William Cronon's Partisan Bloviation

William Cronon is a history professor at the University of Wisconsin who has publicly involved himself in the controversy concerning Wisconsin public employee bargaining. He wrote an op ed for The New York Times and started a blog that, in short order, received more than 500,000 hits. Soon after Cronon's first blog post, Stephan Thompson of the Wisconsin GOP sent the University of Wisconsin an e-mail, and I have verified the e-mail's authenticity. The e-mail requests, "copies of all emails into and out of Prof. William Cronon’s state email account from January 1, 2011 to present which reference any of the following terms: Republican, Scott Walker, recall, collective bargaining, AFSCME, WEAC, rally, union, Alberta Darling, Randy Hopper, Dan Kapanke, Rob Cowles, Scott Fitzgerald, Sheila Harsdorf, Luther Olsen, Glenn Grothman, Mary Lazich, Jeff Fitzgerald, Marty Beil, or Mary Bell."

The Wisconsin GOP's request was made under the Wisconsin open records law. Professor Cronon asserts, correctly in my view, that the Wisconsin GOP's request was intended as political retaliation. Cronon also claims that the GOP's aim was to silence Cronon, but I do not agree with the second claim. Political retaliation is part of the political process and it has not slowed political debate yet.

If there has been silencing at the University of Wisconsin, it is Cronon's and his partisan allies' silencing of Republicans. The ratio of Democrats to Republicans at universities around the country is six to one, and at a left wing-biased place like the University of Wisconsin I'll bet the bias is more extreme. The bias comes about because leftists exclude anyone who does not agree with their ideology, an ideology which has repeatedly failed and whose advocacy shears university social science departments of any claim of providing science rather than ideology. In other words, Cronon's left-wing allies have silenced Republicans within the University of Wisconsin and now object to Republicans' debating them from without.

Cronon has chosen to involve himself in the political process . He states that he has been careful to separate his personal e-mails from his university computer, and makes the spurious argument that communications with students constitute records under the Buckley Law (perhaps Cronon has not heard of redaction). Cronon had already made his views public, and any GOP attempt to silence him would be irrational and counter-productive to the GOP's aims. Rather, as a public official with a partisan affiliation Cronon has entered the political fray. He ought to expect that he be treated as a political player subject to the same tactics to which Cronon and his allies would subject GOP-affiliated officials. Even in his self-serving bloviation about the GOP's request Cronon cannot refrain from partisan rhetoric. He writes:

"My most important observation is that I find it simply outrageous that the Wisconsin Republican Party would seek to employ the state’s Open Records Law for the nakedly political purpose of trying to embarrass, harass, or silence a university professor (and a citizen) who has asked legitimate questions and identified potentially legitimate criticisms concerning the influence of a national organization on state legislative activity. I’m offended by this not just because it’s yet another abuse of law and procedure that has seemingly become standard operating procedure for the state’s Republican Party under Governor Walker, but because it’s such an obvious assault on academic freedom at a great research university that helped invent the concept of academic freedom way back in 1894."

Rather than silence Cronon, the Wisconsin GOP seems to be aiming to obtain information that would be consistent with a long standing pattern around the country: the nation's university professors often use tax exempt and public resources meant for education for partisan advocacy. Outrageously, Cronon claims that his partisan activities ought to receive special consideration and be exempt from Wisconsin's open records law. He claims that college professors ought to be publicly funded, that their partisan advocacy ought to be treated to special protection, and that their partisan opponents be prevented from asking whether professors are illegally using public money to participate in partisan advocacy.

My sincere hope is that Cronon's hypocritical bloviation will not deter the Wisconsin GOP. Perhaps Cronon would like to see repeal of the Wisconsin Open Records law, or better yet, a provision that it ought to apply to Democrats but not Republicans, which is his ultimate message, undoubtedly based on value-free social science.