I am sure the HES Executive Committee makes this statement with no 
intention of taking a side in the US culture war.  But that is what it 
does.  And it does no good for the HES.
    
People have been killed in the custody of US police, some of them 
egregiously.  What the killings signify in some cases is not largely 
contested.  In others it is.  What they signify on the whole is 
contested very much.  
    
Systemic racism?  One can make an argument.  I can see it.  Why is the 
History of Economics Society, whose mission is to advance inquiry into 
the named subject, advancing this extraneous and contested argument?  
    
We have a good thing going in our society.  An uncommon thing. Scholars 
with different ideological, methodological, and other convictions 
communicate openly, learn from one another, and take pleasure in each 
other's company and conversation despite their disagreements. Indeed 
because of them.  It works because the HES does not suffer from the we-
all-agree syndrome that plagues other scholarly societies and US 
academia at large.  Which happens in good part because the HES sticks 
to its mission.
    
You and I just might have an interesting conversation about systemic 
racism in the United States -- why you think it is the salient problem, 
why I think not.  The kind of conversation that has been commonplace in 
HES coffee breaks and serendipitous hallway encounters for the couple 
decades and more that I've been involved.  That conversation will be 
less common after the HES has decided which of us is right.  Try 
thinking how frequently and freely you've heard such a conversation on 
any US university campus of late.
    
The scope of permissible conversation in US academic life is narrowing.  
If there is a salient social problem in the United States that relates 
to the mission of the HES, that's it.  

The HES has been an academic oasis where the range of values and scope 
of conversation is great.  I hope the HES Exec. will take care in the 
future to preserve it.
    
Stephen Meardon
Bowdoin College