Historians in Trouble: Plagiarism, Fraud, and Politics in the Ivory Tower

John Leonard, Harper's Magazine, 1 January 2005
Goes into court documents and behind the newspaper and network scenes to tell us about coverups, screwups, and secret settlements.

Book Description
An entertaining look behind the scenes (and headlines) of the recent controversies in the history profession. "Some historians accused of misconduct have their careers destroyed, while others end up winning the National Humanities Medal from George W. Bush. Why is that?" —from Historians in Trouble Historians have been in the news recently, and the news has not been good —accusations of plagiarism, research fraud, and classroom misconduct have made headlines, brought protracted investigations, and, in some cases, landed big names in the courtroom. In Historians in Trouble, investigative journalist and historian Jon Wiener examines the various history scandals of the last few years, arguing that media spectacles end careers only when powerful groups outside the profession demand punishment —and that such campaigns typically come from the right rather than the left. Focusing on a dozen key controversies ranging across the political spectrum and representing a wide variety of charges, Wiener looks at the well-publicized cases of Michael Bellesiles, the historian of gun culture accused of research fraud; accused plagiarists Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin; Joseph Ellis, who lied in his classroom at Mount Holyoke about having fought in Vietnam; and the allegations of misconduct by Harvard's Stephan Thernstrom and Emory's Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, who nevertheless were appointed to the National Council on the Humanities by George W. Bush.

About the Author
Jon Wiener is a contributing editor to The Nation and a professor of history at the University of California at Irvine. He is the author of Gimme Some Truth, Professors, Politics and Pop, and Come Together. He lives in Los Angeles.


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Cultural historian Wiener (history, Univ. of California, Irvine) writes regularly for the Nation on the politics of academe. His thesis here, presented in a style as readable as any political thriller, boils down to a starkly ideological postulate: historians working from a Marxist/leftist perspective are forgiven no minor trespasses, while those who explore the past to profit conservative agendas are rewarded with scant regard to whatever scandal their work occasions. Amazingly, Wiener presents a credible if less than decisive case. And in this book of cases, none attracts his indignation more than the tale of Bancroft Prize winner Michael Bellesiles, whose briefly lauded revisionist history of American gun culture came under such sustained questioning from within the academy-a point Wiener obscures by weighting the opinions of highly regarded Colonial historians in equal measure to National Rifle Association staff and outright, unaffiliated crackpots-that Emory University fired him from a tenured position. Nor is it certain that the Holocaust historian David Abraham-despicable and unprecedented as his hounding may have been-was merely guilty of sloppy note-taking. But Wiener has to be given enormous credit for publicizing equal failings by right-wing historians and for the disinterest with which he considers recent cases involving three well-known, politically mainstream public intellectuals. Essential for all academic libraries, along with Ron Robin's Scandals and Scoundrels.-Scott H. Silverman, Bryn Mawr Coll. Lib., PA Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.


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