I remain skeptical about Jon Wiener and his podcast. I remember his book Historians in Trouble, in which he took some very successful -- and some other -- historians to task for plagiarism, falsehood, and other academic vices. Sometimes he was accurate, sometime merely parroting what various extremists on the Left and in The Nation were expressing in defense of such worthies as the Rosenbergs and Alger Hiss. However, in showing that even Doris Kearns Goodwin could have flaws, he provides some valuable service, including similar sins by another well-known historian and female, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. While he taught at UC Irvine I taught at UC Riverside, so I was familiar with his general approach to things. He was stimulated negatively by the right-wing ethos in Orange County, while I had faced fewer ideological headwinds at the time. I eventually was victimized by headwinds from the Left. I think we are probably both happy that Orange County has left the extreme Right for the moderate Center and even moderate Left in the last election for Congress.
I remain skeptical about Jon Wiener and his podcast. I remember his book Historians in Trouble, in which he took some very successful -- and some other -- historians to task for plagiarism, falsehood, and other academic vices. Sometimes he was accurate, sometime merely parroting what various extremists on the Left and in The Nation were expressing in defense of such worthies as the Rosenbergs and Alger Hiss. However, in showing that even Doris Kearns Goodwin could have flaws, he provides some valuable service, including similar sins by another well-known historian and female, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. While he taught at UC Irvine I taught at UC Riverside, so I was familiar with his general approach to things. He was stimulated negatively by the right-wing ethos in Orange County, while I had faced fewer ideological headwinds at the time. I eventually was victimized by headwinds from the Left. I think we are probably both happy that Orange County has left the extreme Right for the moderate Center and even moderate Left in the last election for Congress.