NYT editorial: A Shabby Crusade in Wisconsin (the GOP attack on Professor Cronon)

[highplainsdem]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/28/opinion/28mon3.html

Editorial
A Shabby Crusade in Wisconsin
Published: March 25, 2011


The latest technique used by conservatives to silence liberal academics is to demand copies of e-mails and other documents. Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli of Virginia tried it last year with a climate-change scientist, and now the Wisconsin Republican Party is doing it to a distinguished historian who dared to criticize the state’s new union-busting law. These demands not only abuse academic freedom, but make the instigators look like petty and medieval inquisitors.

The historian, William Cronon, is the Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas research professor of history, geography and environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin, and was recently elected president of the American Historical Association. Earlier this month, he was asked to write an Op-Ed article for The Times on the historical context of Gov. Scott Walker’s effort to strip public-employee unions of bargaining rights. While researching the subject, he posted on his blog several critical observations about the powerful network of conservatives working to undermine union rights and disenfranchise Democratic voters in many states.

In particular, he pointed to the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative group backed by business interests that circulates draft legislation in every state capital, much of it similar to the Wisconsin law, and all of it unmatched by the left. Two days later, the state Republican Party filed a freedom-of-information request with the university, demanding all of his e-mails containing the words “Republican,” “Scott Walker,” “union,” “rally,” and other such incendiary terms. (The Op-Ed article appeared five days after that.)

-snip-

Professors are not just ordinary state employees. As J. Harvie Wilkinson III, a conservative federal judge on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, noted in a similar case, state university faculty members are “employed professionally to test ideas and propose solutions, to deepen knowledge and refresh perspectives.” A political fishing expedition through a professor’s files would make it substantially harder to conduct research and communicate openly with colleagues. And it makes the Republican Party appear both vengeful and ridiculous.

[midnight]

1. That's correct, Professors are not just ordinary state employees...

They have earned a PHD.... So pay them better.... Conservative judge has to communicate how petty the Republicans are... because they are...

[sabrina 1]

2. They're getting desperate.

Authoritarians always over-reach which brings attention to what they've been up to and eventually their demise.

They are now acting on emotion, which means they are weak. For a long time they had things their way as the operated in the shadows. Decent people could not have imagined the dirty tricks they were pulling behind the scenes, but now we are getting a close look at how destructive and unethical the 'family values' crowd really is.

I love that they cannot control their instincts to want everything their way. Now is the time to attack them and drag them out into the open so the world gets to see who they really are and who is behind them.

Whose emails would we like to see? Maybe the Koch Bros?

[glinda]

5. Where is Anon on this? Wikileaks? h-e-l-p!

[highplainsdem]

8. +1

[madfloridian]

3. Thanks for posting that. I linked to your post from my journal on this.

So glad to see it.

Professor criticized Scott Walker and ALEC. GOP groups FOIAed his work email.

[JDPriestly]

4. From a practical point of view, don't ever, ever, ever use a work

computer for personal correspondence of any kind. That's my opinion on the topic.

And don't use it for political communications or even websurfing. Bring your own private laptop if you want to do private things at work. Maybe an I-phone.

This is not because you are doing anything illegal. It's just that you probably don't want your boss or others to have access to your personal communications.

[glinda]

6. Might be a fine line here though. He is a historian. He can write on things as part of his job.

[highplainsdem]

7. I'm wondering who wrote the editorial. A.G. Sulzberger wrote an article for the Politics section

that seems rather dismissive of Cronon's blog and of the implications of the open-records request. Sulzberger's the publisher's son.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/us/politics/26professor.html

Wisconsin Professor’s E-Mails Are Target of G.O.P. Records Request
By A. G. SULZBERGER
Published: March 26, 2011

-snip-

It was a lengthy and speculative examination of a national organization for conservative lawmakers that the professor, William Cronon, believed was partly responsible for what he described as “this explosion of radical conservative legislation.” The post soon received more than a half million hits, he said.

-snip-

As a state that prides itself on encouraging government transparency, Wisconsin has a far-reaching open records law that provides journalists and others with a means to pull back the curtain of government to ensure that it is working properly.

-snip-

“I’m pleased to see the Republicans making use of the open records law because they are as entitled to it as everyone else in the state,” said Bill Lueders, the president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, a nonprofit group that supports open records and open meeting laws.

-snip-

The university is in the process of responding to the request, a process that includes removing documents that are exempt, like communications with students and discussions of unpublished research. “This is not unusual,” said Lisa Rutherford, director of the university’s legal office. “We get hundreds of requests a year in all different varieties.”

Ugh. Sulzberger is a poor excuse for a journalist. As Keith Olbermann pointed out recently:

http://foknewschannel.com/new-york-times-punkd-by-anti-union-plant/


As for this article on Cronon, it's a thinly veiled attempt to dismiss what's happening as nothing at all important. Probably Sulzberger's way of trying to counter the Times editorial quoted in the OP.

He doesn't even name ALEC in the first paragraph about the blog, when he should have named it, but he does take up space there to describe what Cronon wrote as "lengthy and speculative" -- in other words, probably boring and pointless, so don't bother to check it out.

Then he goes on to try to make it seem as if this witchhunt is just routine.

And this is what the Times is trying to pass off as objective journalism.

[sabrina 1]

9. It could be an attempt to diminish what should be obvious to

most observers, that this is an attempt to intimidate anyone trying to take a look at who these people are and why they are hiding what they do. But I don't think it will be very effective.

Anyone who is influencing the electoral process must be transparent. ALEC is the exact opposite of transparent.

Let them keep attacking anyone who wants to know what role they are playing in our system of government. All that does is draw even more attention to an organization that clearly wants to hide its activities.

[mysuzuki2]

10. This question may display my ignorance of computers

but are emails stored anywhere? I routinely delete mine. Do the professors emails still exist somewhere if he deleted them?