ALUMNI PROFILE
Foner Completes Term as AHA President
By Timothy P. Cross

Eric Foner '63 PHOTO: JOE PINEIRO

Dewitt Clinton Professor of History Eric Foner '63 capped his one-year term as president of the American Historical Association with a keynote address, "American Freedom in a Global World," on Friday, January 5, at the Association's annual meeting in Boston. Foner, whose most recent book, The Story of American Freedom (1999), was nominated for a National Book Award, is a specialist in 19th century America, notably slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia in 1969.

At the conference, Foner was also the subject of "Eric Foner and the Practice of Historical Narrative," a roundtable discussion of his impact as a historian. Included among the six historians in the discussion were Penny Von Eschen '94 GSAS, who teaches at the University of Michigan, and Manisha Sinha '94 GSAS, of the University of Massachusetts, both of whom studied with Foner at Columbia.

Founded in 1884, the American Historical Association is the oldest and most prestigious historical society in the United States. With 15,000 members from nearly 5,000 institutions, it is also the largest historical society in the United States as well as the umbrella organization of historians studying every period and geographical area. Foner is the 12th Columbian to serve as president of the AHA.