Wednesday, June 23, 2010

MAA in AZ update: read your email

by J J Cohen

If you are an MAA member, you should have received an email with a link to a survey asking if the MAA meeting should be held in Arizona as planned (with special sessions devoted to critiquing some of what is behind the immigration law and the animus towards ethnic studies), or if it should be canceled and somewhat combined with Kalamazoo. I urge you to weigh in, sign your name, and leave a comment.

If you do vote to cancel, and if you have the resources, consider pledging to assist the MAA recover the $32K (!!!) they will lose if they do not hold the meeting in Tempe as well.

Here is the text of the survey:
"The officers and Council must decide whether (1) to hold the meeting as scheduled, or (2) to meet in conjunction with the International Congress at Kalamazoo (with MAA programmatic participation limited to a maximum of three plenary addresses and three sessions, and all MAA meetings held at a hotel), or (3) to cancel the meeting entirely, with a Council and Business meeting to be held at a date in April at a place to be determined by the Executive Committee. If the meeting is held in Tempe, we plan to schedule sessions and a plenary address devoted to topics relevant to the situation in Arizona, such as race, ethnicity, immigration, and migration. If the meeting in Arizona is canceled, there will be a financial penalty, which the Treasurer, Eugene Lyman, and the Conference Program Chair, Robert Bjork, have calculated to be in the neighborhood of $32,000."

6 comments:

Another Damned Medievalist said...

I'm a member and I've got nothing. Got any ideas?

Karl Steel said...

Hmm. Odd. I received one. Maybe write and ask where yours went?

Hannah Kilpatrick said...

Odd. I'm not a member, and I received it. I assumed they'd added the emails from the poll on this blog.

Anonymous said...

I suspect that for some of us we have spam filters that are blocking this. If you don't get it -- write them an email directly; write them, write them, write them. The question is-- will you attend Arizona -- yes, no, don;'t care.

There are people out there that say that only half of the contributors to this blog are members of the MAA -- so that this voice isn't counting.

Write them, write them, write them....

Matthew Gabriele said...

If you didn't get a survey, email:

Christopher Cole -- speculum AT medievalacademy.org

OR

Paul Szarmach -- pes AT medievalacademy.org

Anonymous said...

Mine was originally marked as "junk," so beware of spam filters. Is anyone else hoping they cancel but fearful of what will happen to the IMC if MAA is going on just down the street? Kzoo seems spread thin already, and if MAA is in town, I fear many will be diverted (depriving Kzoo of more good panels and audience members). If they cancel and wait a year, would that help make up for some of the money lost?