American Council of Learned Societies

The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), founded in 1919, is a private, nonprofit federation of 73 scholarly organizations in the humanities and related social sciences. It is best known for its fellowship competitions which provide a range of opportunities for scholars in the humanities and related social sciences at all career stages, from graduate students to distinguished professors to independent scholars, working with a number of disciplines and methodologies in the U.S. and abroad.

The federation was created in 1919 to represent the United States in the Union Académique Internationale (International Union of Academies). The founders of ACLS, representatives of 13 learned societies, believed that a federation of scholarly organizations (dedicated to excellence in research, and most with open membership) was the best combination of U.S. democracy and intellectual aspirations. According to the council's constitution, its mission was advancing humanistic studies and social sciences and maintaining and strengthening national societies dedicated to those studies.

Since its founding, ACLS has provided the humanities and related social sciences with leadership, opportunities for innovation, and national and international representation. The Council’s many activities have at their core the practice of scholarly self-governance. Central to ACLS throughout its history have been its programs of fellowships and grants aiding research. ACLS made its first grants, totaling $4,500, in 1926; in 2012, ACLS awarded over $15 million in fellowship stipends and other awards to more than 320 scholars in the United States and abroad. All ACLS awards are made through rigorous peer review by specially appointed committees of scholars from throughout the United States and, in some programs, abroad. During the late 1950s, the council encouraged Hans Wehr in his writing of the first English edition of his Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic (1962).

The executive directors of the ACLS member societies meet in a Conference of Administrative Officers (CAO); before 1988, this was the Conference of Secretaries. At its first meeting in 1925 the conference had 11 members, including Frederic Ogg of the American Political Science Association and Ernest Burgess of the American Sociological Society (now the American Sociological Association). The goal of the first meeting, and of every meeting since, was "the promotion of closer relations between the associations of humanists [through] a conference in which the secretaries, or principal executive officers, of its constituent societies could make each other’s acquaintance, explain to each other the character, aims and activities of their respective organizations, and discuss, in the light of their various experiences, the many common problems of their societies."

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