[Cicero]

Nice article. Frankly, I don't believe for a minute that Belisles was awarded the Bancroft Prize because the prize review committee didn't think to question his citations, or that the Newberry Library Committee awarded him a second NEH grant because they didn't think to question him either.

At the time the two committee reviews were taking place, Bellisles's scholarly integrity was ALREADY being publicly and vociferously questioned. The readers for the journals and the book publisher didn't have that advantage, but they should have known, too, and probably they did know. They just didn't want to know, as the saying goes.

The truth is, dedicated liberals are perfectly willing to lie or to cover up lies in what they consider to be a good political cause. We have seen it repeatedly in the news media. I am aware of similar shoddy and lying scholarship in my own scholarly field. Many colleagues of the writers are perfectly aware that these books are plain lies, but they prefer to sweep that inconvenient fact under the rug because the scholar in question has the right (i.e. left) political views.

So, maybe it's only polite to give these people the benefit of the doubt when they say, "Oh, we didn't have time to verify quotations. We naturally trusted the author to tell the truth." But in point of fact they are probably lying too. People like Eric Foner, responsible for steering the Bancroft Prize to Bellisles, don't hesitate for a second to lie in a good cause. They think lying is a virtue.

[mrustow]

Eric Foner, from the First Family of red American historians!

[RKV]

Bellesiles book will continue to be cited and will continue to be noted as winning the Bancroft prize.

[beckett]

People like Eric Foner, responsible for steering the Bancroft Prize to Bellisles, don't hesitate for a second to lie in a good cause.

Foner has exceptionally dirty hands in this episode, I agree. His fingerprints are all over the promotion of this patently false piece of "scholarship."