How to Found a Scholarly Organization and Give it Instant Prestige

Abstract

How to Found a Scholarly Organization and Give it Instant Prestige Gerald R. Kleinfeld (bio) Much has been written about the details of the founding of the GSA but if the editors of the special issue want me to write approximately one thousand words on something never committed to paper, perhaps current members would like to know why we did what we did when we did it. As it was in 1976, the first rule was not to start the organization at a public university in Tempe, Arizona. Or, as most people then tended to say, Temple. The second would be not to fill the leading posts with people from other unknown institutions. The last rule was the most important. Do not go against the trend and insist upon gender neutrality. OK, I broke all of those rules. The bylaws I proposed, which were then adopted, committed the GSA to gender neutrality and thus ensured that women could compete equally and rise quickly to the highest offices. Ultimately, I was able to press the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and other agencies advocating women’s opportunities for support. We decided that our fields needed an annual conference and a brand-new academic journal. We wanted to make sure that these ideas did not moulder for a long time in some academic limbo and knew that our members wanted us to demonstrate instant prestige. The early officers, board members, and I decided to take action. So, we insisted that German and English be coequal languages, and that sessions be selected by a combination of program committee choice (the committee appointed by the president) and executive director (not a named post at the time) suggestion. Thus, a broad diversity would replace the “traditional” internal nominations that were the rule in some other organizations. And, we insisted that there be genuine commentators—people not automatically chosen by the organizers, but who could be counted upon to really criticize the papers. I filled in sessions where there were logical gaps. And, we insisted that European conference participants be among the mix from the start, and I found the money to do just that. The journal’s editorial board was responsible to the editor, not vice versa, and nobody on the executive board could write for the journal until their term was over, no exceptions. My decision. At the first editorial board meeting, a senior scholar asked how many manuscripts the board had rejected that I had finally published. I admitted [End Page 665] that I had rejected more than they had. Submissions were blind, and reviewers who wanted to know who had written what were dropped. Then, the German Embassy and Foreign Office insisted that we were an offspring of the American Association of Teachers of German (AATG) and sought to bring the “angry enemies” together. We were not angry enemies, but it took a long time for others to learn that. Our independence was fierce, and we insisted upon our own standards. We did not copy. When we had no funding for a woman luncheon speaker from abroad, I constructed funding from honoraria. When doyens refused to speak unless nominated for president of the association or the executive board, we did not select them. Oh, there were times that I lost. The presidents wanted to write for the journal—I offered the newsletter. Finally, they insisted that the presidential banquet address be published, never refereed, not footnoted, in the journal. I gave in. Strategic retreat. When we were told to reduce the number of presentations to allow for cliques to control our sessions, we expanded the number of sessions and selected junior scholars to fill them. We selected people who would work for the association rather than those who felt that they had “earned” positions of power by their scholarly prominence. Eventually, people understood, and more senior scholars, led by such luminaries as Gerhard Weinberg and Gerald Feldman, proudly joined our ranks. When a controversial session was offered, I often provided a contrary session. There was always a danger that cliques would control things, no matter how well we insisted on quality. Some presidents wanted to choose their own personal themes for the entire conference—I...