7. OTHER ASA PROGRAMS AND ACTIVITIES

ASA continued to promote and advance collaborative relationships with regional and other sociological associations, to develop sources of support for sociologists-such as the Teaching Endowment Fund, and the Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline (FAD)-and to strengthen programs that focused on students. In addition, ASA directed considerable attention to activities on international issues. This section describes the Honors and FAD Programs and ASA's participation in international programs and activities as illustrative of some of these other Association commitments.

ASA Honors Program
On August 13, 1989, Council approved the Honors Program as an official program of the ASA. Founded in 1974 by John H. Shope of Salisbury State College as a undergraduate teaching demonstration for introductory sociology, the ASA Honors Program was not an official function of the ASA until 1989. Indeed, its name derived from the Program's focus on the participation of undergraduates in the ASA Annual Meetings, and for the honor and recognition received by the outstanding students who were selected for the Program. Professor William Brown directed the Program in 1978 and 1979 and Burton Wright of the University of Central Florida (UCF) was Director from 1980 to 1989.

At the suggestion of then ASA President William Foote Whyte, Honors Program students were invited to become participant-observers at the 1981 Annual Meeting in Toronto. Students attended Annual Meeting sessions, kept detailed accounts of impressions and insights, and wrote a formal paper about their experiences. Program participants were expected to pay their own way (including tuition to UCF) and received transfer credits at their home institution.

In December 1988, Wright met with Executive Office staff and suggested that ASA formally adopt the Honors Program after his retirement the following year. In January 1989, Council appointed an ad hoc committee to further explore the issue, and later that year, voted its formal approval. A subcommittee of Council was appointed to oversee the Program, which was administered by the Executive Office. No appropriations were requested from ASA for the Program.

Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline (FAD)

Origins
At its June 1973 meeting, Council established a Committee on the Problems of the Discipline (POD) ". . . to facilitate efforts by small groups of sociologists (probably three to six persons) to meet periodically, to exchange ideas, and to produce working papers. . . focused on basic theoretical and methodological issues in sociology. . . ." (Council Minutes, June 1973). It consisted of Hubert T. Blalock (Chair), Matilda White Riley, and Gary T. Marx, and became a full Subcommittee of Council by 1977. The idea for such an effort emanated from a Council subcommittee in the early 1970s co-chaired by Blalock and James Davis, which explored possible committee initiatives on core problems of the discipline.

At the same June 1973 meeting, Council created a special Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline (FAD) at the request of the Executive Officer as a means whereby contributions could be made by persons, including the assignment of book royalties, to support projects approved by the POD Program. Royalties from books by Blalock launched the Fund, but income from other sources (including a membership drive) contributed as well. By October, 1981 FAD had grown to nearly $85,000 (Rossi Report, August 1982).

The Committee on POD began to administer a Small Grants Program in 1974, implementing the ideas expressed by Blalock and Davis in 1971. From 1974 to 1979, however, the funding for this Small Grants Program came from general ASA operating funds and not from the restricted FAD funds. Indeed, according to the Rossi Report, Blalock had put consistent pressure on Council to use general operating funds for the small grants program so that FAD funds could grow. FAD funds, however, were appropriated in 1979 for startup of the new journal Sociological Theory (Rossi Report 1982).

In 1980, Council approved the allocation of $8,000 from FAD for each of three years for the POD Small Grants Program. Subsequently, funds from the FAD program were allocated to the Small Grants Program from 1982 to 1987, when new support was available from an award of $45,000 by the National Science Foundation in support of a small grants program for 1987-89. Since 1987, ASA has matched the NSF awards in support of the Program-which then became known as the ASA/NSF Small Grants Program, and since the early 1990s, popularly known as the FAD Program. (See Chapter 2.)

FAD in the 1980s Council affirmed that the small grants program supported by FAD was established with the explicit goal of advancing the discipline rather than the profession of sociology, and that the uses of FAD be restricted "workshops, seminars or mini-courses whose aim is to upgrade the scholarly and research skills of ASA members as appropriate uses of the Fund." (Council Minutes, September 9, 1982) Criteria for funding small grants under FAD were also discussed in considerable detail at the 1982 Council meeting (and again in February 1985). A proposal was also made to establish a Committee for the Advancement of the Profession, but the idea was not formally implemented.

From 1980 to 1990 up to eight grants were made under the POD Program each year-with the exception of 1983 and 1984 when FAD funded three Congressional Fellows. The POD awards were made for a wide range of research projects and conferences, including, for example: conceptual problems in the field of collective behavior, survey approaches to community organizations, research on the welfare state, equality and inequality in China, urban theory and policy, ethnicity and race, high school sociology, ideology and social organization, and case studies and organization analysis.

From 1980 to 1990, FAD was also used to support other types of ventures as well. In August 1982, Council allocated $25,000 from FAD in support of the Consortium of Social Science Research Associations (COSSA). FAD funds ($8,000) were also used to begin work on indexing the ASA journals.

International Issues and Human Rights ASA focused attention on international connections in a number of ways during the 1980s, including through: (1) Annual Meeting themes and events, and support for foreign scholar participation; (2) formal and informal representation of ASA in international organizations and at international conferences and events; (3) actions of ASA Council, committees, and sections; (4) initiatives implemented through the Executive Office to establish collaborations with foreign scholars and provide assistance when solicited by sociologists in other countries; and (5) leadership and participation of many individual members of ASA in professional activities on cross-national issues. ASA also addressed human rights violations of scholars and others through various Council and Executive Office actions, including resolutions, policy statements, and campaigns to raise awareness of and protest these situations.

Annual Meeting Events
President Melvin L. Kohn particularly focused on international connections through the theme "Cross-National Research As An Analytic Strategy" for the 1987 Annual Meeting. In his first Council meeting on September 6, 1986, President Kohn said "that his one substantive mission for the coming year was to strengthen the ties between U.S. and world sociology…emphasizing the strategic advantages of cross-national research and bringing to the attention of U.S. sociologists the value of the work being done by fellow sociologists in other countries." To support travel for scholars from Eastern Europe and the Third World, ASA obtained funds from NSF, the International Research Exchanges Board (IREX), and other sources. ASA also provided a contingency fund of $10,000 for travel for foreign scholars, but Kohn noted on August 20, 1987 that this fund was not needed. Formal Soviet-U.S. exchanges began at the 1985 ASA Annual Meeting, and were solidified in other ways over the next several years through joint ventures described more fully below.

Participation in International Organizations
The International Sociological Association (ISA), the major international organization of sociologists, holds its meetings every four years. Delegations representing ASA attended these meetings (in Mexico City in 1982, New Delhi in 1986, and Madrid in 1990). Individual members presented papers and/or served in organizing functions. ASA members also participated in activities of the International Institute of Sociology (IIS), which holds meetings every two years, and is organized along more fluid lines.

ASA obtained funds from NSF (and from the Smithsonian for the 1986 meeting in New Delhi) to help defray the cost of member travel to the meetings. ASA's relationship with the ISA reflected certain complexities and tensions. For example, questions arose in 1990 regarding an ISA statement condemning racist doctrines, but also asserting that, "sociologists who do not endorse the above statement are not welcome at the Congress." (D'Antonio, Footnotes, March 1990:2)

Alejandro Portes, the ASA's new delegate to the ISA thought that, although the resolution was commendable, the last sentence amounted to a loyalty oath restricting freedom of expression of scholars, and requested guidance from Council on how to proceed. While Council took a strong stand against Apartheid, it voted its strong opposition to the sentence that was de facto a "loyalty oath."

ASA Committee Actions
The ASA has had committees focused on international issues since 1965. From 1975 to 1990 the Committee on World Sociology (which became the Committee on International Sociology in 1990) was actively engaged in projects and, in 1991, created "area liaison coordinators" for ten world regions.

In 1990 in a report on Exchanges with Foreign Scholars, Craig J. Calhoun, Louis W. Goodman, and Melvin L. Kohn presented Council with a "preliminary report on the whole range of international relations of the ASA and issues arising from the internationalization of sociology. The report detailed existing ASA capacities and experience in the international field, noting the role of the Committee on World Sociology, ASA Sections, formal and informal representation to various other organizations and agencies, and activities within the Executive Office. It also highlighted the dramatic increase in visiting foreign scholars and the ways in which ASA could facilitate the flow; similarly the importance of integrating international knowledge into U.S. sociology was noted." (Council Minutes, January 1990) Council took several actions relating to the Committee on World Sociology and reaffirmed the direction in which the Subcommittee was moving.

Other Forms of Collaborations
ASA members participated extensively in international conferences and other forms of collaborations. For example, in 1984, Alice Rossi headed a delegation to China that included William Parish, Nan Lin, and Shelby Stewman to establish contact with sociologists there. In 1990, Barry Wellman, Stanley Lieberson, and Thomas Pettigrew attended a small international workshop in Bulgaria on the ethnic crisis in Bulgaria.

ASA also supported evolving relationships with sociologists in the Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries. In a program jointly sponsored by the ASA and the International Research and Exchange Board (IREX), and in cooperation with the Soviet Sociological Association, a series of five seminars brought together Soviet and U.S. sociologists to discuss the feasibility of the exchange of lecturers and graduate students and collaboration in research projects. These cooperative efforts involved a number of graduate departments in the United States, and in the fall of 1989, 17 Soviet graduate students entered U.S. graduate programs. In March 1990, a Soviet sociologist and four students from Russia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia addressed a gathering on Capitol Hill. Especially after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, joint projects also flourished with social scientists in Poland, Hungary, and throughout Eastern Europe.

The ASA supported the establishment of the U.S. Institute of Peace in 1984. Executive Officers Dynes and D'Antonio participated in coalition planning meetings at the National Peace Academy Foundation in Washington and sociologists James H. Laue and Elise Boulding served on the Foundation's Board of Directors. In 1985, Council also approved William Gamson's proposal that ASA jointly sponsor a conference on "Global Conflict and Cooperation: A Sociological Perspective," with the Institute for Global Conflict and Cooperation at the University of California. ASA's commitment to advancing interest on international topics was manifested in other ways as well. Footnotes featured many articles on international issues and on ASA's (and sociology's) international connections. The December 1987 issue of Footnotes included a full-page letter from the School of Sociology at the University in Nicaragua and its petition for assistance.

Many ASA Business Meeting resolutions at Annual Meetings raised awareness of international issues, and Council voted on a number of these, including opposition to apartheid, nuclear arms proliferation, and the 1991 Gulf War; and urging the U.S. to remain a member of UNESCO. Concern was raised frequently in Council on restrictions placed by governments on sociologists (and social scientists in general) in pursuing professional and scientific work-including formal protests against the U.S. government for not granting visas to visiting sociologists, or for pursuing policies of surveillance by intelligence agencies at ASA meetings and elsewhere.

Human Rights
The ASA lodged protests on behalf of sociologists in many places around the world for violations of their individual human rights, or for those detained or restricted in pursuing professional, scientific work (e.g., in Turkey, Korea, Malaysia, Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, Taiwan, South Africa, and Japan). ASA also expressed its solidarity with Soviet scientists and Polish sociologists and raised awareness and a strong voice of protest at the murder of two sociologists in November 1989 in San Salvador. Members also expressed their opposition to human rights abuses generally through resolutions of the ASA Business Meeting-such as those calling for respect of the human rights, civil liberties, and sovereignty of the peoples of Central America and for supporting the sanctuary movement for refugees from Guatemala and El Salvador. Concern was expressed on the situation in South Africa in the form of anti-apartheid policies and direct calls for the release of Nelson Mandela and all other political prisoners. Council responded directly by specifying in its investments policies that "no investment [would be made] in South African companies" (see discussion under Budgets and Fiscal Policies).

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