Michael A. Bellesiles: Living Down Scholarly Scandal

New York Times:

His book "1877: America's Year of Living Violently," which will be published next week, is an attempted comeback for Mr. Bellesiles, who has languished in a kind of academic no-man's land for the past decade after a scandal surrounding his previous book cut short what looked to be a promising career. "I'd like to think that anyone reading it would give it a fair chance," he said of his latest work.

Read the whole story: New York Times

Comments

[OdinsEye]

08:49 PM on 08/05/2010

Bellesiles better realize that ANYTHING he writes is going to be subject to intense scrutiny after his falsifications in his previous book were exposed.

[Buk85]

09:09 AM on 08/05/2010

” Mr. Bellesiles’s current publisher, the nonprofit New Press, described him as returning to writing after becoming “the target of an infamous ‘swiftboating’ campaign by the National Rifle Association.”

Um, no. His very own colleagues confirmed the NRA's accusations, and went further, showing that Dr. Bellesiles engaged in deliberately dishonest "scholarship" to further an ideological agenda. This guy should not get a job teaching at a community college, let alone a research institute.

[grossmont328]

11:48 AM on 08/05/2010

agreed--and when this happened, most history departments would (and still do) rather prove the NRA wrong

[grossmont328]

03:19 PM on 08/04/2010

I truly hope Bellesiles learned his lesson after the "arming america" debacle

[Buk85]

09:10 AM on 08/05/2010

It sounds like he considers himself a victim.

[OdinsEye]

08:47 PM on 08/05/2010

That he does. He refuses to come to grips with the fact that his fall from grace was due to his own mistakes.