Wisconsin Republicans: Abusing Open Records Act to Attack Academic Freedom
Politicians are taking the lessons learned from the climate change battle — when in doubt, subpoena and harass serious research scholars — and taking it from hard sciences to social sciences.
The Wisconsin Republican Party has used the FOIA to request all e-mails including any political content sent by William Cronan, a world-renowned historian at the University of Wisconsin, president of the American Historical Association. His crime? An op-ed piece in the New York Times critical of Scott Walker’s anti-union actions, and a blog post entitled “Who’s Really Behind Recent Republican Legislation in Wisconsin and Elsewhere?”
God forbid we should learn the answer to that little question, right? Because now this citizen-scholar is under all-out attack by the Republicans. They are clearly hoping that, by demonstrating that he used the e-mail account of a public University for political purposes, they can discredit him, even force him to leave his state employment. Which would be great, right? Harvard could hire him then. That’s what Scott Walker should do with all his critics.