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