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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