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For whom Bellesiles tolls
In 2003, Emory historian Michael Bellesiles was bounced from academia in disgrace after his prize-winning book, Arming America, was found to be an ideologically driven fabrication rather than a factually grounded piece of historiography. Bellesiles lost his tenured post at Emory, and the book’s Bancroft Prize was revoked. He disappeared from public view–but not before becoming a poster boy for academic malfeasance. As academic bad boys go, he has, in recent years, been outshadowed only by Ward Churchill, to whom, perhaps, Bellesiles might feel a measure of gratitude–for taking the spotlight off him, and allowing him to get on with things.
And get on with things he has. He’s teaching, though not on the tenure track. He’s got a new book coming out–and is working with publishers who represent him as a victim of a witch hunt, rather than as a perpetrator of severe ethical lapses. And he’s got a nice little piece on teaching military history in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The book and the plum spot in the Chronicle are calling cards. They announce that Michael Bellesiles is back–and they ask us to believe that this time around, he’s all he claims to be.
But is he? Bellesiles’ piece in the Chronicle is attracting the fact-checking attention of Big Journalism (which yields a post that is, as commenters note, a bit factually challenged itself) and, more substantially, of Northwestern law professor Jim Lindgren, who was among those who raised the alarm about Arming America way back in the olden days of this long decade. Lindgren thinks there has been some minor truth stretching, but nothing like what Big Journalism has accused him of.
See what you think. And along the way, ask yourself this question: Are there any terms upon which someone like Bellesiles–someone who has thoroughly disgraced and discredited himself professionally–can recover his lost stature as a scholar and teacher? If so, what are they? If not, how would you propose that academia clarify this point for itself? Professors, after all, are not like doctors or lawyers–they can’t lose their licenses or be disbarred. Often, they can’t even be fired. But is that how it should be?
Your questions are better put than my own, which I put in the comments section of the article at The Chronicle: Why is The Chronicle contributing to the rehabilitation of an academic fraud? It appears that in addition to having made some persuasive and active enemies, Bellesiles has some number of powerful, more shadowy friends. Who are they? What are they trying to prove by rehabilitating him?
Are there any terms upon which someone like Bellesiles–someone who has thoroughly disgraced and discredited himself professionally–can recover his lost stature…?
Ask Michael Behe and Jay Bybee.
“Are there any terms upon which someone like Bellesiles–someone who has thoroughly disgraced and discredited himself professionally–can recover his lost stature as a scholar and teacher?”
Well, he can rebrand himself as a fiction writer, which is what he evidently is.
Even better, ask George Rekers, the infamous University of South Carolina psychologist who always seemed ready to demonize gay people in court as an expert witness. This would be the George Rekers who recently rented that rent boy.
At the same time that the University of Colorado was moving to investigate Ward Churchill, the University of South Carolina was rewarding its own fictionist with emeritus status. So maybe the best way for an academic hack to stay off the conservative hit list is to be a homophobic hack at a Southern University, and to make stuff up about gay people rather than the White Man.
As for Bellesisles’ recent Chronicle essay, it certainly doesn’t strike me as self-evidently fabricated. The wingnut response to it seems vindictive, hyperbolic, unfounded, sadistic, and certainly not very Christian. No surprises there.
Anyway, the answer to Erin’s question is obvious. Bellesisles can recover his lost stature–at least some of it–by doing honest work from here on out.
Isn’t “rewarding” someone “with emeritus status” just a nice way of saying ‘pushing him into early retirement to get him out of the classroom’? Hardly a ‘reward’ in the usual sense.
Maybe so. Rekers was only in his 50s when he retired. But still, when I compare the academic cashiering of Bellesisles and Churchill to the kid-glove treatment accorded by USC to Rekers, I sure know which I would prefer. Not that I’d want to be Rekers in any other sense, poor guy….
You make it sound like you wouldn’t mind being Bellesisles or Churchill, which some might find contemptible.
Jim Lindgren has been doing more fact-checking–and it’s not looking pretty.
“I have now read through every DoD casualty report from last fall for both Iraq and Afghanistan and news obituaries for most of them, and I have found none that was even remotely possible as the case that Bellesiles wrote about in the Chronicle. … Bellesiles’s story of Javier’s service and injury is so unusual that it should have been easy to verify. But it wasn’t.
This leads to concerns about the Chronicle of Higher Education. Serious questions have now been raised whether the Chronicle of Higher Education has published claims from Michael Bellesiles that can’t be substantiated. This is unfortunate, as it undermines the Chronicle’s credibility and reputation. Liz McMillen, the editor of the Chronicle Review, therefore ought to check Bellesiles’s story. Fortunately, that’s easy to do. She merely has to contact Bellesiles, find out the real name of Javier (either a first or last name would probably do), examine Bellesiles’s syllabus to establish the timeline, and interview his Marine teaching assistant. With Javier’s real name, it should be extremely easy to verify the date and cause of his injury, his place of treatment, and his date of death. She need not publish Javier’s real name any more than Bellesiles did when he published his story about Javier; indeed, her inquiry would be less intrusive than Bellesiles’s original publication of his story in the Chronicle. … If the Chronicle were to do its duty and report its findings honestly, then we would know whether the story is true. If Bellesiles substantially made up his story to advance his career, then I would expect him to refuse to give Javier’s name to even a friendly editor from the Chronicle. Fortunately, the Chronicle should at least be able to review his syllabus and interview his teaching assistant. At the end of the day, the Chronicle should publish its findings or report that it was unable to verify Bellesiles’s story as true.”
Quite the opposite, Dr. Weevil. I would very much mind being any of those people. I was offering up a hypothetical. I was saying that if I were ever to be guilty of academic misconduct, I would rather wind up being pushed into early retirement and named professor emeritus than be fired. I would rather be treated like Rekers than like Churchill or Bellesisles, just as, were I ever convicted of theft, I’d rather get probation than five years in prison. Who wouldn’t? But to say that is hardly to say one “wouldn’t mind” being a thief.
I was saying I’d rather be Rekers than Churchill or Bellesisles, but only when it comes to the former’s treatment by the academy, not (as I wrote) “in any other sense.” I certainly wouldn’t want to be busted as a customer at Rentboy.com. Who would?
Is that contemptible of me?
Your comment got me to thinking about whether being named emeritus is a “‘reward’ in the usual sense.” According to Wikipedia, professor emeritus “may be given to a full professor who retires in good standing…. [I]t is typically awarded for ‘long and distinguished service.’” Sounds about right. If not a reward in the material sense, emeritus status is certainly, with its implications of “good standing” and “distinguished service,” a reward in the social sense. In addition to the pat on the head, emeritus status usually also affords some perks with a modest dollar value, such as continued access to research databases and the campus recreation center.
Wikipedia also notes that “Standards for granting professor emeritus status vary considerably from one institution to another.” To which I can only say, apparently so.
FWIW, I liked the Galen quote about the taste of human flesh. Pork? Not surprising, I guess, though I’d have thought it would taste more like chicken.
There’so much rubbish in literature nowadays irrespective of genre, there seems to be no reason at all to give sack to this guy.
Eveningsun, thanks for mentioning the Rekers controversy, about which I hadn’t heard. But a cursory check on it seems to show that the Bellesisles-Churchill cases concerned, inter alia, scholarly fraud, not hypocrisy. Correct?
I’m no Rekers expert, but as I understand it his academic research is pretty deeply compromised by his religious views
Like you, I’m skeptical about the scientific basis of Rekers’s academic research, as I am in general about academic research (often rife with tendentious interpretation and socio-political advocacy) in quasi-scientific fields like psychiatry, psychology, sociology, cultural anthropology, and ethnic and gender studies. For example, it’s only been several decades since the American Psychiatric Association decided by convention vote to remove homosexuality from the category of “mental illnesses.”