Disgraced ‘Historian’ Michael Bellesiles’ Fishy War Story
Posted by Dutton Peabody Jul 6th 2010 at 8:51 am in Military | Comments (12)
Out here along the Picketwire, we were mighty surprised ten years ago when we heard about an historian back east who’d proved that nobody to speak of had actually owned guns back in early America. This came as a big surprise, because it wasn’t what we’d heard from our daddies and granddaddies. But this historian, Michael Bellesiles by name, had all the facts and figures to prove it. This was pretty cheering to the New York Times’ reviewer (Garry Wills, “Spiking the Gun Myth,”), who said Professor Bellesiles had “dispersed the darkness that covered the gun’s early history in America” and provided “overwhelming evidence that our view of the gun is as deep a superstition as any that affected Native Americans in the 17th century.” Apparently a lot of people agreed, because Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture was given the Bancroft Prize.
Well, you probably know what happened. Some gun nuts and spoilsports started looking into Professor Bellesiles’ research, and it turned out that the evidence Garry Wills was so happy about didn’t actually exist. Professor Bellesiles had made it up, and the press had eaten it up. “Now many of Mr. Bellesiles’s defenders have gone silent,” the Times had to report a year later (Robert Worth, “Historian’s Prizewinning Book on Guns is Embroiled in a Scandal“):
Over the past year a number of scholars who have examined his sources say he has seriously misused historical records and possibly fabricated them. They say the outcome, when all the evidence is in, could be one of the worst academic scandals in years.
And in the end, they took his Bancroft Prize away, and he lost his job at Emory University in Atlanta.
But never say die. Mr. Bellesiles shows up in the June 27th Chronicle of Higher Education with an article called “Teaching Military History in a Time of War.”
The teaching he speaks of is at Central Connecticut State University, where he’s an adjunct lecturer in history. He has a new book coming out this month (though not from the same publisher as before), called 1877: America’s Year of Living Violently, and if you hadn’t known about his last one — the Chronicle of Higher Education is too discreet to mention it — you might look forward to Mr. Bellesiles’ account of (to quote Publishers Weekly) “lynchings, racism, homicides, army attacks on Indians, labor violence (including a near national general strike), quack theories to explain it all, and a political crisis whose resolution on the backs of African-Americans scarred the nation,” in short all the things Mr. Bellesiles seems to think characterize America.
In his Chronicle of Higher Education article he reports teaching a course in U.S. military history last semester, 18th century to the present, and the disturbing traumatic suffering of a student he calls Ernesto. Ernesto’s brother, Javier, had recently enlisted in the Army, and as the semester progressed was sent to Iraq, saw combat, was shot in the head by a sniper (too seriously to be evacuated to the Army’s medical facilities in Germany), and after some weeks died. Ernesto, after authoring an amazing paper showing “don’t ask, don’t tell” to be an example of military discrimination, had taken his brother’s being shot very hard: while he awaited the outcome, he:
never spoke in class, cut his hair short, and began wearing military boots and fatigue-style clothes. His identification with his brother was obvious, and he appeared to age several years in those few weeks,” Mr. Bellesiles tells us: “And then, just as we were coming to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which allowed President Lyndon Johnson to send combat troops to Vietnam, I received an e-mail from Ernesto letting me know that his brother had died. Not surprisingly, Ernesto’s attendance became erratic, and he skipped entirely the discussion of our current wars. Every time I saw him, his grief was palpable. It pained me to witness his loss and to imagine what his family must be going through, yet all I could do as a teacher was to be present, listen, and give every consideration to the circumstances.
Pretty tough, something many American families of service members have gone through, and only a cold-hearted person could fail to grieve along with Ernesto.
But given Mr. Bellesiles’ last book, unkind minds have fallen back on President Reagan’s “trust, but verify” maxim. And it’s a curious thing. Central Connecticut State does offer military history courses, but the course catalogue at the college’s website doesn’t seem to list one corresponding to Mr. Bellesiles’ description of his. He is not listed among the history faculty there, not even in the “Adjunct and Affiliated” category, nor in the faculties of several other departments which might possibly offer a military history course. Search for “Bellesiles” at the website’s search engine, and you get zero results. Websites aren’t always absolutely up to date, but Mr. Bellesiles has taught there at least a semester, according to his article, and it sounds like longer. You’d almost think the school wasn’t proud of him.
A friend who used to be in the Army is also a mite suspicious about Javier’s service. He had “recently enlisted” when the spring semester began, January 25th, but two weeks later he was in Iraq. Now, basic training is nine weeks; add infantry advanced individual training, and you’re talking about fourteen or more. So Javier would have had to enlist around the beginning of November or earlier, not exactly “recently,” but then Mr. Bellesiles is sometimes imprecise with figures. Once Ernesto reports that Javier is in Iraq, in mid-February, enough time passes before he is mortally wounded for Mr. Bellesiles’ course to go from the Revolutionary War through “the decision of the United States to invade Mexico” (based on lies, he tells us) to the Civil War, apparently late enough that conflict to discuss Grant’s “strategy of attrition.” After Javier is wounded, Ernesto “missed the wars against the Plains Indians and the Spanish-American War, but showed up in time for the Philippine Insurrection.” Javier is still holding on, despite not receiving medical career outside Iraq. Mr. Bellesiles gets through both World Wars and Korea, and into Vietnam, before Javier dies. Surely we are nearing the last day of class, May 12th, with Mr. Bellesiles discussing the current wars without Ernesto present.
Funny: the Hartford Courant keeps careful track of Connecticut casualties, and there has been only one fatality so far this year, reported on April 4th as recently killed. That would seem weeks before Mr. Bellesiles says Javier died in Iraq. And then Lance Corporal Tyler Griffin was a Marine, not Army. And killed by an IED, not a shot to the head. And in Afghanistan, not Iraq. Nor was he an immigrant, as Javier is described. (“We discussed [his] reasons for enlisting, which mostly focused on a sense of gratitude to a country that had given their family refuge.”) And there is no sign of a brother in the Courant obituary.
Ten years ago, Mr. Bellesiles’ woes over his Arming America were triggered partly by another article of his, “Exploding the Myth of an Armed America” — in the Sept. 29, 2000, issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Is it too much to ask if the Chronicle did any due diligence about this new one by Mr. Bellesiles? Reckon not!
bigjournalism.com
h/t brumar |
