Reply to Josh Greenland (#6706)
by Peter Jackson on January 7, 2003 at 6:49 PM

The fact that my department contains five liberals who hold different views about gun regulation makes us a possible home for a future Bellesiles? All five of us were hired by committees who did not think our personal politics were relevant to our qualifications. All five wrote dissertations that could have been written by liberals or conservatives. All five are committed to a professional ethic that asserts academic fraud of any kind (plagiarism; falsification of evidence) is unacceptable. When you assert, Mr. Greenland, that our politics make us a potential source of the next Bellesiles, you are making an assumption that is as unjust as that made by those who dismissed Cramer's work because we was a conservative and opponent of gun control. Perhaps political diversity in history departments would be beneficial, provided it could be achieved without imposing hiring policies that are discriminatory and/or violate people's rights to free expression and free association. But the real issue here is the degree of commitment to honesty and integrity. Neither liberals nor conservatives hold a monopoly in this area.