A respected UW-Madison historian, Prof. William Cronon, has just published a thoughtful op-ed piece in the New York Times regretting the loss of civility and clean government in Wisconsin. A few days prior to that, he had posted an article on his private blog analyzing the role of a shadowy advocacy organization in setting the legislative agenda for Republican governors and legislators across the nation.
Now Prof. Cronon has just learned that he is the subject of an Open Records Law request by the Republican Party of Wisconsin. Specifically, a letter from a certain Stephan Thompson demands
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.
To appreciate the context and likely motivation for this request, the reader is invited to visit Prof. Cronon’s own account here:
Needless to say, the Republican Party’s singling out of an academic scholar for this kind of personal attention is a highly disturbing development, regardless of whether the intent is simply to intimidate Prof. Cronon or rather to fish for real evidence, however ambiguous, that he might have ever used his UW email account for political purposes.
With every new development since mid-February, the party of Scott Walker further entrenches itself in the public consciousness as one that is implacably hostile toward anyone who dares to question its methods or motives.
Hopefully he was smart enough to use his own eamil account for such discussions. They only own his official state emails and it’s easy to have a laptop and a private gmail or yahoo account.
Paul Krugman at the NY Times has now picked up this story: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/academic-intimidation/
… as has the Cap Times: http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/govt-and-politics/article_54c271b2-56e6-11e0-b524-001cc4c002e0.html
It is time for the ostriches to pull their heads out of the sand.
What would we do when they come for us, for our scholarship on say,
‘Making wind power more practical?’
‘Using stem cells for promoting health?’
‘Promoting early-childhood education to tackle poverty?’
‘Carcinogenic effects of certain chemical processes?’
‘Links between water quality and prenatal health?’
‘Improving combustion efficiency of diesel engines?’
‘Screening techniques to precent breast cancer?’,
‘Making bio-fuels out of farm waste?’
-because these may not be consistent with the party platform?
The threat is real, and how long is our community going to ignore the symptoms. It may be too late if we do not check this. Here’s a quote from none other than Ronald Reagan, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”
The apathy of our community is appalling.
Biddy Martin acceded already to cave to Walker (in the guise of the guy who filed the request, who worked for Walker until a few weeks ago) yet again in this case. That is appalling and again evidence of her tendency to precipitous actions. She could have awaited discussion with legal counsel, who could have told her that in a case just a year ago in Wisconsin, the high court upheld an open records request for a teacher’s emails and that the ruling made distinctions that may have helped the UW to fight this request.
Once again, Biddy Martin has not acted in the interests of all of us in the UW System — its faculty, its staff, its students — and thus she has not acted in the interests of all of the citizens of Wisconsin. Is it past time to file an open records request on her emails that use the terms cited in the request filed on Cronon?