Two new articles on Professor William Cronon:

[highplainsdem]

The first one is from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/120041909.html

UW historian sucked into vortex of state politics
Academic stunned when GOP requests his emails
By Bill Glauber and Don Walker of the Journal Sentinel
April 17, 2011

-snip-

Cronon suggested that a group called the American Legislative Exchange Council should be studied further. That group works on model legislation of interest to conservative legislators around the country.

Two days later, Stephan Thompson, deputy executive director of the state Republican Party, requested Cronon's emails from his university email account dating back to Jan. 1.

-snip-

If the Republican Party was hoping to find evidence that Cronon was electioneering or advocating recalls of Republican or Democratic candidates in the emails they obtained, they would have been sorely disappointed.

Emails reveal little

A review of the emails released to the GOP found Cronon immersed in the mundane details of academia. They included correspondence with UW housing officials who were thinking about renaming some campus buildings after prominent Wisconsin women, as well as a copious collection of emails about a proposal for an undergraduate major in environmental studies.

-snip-

The second is on the website for the Unitarian Universalists' magazine:

http://www.uuworld.org/news/articles/181822.shtml

UU professor target of GOP investigation after questioning conservative legislation
William Cronon at center of storm over academic freedom in Wisconsin.
By Donald E. Skinner
4.18.11

Professor William Cronon of the University of Wisconsin at Madison was intrigued by a rash of conservative legislation that was being introduced across the country, including in Wisconsin, aimed at ending collective bargaining rights, rolling back environmental protections, and requiring photo identification to vote. These proposals can’t all be coming out of Wisconsin, he reasoned. So he did what professors do: He researched it. He found that much of the legislation was likely coming from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a little-known Washington, D.C., group that supports and promotes conservative issues. When Cronon wrote an item about ALEC on his blog, Scholar as Citizen, on March 15, and urged his fellow Wisconsinites to educate themselves, the Wisconsin Republican Party filed a freedom of information request for his emails since January 1. The university subsequently released some emails, but withheld most on the grounds they were protected communications with students, other faculty members, and professional groups. The GOP request created a storm of controversy about academic freedom that brought widespread attention to Cronon and his blog.

-snip-

Both articles are well worth reading in their entirety.

The Journal-Sentinel article mentions Cronon's role in Ken Burns' documentary on America's national parks (which is a great documentary -- and Burns also highlighted the resistance to creating parks from conservative politicians who'd wanted to see that land developed instead, a problem we could be facing again in the future, considering GOP plans for a "yard sale" of government property).

[slackmaster]

1. Is he the one they call "Cronon the Barbarian?"

:shrug:

[highplainsdem]

2. LOL! Did you miss all the controversy and all the posts about him?

This is a link to his blog:

http://scholarcitizen.williamcronon.net/

His post about ALEC is on the page of "Older Entries":

http://scholarcitizen.williamcronon.net/page/2/

His study guide on ALEC directed more attention to that group than anything else recently -- and the Wisconsin GOP's attempt to intimidate him and other academics through an open-records request, just two days after the blog appeared, drew even more attention both to ALEC and to the McCarthyite GOP tactics.

[xchrom]

3. recommend

[highplainsdem]

4. Thanks!

[highplainsdem]

5. kick