Friday 25 March 2011

Wisconsin Republicans Vs. William Cronon

If you haven't yet heard, the Wisconsin Republican Party, in response to an unflattering (but otherwise objective) blog entry by the AHA's President-Elect, William Cronon, has decided to try to intimidate him by fishing for ammo to use against him from his @wisc.edu address. They're using a FOIA-type request, which to me (and more importantly, to Dr. Cronon) seems to be a politically-motivated misuse of an otherwise exceptionally good law. For the full story, the full text of the Open Records Law-based fishing request from Stephan Thompson, and some fantastic analysis by Cronon himself, go here:

Abusing Open Records to Attack Academic Freedom


To say that this reflects poorly on the Wisconsin Republican Party is one hell of an understatement. The name McCarthy shows up a few times in the article, and though I think it's a stretch, I don't think the comparison is wide enough of the mark to be completely baseless. And that in itself is scary.

Happy reading.

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