How You Can Fight For Academic Freedom
Education, PoliticsApr 1, 2011In 1983, professor William Cronon made his career with Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England,a seminal study of how European settlers transformed the ecosystem of early America. Nearly thirty years later, the now distinguished Cronon, President of American Historical Association, finds his career in the middle of another Change in the Land, of a very different variety.
“Whatever you think of its politics, I don’t think there can be any question that the rise of modern conservatism is one of the great turnaround stories in twentieth-century American history,” Cronon wrote in a March 15 blog post, one that would place him directly in the path of that conservative turnaround, as a conservative think tank requests to snoop about his email (using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)), furthering a well-coordinated assault on Public Employees in Wisconsin and around the nation.
In the post, Cronon – acting as a historian – places Wisconsin Gov. Walker’s union busting in a broader historical context, carefully, fairly, and