, and Catholic: New Orleans Interracialism, 1947-1956 (Vanderbilt 2005), and he is the recipient of a summer 2011 Fulbright Specialist Program award, which takes him to South Africa to collaborate with the faculty of Theology at the University of Pretoria.

I want to offer my personal thanks to both Bentley and Fordham for his willingness to serve and their support in the transition and beyond.

Larissa Juliet Taylor, President