The Optical Society Oral History Project Interview with ... - OSA

Interview with Dr. Anthony Siegman, May 5, 2008 28
So it was my job, and I was sincerely behind it at the time, to try to sell this concept of
“UNO” to the OSA membership. I think it required a two-thirds favorable vote of the
membership, certainly of those voting to pass. And the opposition from those in OSA
who didn't agree with this got to be fairly heated. Looking back, I think I handled it
reasonably well. I think I did a decent, good job of giving everyone the chance to voice
their feelings on this, to voice their objections and to make sure that both sides of the
argument got full publicity and so on. At least, that was what I tried to do. And in fact, in
the end, the vote came out just practically 50/50. I think it was, you know, I said at one
point 49.37 percent of the voters of the membership endorsed me, and the other 50 point
whatever,―67, 63—percent were vehemently opposed to this. And knowing that it was
going to take a long while for this to work if the proposal passed, I mean I must say, as
the vote neared, I began to realize that if it passed, we would really have to do this, and
that was going to be very tough. That was going to be very difficult. And so I have to
say, I was actually immensely relieved when it didn't pass. I was truly not disappointed a
bit.
I remember I had to announce the results of the vote at a huge OSA meeting which,
again, I think was in Long Beach. The vote was handled by an outside organization, and
I truly didn’t know what the results were going to be until minutes before I went to the
podium. And I remember vividly standing in front of this huge session of the meeting
and saying something to the effect that I supposed it was up to me at this point to say
something statesmanlike, only I didn't know what that would be. And in fact, it turned
out that there were people in SPIE who were also very proud of their society and of its