Posted on 08/05/2010 1:54:30 PM PDT by neverdem
In his 2000 book Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture, then-Emory University historian Michael Bellesiles asserted that guns were actually rare in early America, and that the idea of widespread gun ownership before the Civil War was an "invented tradition." This provocative thesis charmed the academic world and netted Bellesiles the prestigious Bancroft Prize from Columbia University. But as it turned out, Bellesiles was the one doing the inventing. As Bentley College historian Joyce Lee Malcolm wrote in her definitive account of the Bellesiles affair for Reason:
The evidence he had presented for his groundbreaking theory was investigated first by experts from a range of disciplines and political viewpoints; then by a special symposium in a learned journal; and finally, as a result of the disturbing findings, by the professor's university and an outside panel of scholars that it appointed. The results are now in: Bellesiles' arguments are based on wholesale misuse of evidence and, in some cases, no evidence at all. The "invented tradition" is fact, the professor's version a folk tale.
The results were swift and severe: Bellesiles' publisher dropped the book and Columbia rescinded the prize, the first time that it had ever retracted a prize in the Bancroft's 50-year history. Bellesiles also lost his tenured job at Emory and basically disappeared from public life. But now he's back with a new book (from a new publisher) called 1877: America's Year of Living Violently. Does this discredited and disgraced author deserve a second chance?
The Chronicle of Higher Education seems to think so. Bellesiles is the subject of a new and mostly sympathetic portrait by Chronicle writer Tom Barlett, who concludes his piece like this:
In a sense, Michael Bellesiles will never get a second chance. The odds of his once more securing a tenure-track position are vanishingly small. He will never completely outrun the controversy over Arming America. He is aware of that, and his goals are more modest: "I would like to think that the scholarship I am producing will demonstrate that I am a competent, capable historian and I always have been."
He doesn't want to talk about Arming America. He doesn't want to talk about guns. He doesn't want to talk about Emory. Instead the historian wants to look forward. "Let's talk about the new book," he says. "And the book after that. And the book after that."
Of course Bellesiles doesn't want to talk about the fraudulent book that cost him his job and his reputation, but why should we pretend like it doesn't exist? Bellesiles' so-called scholarship has already demonstrated that he is an incompetent, incapable historian. What more is there to say?
Hilarious!
Is that right? What nerve.
Lefties, libs and demonrats CANNOT be shamed...if you need any proof of this, read any quote in the last month or so from Charlie Rangel.
wow, I knew it was bad, but WOW....
The thing about scholarship, especially of any historical subject, is that there is a lot of “trust” involved b/c no one else is able or willing to monitor every single footnote and citation, even if the notes themselves point accurately to the sources of information (that alone can be a huge issue with someone like Bellesiles).
The most detailed footnotes are still worthless and deceptive if the text being written does not accurately and fairly represent the materials pointed to by the footnotes.
SO, no, one can never trust again a guy who proved so wildly contemptuous of elementary norms of historical scholarship. Short of doing every bit of research that he does to cross-check every line of his work, it can never be trusted at all......... and if others have to monitor his future writing/research in such ways then it cannot be trusted at all......
He's an adjuct lecturer at a third rate school no one's ever heard of. That's quite a demotion from full professor at Emory. It's the academic equivalent of an executive vice president at a Fortune 500 company getting demoted to graveyard shift manager at a Roy Rodgers.
Adjunct lecturers can be fired at any time. When money gets tight, they're the first ones let go. They're not on salary, but rather get paid per credit hour, which means they can't count on a steady income. They generally teach only the classes that the professors don't want, which means they end up with the dumbest students. They are also frequently called up to fill teaching gaps as they come up, such as when a professor goes on sabbatical, so they often have to prep for new classes they've never taught before. Unlike professors, they don't get teaching assistants, and they get the lowest priority from the clerical staff.
If that weren't enough, their pay sucks. I doubt an adjunct lecturer in history at a school like Central Conn. State makes much more than 30K a year.
In some sense, it is the exploitation of the lecturers that allows universities to make the jobs of tenure-track professors so cushy. Since I'm tenure track, I love it, but I wouldn't do a lecturer's job even if you paid me $500K a year.
If this guy is forced to work as an adjunct lecturer for the rest of his life, justice will have been done.
His publisher calls him a “celebrated historian.”
Yeah, it's called PR. Never believe the hype publishers put out about their authors.
NO!!
Not in his current role - maybe as a gay porn star or as worker in MacDonalds Then he deserves a 2nd chance
He’s a man of low calibre.
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