A few things have caught my eye of late

First of these things:

The 'fight' over William Cronon's emails related to Wisconsin's labor bill.

If you haven't kept up-to-date on this issue, interesting articles and opinion blogs abound! Huffingtonpost.com's take on it can be found here: Huffington post on Cronon At the bottom of that story is another article asking for emails related to Rachel Maddow, a liberal journalist, and labor.

I haven't formed a complete opinion on the matter. However, what I wonder is do these requests for private or semi-private communications intimidate scholars and other intellectuals? Would I want Random Political Group trawling through my email conversations? No of course not. Would they learn anything new about me that they could then use to ... suppress my writing/research? Again, No. In fact, I'd be even more likely to write/publish/blog/research a topic given the extra attention. Because to me, that suggests that they have something they are worried a researcher will discover and shed light upon. Somewhere a juicy bone is waiting to be found. (Insert evil laugh and rubbing of hands here.) According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Cronon stated that the request for his emails "could have a chilling effect on the university," "giving faculty members reason to fear that any e-mail they send will be made public as a result of politically driven efforts by their critics to fish around for information that will discredit them." (Lifted from Huffingtonpost article.)

Would it? Would the possibility that a hostile political group could sift through your emails and research cause you, as a scholar, to censor yourself?

Second of these things:

Winners of the Bancroft Prize were announced. One day I hope to be at least considered for a nomination for this prize. I dream big!

I am extremely pleased that Christopher Tomlins won for his work Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580–1865. His work was featured in my graduate education and he made his way into my comprehensive exams as well. Because I am a childhood historian, I was also very interested in Sara Dubow's Ourselves Unborn: A History of the Fetus in Modern America. Fetus...childhood...it's related. The third book to win was Eric Foner's The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery.