LETTER FROM ASOR’S PRESIDENT: MARCH FELLOWSHIP MADNESS SUSPENDED & OTHER ASOR RESPONSES TO PANDEMIC
Dear Fellow ASOR community members,
First and foremost, I hope that you, your family and your friends remain safe and healthy. I am writing to update you about ASOR’s plans to move forward responsibly in these uncertain times, and about your success in funding scholarships for fieldwork.
First, to your success: As your President, I am proud and grateful to each of you who has contributed already. We have raised the most funds in our 120-year history toward dig scholarships. This is such good news!
Secondly: After consultation with our Executive Director, Chairs of the Development Committee and Committee on Archaeological Research and Policy and its sub-committee on fellowships, we have decided, in view of the concerns about the safety and wisdom of travel, that we are going to end our March Madness fundraising effort early. We will segregate the funds that already have been given, so that they remain available for the same purpose in the future—summer fieldwork.
If it proves infeasible to award dig scholarships in 2020, due to travel restrictions and the need for social distancing, we will make these funds available in 2021. If the situation changes, and field experiences are able to move forward, we will revisit this decision by April 15th. It seems unlikely that digs will go forward this year, however. Excavation does not lend itself to social distancing. The Universities that send students to our fieldwork projects are already restricting travel, and ASOR has a community responsibility to join in the efforts to be part of the solution in slowing the spread of the Coronavirus.
Our Overseas Research Centers in Amman, Jerusalem, and Nicosia are also suffering greatly from these travel restrictions and cutbacks in fieldwork. Much of their income derives from visits to and work on ASOR field projects for which they provide essential support and services. We will be providing reports from the directors in upcoming issues of News@ASOR and on our web page, but for now you can learn about their situations at ACOR, the Albright Institute, and CAARI.
Finally, instead, ASOR staff will work to serve our community now, this week, by launching a series of webpages devoted to bringing online resources to our many members who are required to teach online courses with very little notice. Also, these resources may be of great interest to Friends of ASOR and others for whom the past matters.
We will continue to look for other ways to actively support our members and their research as we all deal with the Coronavirus pandemic. I invite you to share ideas with me or Andy Vaughn, our Executive Director, or anyone on ASOR’s Executive Committee.
With wishes for your good health,
Sharon C. Herbert
President, American Schools of Oriental Research
Charles K. Williams, II Distinguished University Professor of Classical Archaeology Emerita
Department of Classical Studies
Research Associate, Kelsey Museum of Archaeology
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109
president@asor.org
