> As for Carrol's comments, it's perfectly possible to hold two
> thoughts in your head at once: that it sucks that WC was the subject of
> this attack _and_ that WC is not a scholar and that, on my view, by not
> dealing in a low-profile way with this, he purposefully and repeatedly
> lied to his supporters, making them belief he'd never done anything
> wrong. He knew he'd done something wrong, and yet he continued to call
> attention to himself. Bellesidles' was under political attack as well,
> but he did not bleat around the country about how wronged he was.
> Churchill lied to _us_.
I agree that there is plenty of stuff to be indignant about in this matter. I have to say I share the disappointment of Doug, Justin, Kel et al. here: WC's conduct as a scholar is indefensible, and he is reinforcing heinous right-wing stereotypes about dogmatic, mendacious, unscrupulous leftist college professors. At the same time, this investigation was not instigated by peers to maintain high standards of scholarship; it was obviously and blantantly motivated by WC's politics.
For my money, the more dangerous problem here--the thing that really deserves our indignation and political response--is the precedent of calling for investigations of a scholar's work based on his political beliefs. Practically speaking, the academe can deal with the problem of scholarly misconduct; we have formal and informal peer review processes that marginalize and stigmatize "deviant" scholars. As Carrol argues, the most serious issue here is not WC's dubious scholarship; it is the fact that his work was singled out for investigation because of political pressure from outside of the academic community. This action fundamentally undermines the guiding principles of academic inquiry (e.g., freedom to express and analyze unpopular viewpoints), and unless we nip these kinds of politically motivated investigations in the bud, left-wing scholars (actually, any academic scholars who advocate unpopular ideas) are truly fucked.
Miles