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Reflecting on ASA’s Centennial Year, 2005At this time 100 years ago . . . Albert Einstein changed human’s conception of time forever in 1905, introducing his theory of special relativity and setting a seemingly generous “universal speed limit” of 186,282 miles per second. Perhaps leveraging one of his postulated pockets of variant time, the American Sociological Society managed two years later to publish its first Index to the Sociological Papers & Reports of the American Sociological Society (see the 1906-30 cumulation at www2.asanet.org/centennial/). 75 years ago . . . Amelia Earhart completed her solo trans-Atlantic flight, breaking aviation and news barriers to women in 1932, when the American Sociological Society began exploring its first plan to break into mass media to get press coverage at the Annual Meeting, a plan it implemented in 1938. 50 years ago . . . the U.S. Supreme Court ruled segregation illegal following Brown vs. Board of Education, and in that same year the American Sociological Society for the first time recommended Annual Meeting sessions on teaching sociology in colleges and high schools (1954). 25 years ago . . . sociology undergraduate major Ronald Reagan became the 40th President of the USA, and a year later ASA Executive Officer Russel R. Dynes helped found the Consortium of Social Science Associations (COSSA) to respond to the ensuing federal R&D budget cuts to social science and to create a congressional liaison office in the nation’s Capital (1981). |