Annual Meetings

The 2020 ACLS Annual Meeting was held on May 1 via Zoom. In attendance were members of the ACLS Board of Directors, delegates of the constituent societies, members of the Conference of Executive Officers, presidents of the constituent societies, representatives of affiliate organizations, representatives of college and university associate institutions, and other invited participants.

The ACLS Board of Directors met on Friday morning, May 1. For current board membership, see Board and Committees.

President’s Report to the Council by Joy Connolly

President Joy Connolly’s first-ever Report to the Council focused on her vision for ACLS and new strategic priorities for the organization. Emphasizing that ACLS is ideally positioned to engage collaborative action toward positive change within the academy and ensure a strong future for humanistic scholarship, her remarks underscored the core elements for which the strategic priorities are based: providing support for scholarship and scholars, especially new PhDs and those facing a difficult job market in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic; our organization’s mission to connect different facets of the academy and serve as an alliance builder in strengthening its infrastructure and exploring what its future will be; the need to amplify humanistic scholarship in the public eye; as well as the need to review what we as a community are doing now and renew in order to strengthen and sustain a positive future for humanistic scholarship.

 

Meeting of the Council

ACLS Board of Directors chair William C. Kirby presided over the Council meeting.

Marwan Kraidy, Chair of the Nominating Committee, announced the following nominations to the board.

Nominations for the following offices were put forward for three-year terms ending 2023:

  • Ann Fabian, History, Rutgers University, and
  • Michele Moody-Adams, Philosophy, Columbia University
 

Nominations for members of the Board of Directors were put forward for four-year terms ending 2024:

  • Peter Baldwin, History, University of California, 
  • Michèle Lamont, Sociology, Harvard University, 
  • Carl H. Pforzheimer III, CHIPCO Asset Management, LLC, and
  • Richard J. Powell, Art History, Duke University
 

The nominees were elected to the Council.

Dorothy L. Hodgson, delegate from the African Studies Association and chair of the Executive Committee of the Delegates, reported on the nomination of two new members to that committee:

  • Carol Greenhouse, American Philosophical Society, Princeton University
  • Christine Worobec, Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, Northern Illinois University
 

The nominees were elected by the Delegates.

Michele Moody-Adams, treasurer of the ACLS Board of Directors, reported on ACLS finances and investments. Voting members (Delegates and board members) approved the ACLS budget for FY 2021.

The Conference of Executive Officers (CEO) will hold its spring meeting on Wednesday, May 6.