On Sunday, the American Historical Association released a statement deploring the effort to intimidate AHA president-elect William Cronon. A few members have asked for additional information and context for the statement, so we offer the following:

William Cronon
The controversy was initiated by a blog post on Dr. Cronon’s personal web site: “Who’s Really Behind Recent Republican Legislation in Wisconsin and Elsewhere?” In subsequent items on his blog, Cronon details how the Wisconsin Republican Party issued an Open Records Law request for his University of Wisconsin—Madison emails. He has also posted a response from the Republican Party. In connection with the original blog post, Cronon also published a related New York Times op-ed “Wisconsin’s Radical Break.”

Coverage
We highlight a few articles below, but you can find a more extensive list of media coverage on Cronon’s blog.

Association

• The American Association of University Professors supports William Cronon in his assertion that the request for his emails is “obvious assault on academic freedom” and they have sent a letter (PDF) to the University of Wisconsin chancellor Carolyn (Biddy) Martin.

News

• Wisconsin Professor’s E-Mails Are Target of G.O.P. Records Request
  By A. G. Sulzberger at New York Times
• Wisconsin GOP Seeks E-Mails of a Madison Professor Who Criticized the Governor
  By Peter Schmidt at The Chronicle
• Wisconsin Gets Weirder
  By Doug Lederman at Inside Higher Ed

Editorial

• The New York Times
  • A Shabby Crusade in Wisconsin
    Editorial
  • American Thought Police
    By Paul Krugman
• Wisconsin: The Cronon Affair
  By Anthony Grafton at The New Yorker
• William Cronon vs. Wisconsin Republican
  By Christopher Shea at The Wall Street Journal
• ‘Have You No Sense of Decency?’ The Wm. Cronon Story
  By James Fallows at The Atlantic
• There’s No Such Thing as a Bad FOIA Request
  By Jack Shafer at Slate
• Wisconsin’s most dangerous professor
  By Andrew Leonard at Salon

This post first appeared on AHA Today.