Of course, France has legislated and ruled as if there were one official history, at least one that descends from the Enlightenment and the Revolution – one that depicts a unitary nation bringing civilisation to the world. The history of progress determined how French imperial rule unfurled throughout the world, especially when it came to injecting officials and entrepreneurs with arrogance.

France must have given something to the people who were colonized – the skeleton of state administration and enoough impetus to allow resistance to emergeand a national identity to form. However, no former French colony matches the success in the contemporary world of Britain's India, Netherlands' Indonesia, or Portugal's Brazil. No one reaching for world power, or at least a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. France's contributions oftentimes look generic. It created a Francophonic elite that related to the general population with difficulty; it outlawed slavery, but only on paper; and in most cases the socio-economic structures were too directed towards the Metropole to be serviceable. Moreover, some of its post-imperial endeavors have been troubling as well (for every intervention in Côte d’Ivoire, there is a Rwanda.) Algeria, if it could be called a success, cannot outweigh the political and social problems in other former colonies.

The attempt to make an official judgement on French imperialism can only inflame passions on both sides, and it is not clear that such a judgement would be helpful. There may be a positive balance, but demanding that it be accepted will in the end be divisive. The controversy, however, enlightens in a small way one of the fundamental problems of French history: the insistence that the nation is the civilizing, progressive force par excellence. Any multicultural policy would be greatly weakened by France, one and indivisible.

The Tennessee senator contended that the academy's lack of intellectual diversity is hampering efforts for sustainable public funding."When I go to talk to people about funding for higher education," he noted,"the single biggest pushback I get is from elected representatives who think that higher education is too one-sided."

Even those not concerned with the current state of staffing patterns in the academy might wonder whether the self-interest of the professoriate might be better served by making a token effort at greater pedagogical and intellectual diversity among the faculty.

It turns out that David was talking about my call for him or his"Professor X" to tell the readers at Front Page Rag that Professor William Bradford of the Indiana School of Law at Indianapolis has resigned and that misrepresentations of his military experience were at the bottom of that resignation.

As usual, discussion with David exploded into diffusing side-bursts of counter-accusation – in this case, about the credibility of an Indianapolis Star columnist, the identity of"Professor X," my incivility, etc. Like, David's calling me"snotty" and"scummy" teaches me to be civil.

I have to admit that I am curious about the identity of"Professor X." He (or she)initially identified himself (or herself) thusly:

I am a full professor of History (since 1994), with 25 years experience at the flagship campus of a major state university. I have served on numerous promotion sub-committees at my institution (cases both of promotion to associate professor with tenure, and of promotion to full professor), and I have personally chaired three such sub-committees. I have won awards from the LGBT organization on my campus for my public championing of gay rights, and from the Asian-American faculty on my campus for my public championing of the rights of minority faculty (especially in promotion cases). I voted for Kerry in 2004.

Subsequently, between 12 August and 28 September,"Professor X" published six articles at Front Page Rag in defense of William Bradford and critical of the review process at the Indiana School of Law. Then, the voice of Professor X fell silent. It fell silent just as Bradford's own case began to come apart, as Bradford was forced to admit to the use of sock puppets on the law school's private listserv and to misrepresentation of his military service. For all we know, then,"Professor X" might have been just another of Bradford's sock puppets and all the identifiers of him or her just made up.

I disagree with both of my colleagues at Cliopatria, Tim Burke (and scroll down) and KC Johnson, about what conclusions we draw from the Bradford case. KC seems unchastened by Bradford's subsequent resignation and the reasons for it. He does not back down from his earliercriticism of Bradford's colleagues and the process at Indianapolis. On the other hand, Tim suggests that we ought to be chastened by it – that we ought to acknowledge the possibility that Bradford's senior colleagues had some intuition of his duplicity and that the confidentiality of the process prevented them from a public defense of their actions.

I disagree with KC because I do think that we ought to be chastened by the Bradford case. We didn't know all the conditions that led to this result and should be cautious about uninformed pronouncements. On the other hand, I disagree with Tim because there isn't the slightest bit of evidence, even now, that Bradford's colleagues had any more intuition of those conditions than any of us did. Moreover, if Bradford's colleagues were bound by confidentiality, they certainly didn't abide by it. His most prominent critics were quoted at great length in the articles at Front Page Rag. Although I'm sure that there are academic people as deeply ethical as Tim, who observe claims of confidentiality, I am in general skeptical of such claims. I suspect that they are often cited only when it is advantageous to the person citing them. After six months of loud accusations, Bradford, for instance, is now citing claims of confidentiality.

Which brings me back to the point of my e-mail exchange with David Horowitz. Front Page Rag devoted at least seven articles to Bradford's case in August and September. Its readers still have not been told that Bradford has resigned. Horowitz, himself, denies that the resignation had anything to do with Bradford's misrepresentation of his military service. If"Professor X" is a historian, he or she should demand that Front Page Rag's readers be told the truth. If he or she doesn't set the record straight, it's another embarrassment to historians.

At The Elfin Ethicist, Jonathan Wilson finds both the expected disturbing and some surprising things in Mrs. M[arinda] B[ranson] Moore, The Geographical Reader for the Dixie Children (Raleigh, NC: Branson, Farrar & Co., Biblical Recorder Print, 1863).

In case you missed it, Scott Jaschik,"The Culture Wars of 2005," Inside Higher Ed, 8 December, is a very thoughtful review of the year's issues.

Finally, Joseph C. Miller is an expert in African history and the slave trade, holds an endowed chair at the University of Virginia, and is a former president of the American Historical Association. Like many academics, he was grading student papers last Saturday. Miller was sitting at his home computer in rural Albemarle County, Virginia, when there was a crash and he was covered with shards of glass. Initially, Miller thought that a window had shattered as the family's modern house settled, but he was shocked by the sight of the window's perfectly round hole, surrounded by radial fractures. It was a bullet. On impact, the bullet split in two, with one half of it landing on either side of him. Albemarle County officials are continuing to investigate what appears to have been a hunting accident. Thanks to Margaret Soltan at University Diaries for the tip.

Before I went public in my tenure case, I was told frankly that every possible negative thing about my background would come out, and therefore I needed to make sure I had no skeletons in my closet. I didn't, and so had no problems with going public. Bradford, clearly, did--and therefore got what he deserved. Since he lied about a serious matter on his resume, he had to resign.

The broader issue about this controversy, however, remains unchanged: according to the testimony of a member of the personnel committee, Bradford's lying about his background was not known when the reappointment vote occurred, and therefore wasn't an item considered by the committee. The Law School has never offered an explanation as to why five faculty members voted to fire someone whose scholarship and teaching were considered first-rate but who had disagreed on highly charged political and social issues with the department's two most prominent left-leaning members, who then turned around and voted to dismiss him. Unfortunately, because of Bradford's own misconduct, his five critics will not be forced to explain their bevahior. If I were on the law school job market, I'd steer clear of IU-Indianapolis.

Tim Burke,"Unbelief and Imagination," Easily Distracted, 8 December, on Narnia as a Christian narrative or a religio/mythical potpourris.

Jamie Wilson,"Nigerian Church Puts Texans' Love for their Neighbors to the Test," The Guardian, 5 December, asks whether Klan Kountry kan accept modernity. Wilson may be asking the wrong question. Can the Nigerians convert Texas to Christianity? That's a much bigger challenge, I think. Thanks to Ben Brumfield at Horizon for the tip.

Laurie Goldstein,"When Christmas Falls on Sunday, Megachurches Take the Day Off," New York Times, 9 December, puts the lie to the whole"Merry Christmas"/"Happy Holidays" fru-fru. The mega-churches have traded Christmas in for a Holiday. Willow Creek Community Church in Illinois will send home a DVD with a"heartwarming contemporary Christmas tale" for its congregants to play on Christmas morning. Why not routinize the whole thing? You could send out bottled water, fruit juice, and airline snack kits as do-it-yourself sacraments.

Mark Grimsley has returned to his"Counterfactuals and Contingencies" theme at Blog Them Out of the Stone Age.
Caleb McDaniel is at work on his presentation at the American Historical Association convention and invites your comments.
I'm not much interested in his" critical whiteness studies," but there are some interesting issues in Seth Sandronsky,"An Interview with David Roediger," Political Affairs.net, 7 December.

Cliopatria lost interest in most of the other awards after The Cliopatria Awards were established. But she noticed that some of her friends are competing in Wizbang's The Weblog Awards. Among the history bloggers, Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo is competing for Best Blog, Orac's Respectful Insolence for Best New Blog, Pepys' Diary for Best UK Blog, Frog in a Well for Best Asian Blog, Belmont Club for Best of the Top 250 Blogs, and Political Theory Daily Review and ZenPundit for Best of the Top 1751-2500 Blogs. These are not endorsements, you understand, because Cliopatria also has friends among the non-historians. But, if you have time for such things, you are free to cast your vote anew every 24 hours until 15 December. Thanks to Ahistoricality for the tip.

Our colleague, Alan Allport, staffs the AHA's Local Arrangements Committee for the Philadelphia convention, assuring me that Cliopatricians move in the highest ranks of the profession. His article,"Philadelphia for the Poor and Thirsty," Perspectives, 43 (December 2005), 42, suggests that the ranks may not be too exalted, he understands our condition very well, and he knows what the priorities are. We'll expect to adjourn from the session on Saturday to the Cliopatricians' Third Annual Banquet. [ more ... ]

I feel obliged to say something about the odd case of Professor William Bradford at the Indiana University School of Law, Indianapolis. Several of us here at Cliopatria, myself included, were inclined to take up his cause when it first became known in June. In many ways, he seemed like a strong candidate for tenure. He had excellent teaching evaluations and more publications than a number of his senior colleagues. After the still-unresolved Ward Churchill fiasco at the University of Colorado, the cause of a real native American with degrees from very strong institutions seemed like a worthy one, and his argument -- that he was being discriminated against because he is a conservative -- seemed plausible.

And all of those things may yet be true. But his story began to come apart when he, like John Lott [ed.: Why is he still at the American Enterprise Institute?], was forced to admit the use of sock puppets in internet exchanges. He has resigned from the Law School faculty after it became known that his claims for his military service were false. He saw no more active duty than George Bush did. He did not earn a Silver Star; and he did not retire as a Major. His story begins to sound like an odd blend of John Lott's and Mt. Holyoke's Joe Ellis. Once questions were raised, it was all too easy to show that both Joe Ellis and William Bradford doing their academic thing when they claimed to have been on the battlefield. That a major part of his self-representation was false helps, I think, to explain some of the frenzy about Bradford's campaign for tenure. Behind it lay the fear of exposure.

Some of the claims that Bradford made for himself were false, but some of his charges may yet be true. There is no evidence that those who opposed his being tenured had any intuition that his claims about military service were false. Still, I'm a little unnerved by how easily I might have been used as a spokesman for his cause. Smart conservative legal scholars, like Eugene Volokh, were not. But I challenge "Professor X" of David Horowitz's Front Page Rag, who took up Bradford's cause with such zeal, to give us a final article about the discrimination against this" conservative" legal scholar – one that acknowledges that his hero was, in part, a fraud. Given the recent revelations, however,"Professor X" may have been William Bradford. Yet another lie brought to you by David Horowitz.