Eric Alterman: Conservative class warfare against free speech

  William Cronon, the Frederick Jackson Turner Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is unarguably a brilliant historian. His books on environmental history, including Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (1983) and Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (1991), are recognized by his colleagues as state of the art. He’s president-elect of the American Historical Association and he’s got a MacArthur “genius grant.” But he can be a little naïve when it comes to contemporary American politics.

  Last week, using the admirably sweeping Wisconsin Open Records Law, the Republican Party of Wisconsin filed an open records request demanding access to any emails Cronon sent or received since January 1 containing the terms “Republican,” “collective bargaining,” “rally,” “union,” or the names of eight Wisconsin Republican legislators.