The National History Center and the Wilson Center are pleased to announce the Fall 2022 season of the Washington History Seminar.The seminars will all be held virtually via zoom and recordings will be posted to our YouTube channel. |
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Dear NCH Member,
You may have seen Trump's claim that former-president Obama took 33 million records to Chicago with him after he left the White House. This claim is patently FALSE.
Dear NCH Member,
Recently, the National Coalition for History (NCH) intervened in a fast-developing situation seeking to delay the transfer of control of the museum at the George W. Bush Presidential Library from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to the George W. Bush Foundation. It was brought to public attention in an article in The Atlantic written by former-Director of the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library, and professor of history at NYU, Tim Naftali.
Dear NCH Member,
On July 28, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) released draft versions of all twelve Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 appropriations bills. The bills were written with no input from the Republican minority on the committee. So, the funding levels can be seen as markers from which lengthy negotiations will begin and likely don’t reflect what we can expect at the end of the budget process in the Senate. Action on the bills is not expected until the fall.
President Biden has nominated Dr. Colleen Shogan to be the 11th Archivist of the United States. Tenth Archivist David S. Ferriero retired in April 2022.
Dr. Shogan is the Senior Vice President and Director of the David Rubenstein Center for White House History at the White House Historical Association.
She previously worked for over a decade at the Library of Congress, serving as the Assistant Deputy Librarian for Collections and Services, the Deputy Director of the Congressional Research Service, and the Deputy Director of National and International Outreach. Prior to joining the Library, Dr. Shogan was a policy staffer in the Senate, handling matters on defense, appropriations, transportation, small business, and science and technology.
Dr. Shogan was the Vice Chair of the Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commission and now serves as the Chair of the Board of Directors at the Women’s Suffrage National Monument Foundation, designated by Congress to build the first Washington, D.C. memorial dedicated to the early movement for women’s equality. She is an Adjunct Professor of Government at Georgetown University, and a member of the United States Capitol Historical Society Council of Scholars.
A native of Pittsburgh, Dr. Shogan holds a B.A. in Political Science from Boston College and a Ph.D. in American Politics from Yale University, where she was a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow. Prior to working in Congress, Dr. Shogan was an Assistant Professor of Government and Politics at George Mason University. In addition to scholarly publications, Dr. Shogan is a mystery writer and has published seven novels.
The nomination now goes to the Senate for confirmation.
During July 2022, the National Declassification Center (NDC) released a listing of 321 declassification projects that consists of over seven million pages which were completed between January 2020 and June 2022. This is the first release of textual records from the NDC since the COVID Pandemic began. These records are now available for researcher requests. This release consists of textual materials from military and civilian agencies. The FY2022-Q3 Release List is available to view or download in PDF and Excel formats:
Highlights from the released records include:
The National Coalition for History (NCH) thanks Senators Ron Wyden and Jerry Morgan for supporting an overhaul of Executive Order (EO) 13526, which regulates the U.S. government classification and declassification system, NCH Declassification Sens Wyden and Moran.pdf, and urges the Biden Administration to overhaul these rules that were last updated in 2009, Wyden-Moran Declassification Letter 5.25.22.pdf.
SHAFR’s June 2022 Prize Winners
Oxford University Press USA Dissertation Prize
Dear friends,
I would like to inform you that my latest book "Non-Aligned Movement Summits: A History" has just come out with Bloomsbury (www.bloomsbury.com/9781350032095). It is based on the largely unused archival documents from Serbia, India, China, Myanmar, US, Britain, Russia and Germany, bringing back some of the forgotten facts and histories of the NAM's global role during the Cold War years, especially about its internal history and workings. This book was officially endorsed by our esteemed colleagues Odd Arne Westad, Lorenz Lüthi and Robert Rakove.
Dear NCH Member,
The Smithsonian Board of Regents announced today that the search for sites for two new museums—the National Museum of the American Latino and the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum—will primarily focus on four locations. Each will be further evaluated by the Smithsonian and the engineering/architecture firm Ayers Saint Gross of Baltimore between now and the end of the year. The museums were authorized by Congress in December 2020. Since the passage of the legislation, the Smithsonian has undertaken an extensive site-selection analysis and thorough review of more than 25 sites. The legislation requires that the Smithsonian identify the two final locations by the end of 2022. The final decision on locations will be made by the Board of Regents.
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2022–2024 Freedom of Information Act Advisory Committee Nominations Now Open WASHINGTON, June 8, 2022 –The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) seeks member nominations for the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Advisory Committee (Committee). The Committee serves as a deliberative body to study the FOIA landscape across the executive branch and advise the Archivist of the United States on improvements to the administration of FOIA. |
Dear NCH member,
In the coming weeks, the House Appropriations Committee will consider fiscal year (FY) 2023 appropriations bills for federal agencies and programs. It is critical for you to contact your Members of Congress now to urge them to support increased funding for the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC).
In collaboration with the National Humanities Alliance (NHA), we have created a legislative alert that makes it simple for you to make your voice heard. Please follow this link to send an electronic email. The system uses your zip code to identify your Member of Congress.
NCH recently submitted testimony to the House Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government which has jurisdiction over the budgets for NARA and NHPRC.
NCH supports the Biden administration’s recommended funding level of $426.5 million for NARA’s Operating Expenses (OE) budget in FY 23, which is an increase of $38.2 million (approximately10 percent) from the FY 22 level of $388.3 million. Over the past three years NCH, in conjunction with our colleagues at the NHA, have been aggressively advocating for increased funding for NARA. This is the first time we have seen a significant increase in appropriations proposed for NARA in over a decade.
NCH also supports the Administration’s proposed base funding level of $9.5 million in FY 23 for the NHPRC grants program. That represents an increase of $2.5 million over the FY 22 base level of $7 million. The NHPRC received a total of $12.3 million in funding in FY 22. However, $5.3 million of that was the result of congressionally directed funding which we expect will fluctuate from year to year.
It is vital that Members of Congress understand the importance of NARA and the NHPRC to your members and that of your colleagues in the many constituencies represented by NCH. Please share this with your members and urge them to act today!
I’m happy to answer any questions you may have.
The National Coalition for History (NCH) recently submitted testimony to the House Appropriations Committee’s Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee on the proposed fiscal year (FY) 2023 budget for the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC).
NCH supports the Biden administration’s recommended funding level of $426.5 million for NARA’s Operating Expenses (OE) budget in FY 23, which is an increase of $38.2 million (10 percent) from the FY 22 level of $388.3 million. Over the past three years NCH, in conjunction with our colleagues at the National Humanities Alliance, have been aggressively advocating for increased funding for NARA. This is the first time we have seen a significant increase in appropriations proposed for NARA in over a decade.
NCH also supports the Administration’s proposed base funding level of $9.5 million in FY 23 for the NHPRC grants program. That represents an increase of $2.5 million over the FY 22 base level of $7 million. The NHPRC received a total of $12.3 million in funding in FY 22. However, $5.3 million of that was the result of congressionally directed funding which we expect will fluctuate from year to year.
The testimony states, “NARA’s operating expenses (OE) budget has remained stagnant for more than a decade at a time when the transition to use of electronic records by federal agencies is well underway. Investment in human capital, including professional archivists, is vital for providing an elevated level of service to the public.”
Among other topics addressed were the importance of returning NARA research rooms to pre-pandemic operations as soon as practicable, the growing backlogs in the declassification and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, and the need for Congress to provide additional funding to expedite digitization of existing paper records.
In 2019, NARA and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) announced that the agency will no longer accept paper records from federal agencies as of December 31, 2022. We expressed our concern, “that with diminished resources and the impact the pandemic had on its ability to perform even its most basic functions, NARA will not be prepared to continue this transition without serious disruptions.”
Please join us for a special Washington History Seminar Panel with Shawn McHale, Christopher Goscha, and George Veith on The Vietnam War.
Dear NCH Member,
The National Coalition for History (NCH) has endorsed a statement, An Opportunity to Reform and Improve the Practices of the Archives of the United States. It was authored by three former presidents of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR), Dr. Richard Immerman, Dr. Warren Kimball and Dr. Lloyd Gardner, and Dr. William Burr, a senior researcher at the National Security Archive. Dr. Immerman and Dr. Kimball are former chairs of the Advisory Committee on Historical Documentation for the U.S. Department of State. SHAFR has also endorsed the statement, which is attached to this email.
Please join us for a Washington History Seminar Panel with Kelly Lytle Hernández on Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands.
Please join us for a Washington History Seminar Panel with Patrick Ossian Cohrs on The New Atlantic Order.
SHAFR welcomes applications for participants in a one-day second book workshop scheduled to take place on June 15, 2022—right before the SHAFR Annual Meeting in New Orleans. This initiative is aimed at mid-career scholars who are researching/writing their second book and who would like to have a productive environment in which to receive feedback on their work.
Participants will be part of a group of four peers; they will give comments to others and receive feedback themselves. They will also have the opportunity to speak to a mentor about their project and how to progress towards publication and to share their ongoing work with editors from major presses.
Call for Nominations
SHAFR’s Nominating Committee is soliciting nominations for elected positions.
