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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...

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There is a minor kerfuffle in the right wing blogs about Michael Bellesiles being caught publishing fiction as truth. The right wing has it in for Bellesiles, since he once faked data on gun ownership in early America, trying to prove no one owned guns then (and ergo the second amendment was meant to refer to the National Guard, not to private ownership of guns). So there are a lot of people out there to “get” him when he writes. What is interesting is that, when he wrote a very nice essay published in the Chronicles of Higher Education, that...

Eugene quotes from an editor at the New Press who is peddling the ridiculous notion that Bellesiles was a victim of an NRA conspiracy instead of someone who destroyed his own career by writing a book (Arming America) that did not hold up when some of us checked his evidence, including work based on hundreds of non-existent documents. The idea that the NRA had anything substantial to do with the Bellesiles case is utter nonsense. I have tried to think what I had ever heard about NRA involvement in the Bellesiles case. 1. Before the book came out, Charlton Heston...

STARKVILLE, Miss. - The University of Georgia Press has revoked an award given to a Mississippi State University professor after determining a winning short story "borrowed heavily" from uncredited material taken from an Alabama publication. University of Georgia Press spokesman John McLeod said the company revoked English professor Brad Vice's award, recalled its books with the winning story and canceled the book's publication. McLeod said in a statement that the publishing company learned Oct. 13 that a story in Vice's short story collection, "The Bear Bryant Funeral Train," contained uncredited material from the fourth chapter of Carl Carmer's story "Stars...

Michael Bellesiles Resigns from Emory Faculty October 25, 2002 Robert A. Paul, Interim Dean of Emory College I have accepted the resignation of Michael Bellesiles from his position as Professor of History at Emory University, effective December 31, 2002. Although we would not normally release any of the materials connected with a case involving the investigation of faculty misconduct in research, in light of the intense scholarly interest in the matter I have decided, with the assent of Professor Bellesiles as well as of the members of the Investigative Committee, to make public the report of the Investigative Committee appointed...

Last Wednesday, April 6th, Instapundit posted an item about the Bellesiles affair, James Lindgren, the Chronicle of Higher Education's coverage of the affair, and Wonkette (I am not making that up), with an update from a former CHE employee disputing the story. Reynolds also received a link from the CHE where you could see all their coverage and judge for yourself. That's just the kind of geeky think I like to do, and besides, it put off finishing the yearly Ides of April ceremony of getting anally raped with a red hot poker. I haven't finished all the CHE articles...

I’m beginning to see Ward Churchill as the carny in the dunking booth, who hurls insults at the crowd, and then howls with outrage when he gets soaked. Yes, the unenlightened were out to get you. Yes, the system was rigged against you by the power structure. No argument there. But should anyone care? For the second time in the new millennium, a university professor has come under heavy fire from the political right, and is in danger of losing his job as a consequence. The most prominent dispute in recent years concerned the scholarship of Michael Bellesiles, a history...

<p>History has its fair share of persecuted geniuses, men who were ahead of their time and made to pay for it. There's the hemlocked Socrates, the house-arrested Galileo, the exiled Rousseau. And to this list of giants it seems that we are now expected to add the name of Michael Bellesiles.</p>

<p>An antigun "scholar" as today's Galileo? Oh please, just shoot me.</p> <p>History has its fair share of persecuted geniuses, men who were ahead of their time and made to pay for it. There's the hemlocked Socrates, the house-arrested Galileo, the exiled Rousseau. And to this list of giants it seems that we are now expected to add the name of Michael Bellesiles.</p>

Soft Skull Press Issues New Edition of Arming America 1/12/2004 Press Release Soft Skull Press 71 Bond Street Brooklyn, NY 11217 Contact: Richard Nash Phone: (snip) Michael A. Bellesiles' Arming America remains a stunning and seminal book that challenges everything we've previously been taught about America's history with guns. Brooklyn, NY - Painstakingly examining the historical record, Bellesiles shatters the myth of America's gun-toting revolutionary citizens. Beginning with the European tradition from which the American colonists emerged, Bellesiles indicates that ordinary people had virtually no access to or training in the use of firearms Bellesiles shows that there was a...

<p>Military techno-hype, reflecting a long-standing Anglo-American faith in technological quick fixes, has frequently fed expectations of a "clean" victory. But we have found that the latest technology does not always shorten wars.</p> <p>As early as 1609, John Smith, a leader of colonial Virginia, told his troops that if they just discharged their muskets at the Indians, "the very smoake will bee sufficient to affright them." Unfortunately, Smith was wrong. Virginia's Indians developed tactics to circumvent the colonists' technological advantages. Smith returned to England, proclaiming his mission accomplished, but the Virginia Indian wars lasted for decades.</p>

<p>Military techno-hype, reflecting a long-standing Anglo-American faith in technological quick fixes, has frequently fed expectations of a "clean" victory. But we have found that the latest technology does not always shorten wars.</p> <p>As early as 1609, John Smith, a leader of colonial Virginia, told his troops that if they just discharged their muskets at the Indians, "the very smoake will bee sufficient to affright them." Unfortunately, Smith was wrong. Virginia's Indians developed tactics to circumvent the colonists' technological advantages. Smith returned to England, proclaiming his mission accomplished, but the Virginia Indian wars lasted for decades.</p>

What do you do when you are about to lose a tenured job, your employer is investigating your fraudulent research and you've alienated a small cadre of supporters in an academic scandal over the explosive topic of guns? Readers might remember Emory investigated former history professor Michael Bellesiles (pronounced bell-EEL) for his 2000 book Arming America, which argued that guns were rarer in early America than previously imagined and that frontier America wasn't violent. Only the book was wrong, and when reputable academics criticized it, Bellesiles couldn't verify many of the records he'd cited. Emory's investigators, charged with finding research...

There were several of the hardcover books "Arming America, The Origins of a National Gun Culture" By MICHAEL A. BELLESILES at a small local bookstore (not a chain store). They were marked down from $30 to $7.50. I was not tempted. I wonder if the publisher is taking it in the shorts on this or if the bookstore is. No, it wasn't in the "fiction" part of the store. It was on the markdown table.

2. A-76 UPDATE -- CENTER FOR MILITARY HISTORY TARGETED -- IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED! Some weeks ago, we reported on the A-76 effort to contract out archeological research within the National Park Service ("NPS and Interior Agency Professionals Subjected to A-76 Outsourcing Assessments;" NCH WASHINGTON UPDATE, Vol. 9 #4; 30 January 2003). Now we have information on a history office being targeted for outsourcing -- the Department of the Army's Center for Military History (CMH). The Department of Army has 154,910 positions held by civilian employees and some 58,727 held by soldiers who hold what are considered "non-core" positions. Because these...

How an award-winning scholar twisted the truth about America’s gun culture -- and almost got away with it. "Real historical writers probe factual uncertainties, but they do not invent convenient facts and they do not ignore inconvenient facts. People are entitled to their own opinions, but not to their own facts." -- William Kelleher Storey, Writing History When the Playboy interview with Michael Bellesiles appeared in January 2001, the Emory University history professor was riding high. He was basking in the heady glow of rave reviews and a media blitz hailing his book, Arming America: The Origins of a National...

What is it about statistics and guns? Last year, Michael Bellesiles, a historian at Emory College, came under criticism for his Bancroft Prize-winning book, Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture, which argued that gun ownership was far less common during the 18th and 19th century than is generally supposed. His analysis, which was obviously pleasing to proponents of gun control, was drawn from probate records. But Bellesiles was unable to produce all of his data, owing, he said, to a flood in his office. After a committee of three scholars examined Bellesiles' research, they concluded that "his...

Throughout my college career I was lucky to have studied under some well-known, very knowledgeable history professors. These were men of integrity and vision, who taught their classes with passion and honesty. These learned scholars provided me with the tools I needed to seek the truth of the past and the willingness and interest to explore the lessons of my forefathers. I graduated Johns Hopkins in the spring of 1993. During my four-year stay at Hopkins there were a few attempts to hijack history and political science by “progressives” who wanted to force students to specifically view the world through...

From the Joyce Foundation newsletter, Work In Progress Issue date: January 2003 Right Balance "Gun rights groups have made it seem that the Second Amendment belongs to them. But it belongs to all Americans — we all need to understand what it means." Getting a clearheaded understanding of the Second Amendment is a tall order these days. But scholars at The Ohio State University — with Joyce funding and the backing of an all-American hero — are taking up the challenge. The John Glenn Institute at OSU is creating a research center to help courts, scholars, journalists, and the public...