Is Sean Wilentz a historian or a "propagandist"?
BY JAMES TARANTO
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Wednesday, April 19, 2006 2:51 p.m. EDT
'A Good Propagandist, Maybe'
Remember Sean Wilentz? He's a Princeton historian who last appeared in this column back in November 2000, when he organized something called the Emergency Committee of Concerned Citizens 2000, which spent more than $125,000 buying ads in the New York Times urging a "revote" in heavily Democratic Palm Beach County, Fla., in the hope of installing Al Gore in the White House. (Mark Steyn subsequently satirized the effort.)
As it turned out, several of the "signatories" of the ad said that they never saw the final text and that they disagreed with it. And of course, the "revote" idea was preposterous. No one, not even the Florida Supreme Court, considered it seriously.
In a forthcoming issue of a prestigious academic journal, Wilentz, described by the journal as "one of America's leading historians," takes the measure of President Bush. According to the Drudge Report, Wilentz's article declares that "George W. Bush's presidency appears headed for colossal historical disgrace." The journal's cover carries the blurb "The Worst President in History?" and has a caricature of the president sitting in a corner wearing a dunce cap.
Oh wait a second. Rolling Stone isn't exactly an academic journal, is it? Wilentz, however, is a historian, and he has strong ideas about historians weighing in on current politics, as he explains on Princeton's Web site:
<<< I do think that historians must always be careful that their history writing doesn't become infected by their politics. The minute you start with a political idea and try to find a version of history that affirms it, you're a bad historian. A good propagandist, maybe, but a lousy historian. >>>
Now, one might argue that speculation about where the Bush presidency "appears headed" isn't history writing at all, and thus it is a completely extracurricular activity that has no bearing on Wilentz's reputation as a historian. But the magazine is trading on that reputation to peddle his piece of partisan punditry.
One would think that professional pride would restrain Wilentz from participating in such an exercise. But perhaps the academy is so politicized these days that such foolishness will only end up enhancing his reputation among his colleagues.
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