You wake up exhausted from studying all night at College Library and decide to check your emails before you saunter off to your morning class. After scrolling through the usual mail; Hoofers, Biddy Martin, Extenze discount, you come across an email from the Republican Party. They want to use the Open Records Law to search through your emails. You’re suddenly more awake, not needing that triple shot of Starbucks espresso.
This must have been the same surprise that met University of Wisconsin professor William Cronon when he received notice from UW attorneys that the Republican Party wanted to investigate his emails using the open records law.
This inquiry into Cronon’s emails came quickly on the heels of an op-ed he wrote for The New York Times where he expressed his ideas on Gov. Scott Walker policies and investigated the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a group with deep ties to the Republican agenda.
Something he found in his investigation must have pushed the right button in the Walker political censor machine, because the administration is now aiming to take this professor and make an example of him.
As students of UW, we should be appalled that the conservative clique is so eager to attack the university and its long held tradition of protecting academic freedom. We shouldn’t so easily allow them to throw that in the trash along with other now-defunct Wisconsin traditions of fair and open government.
It’s not that I oppose the open records law – the party has the right to look at his emails, and Cronon would agree. “Under Wisconsin’s open records law, anyone has the right to request access to the state’s public records, and can do so without either identifying themselves or stating the reasons for their interest in those records,” he said.
However, it is the manner and reasoning behind the inquiry that has me suspicious of the motive. While you might have accused Cronon’s articles of violating university policy by creating bias for nomination or influence of votes in an election, that simply isn’t the case. If you read the articles he wrote, you will see that they are moderate and factual.
Cronon admits his non-partisanship, “My professional interest as a historian has always been to research and understand the full spectrum of American political opinion. I often spend as much time defending Republican and conservative points of view to my liberal friends as vice versa. (For what it’s worth, I have never belonged to either party),” he stated on his blog post.
It’s no surprise the Republican Party is so offended by historical facts. At every turn they try to cut funding to public education that creates minds that can expose the truth within history instead of bury it beneath rhetoric. But why single this professor out? We know they assume the whole university to be full of undeserving liberal public employees out to destroy the state with their benefits.
It’s simple. The reasoning is as follows: if a moderate, even part-time defender of conservative policies is able to find questionable dealings in facts and history, people might begin to think the liberals have legitimate cause against them.
With the real threat of recall effort knocking at the Capitol door, the Republican Party is looking for tools to ensure the benefit of its position.
The only tool they seem to know how to use is the blunt force of slander and demonization of public employees and their freedoms. The student body should be disgusted that they attack the pillar of academic expression at this university that has defined us for so long, let alone the fact that they claim to be the party of small government and liberty and all they have been doing since they arrived in office is trample over those ideas like a hypocritical stampede of pachyderms.
Whether or not Cronon actually violated university policy is up to someone who better understands the law than myself to interpret. However, I will stand in defense of the professor because the inquisition by the Republican Party is the same old blackballing bully tactics that they have always used to sway political favor.
Reading through the professor’s blog more eloquently iterates the facts of the situation, as someone who actually finished college is able to do.
This whole tactic by the Walker administration is a little too late. The administration might not believe in transparent government, but the public can see right through it. Another mud raking ploy is only adding to the bonfire that is the recall effort – it is Walker who is about to get burned.
Cruz Ramirez ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in English