An Open Letter to the OAH's Vicki Ruiz and Lee Formwalt

Dear Drs. Ruiz and Formwalt,

I've been a member of the Organization of American Historians for about 35 years. For all those years, it has been a center of my professional identity and pride. Its Journal of American History has kept me apprized of the latest research in my field and its conventions have been opportunities for re-union with professional colleagues whom I've cherished for many years. Unlike some other historians, I'm not deeply estranged by the OAH's"political correctness" nor have its occasional follies, such as shifting conventions from one undesireable location to another at the last minute, undone my loyalty. In the last three or four years, however, I have begun to wonder if it has become the place where Offences Are Honored.

I'll cite some instances of what I mean for you. Then, you tell me whether I am" cherry-picking" evidence that has no coherent center.

Case #1: Together with its antecedent, The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, the Journal of American History has long been the venerable authority in American history, with a publication record dating back to 1914. In 1996, the Journal of American History published Michael Bellesiles's article,"The Origins of Gun Culture in the United States, 1760-1865." It was awarded our Binkley-Stephenson Prize for the best article of the year in the Journal. There's no need to rehearse the painful saga of what happened thereafter. Before it was over, however, his book, Arming America, won and lost the Bancroft Prize, his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, withdrew it from publication, and Bellesiles lost his tenured position at Emory University. No reputable scholar any longer believes that his 1996 article will bear close scrutiny, but the OAH and its Journal of American History are the only institutions that still honor Bellesiles's research trajectory. There's been no official repudiation of the article, no official acknowledgment of its deep flaws, and no withdrawal of the Binkley-Stephenson Prize. Why is that?

Cases #2: The Organization of American Historians' Distinguished Lectureship Program began in 1981. Over the years, it has offered local institutions across the country the opportunity to present lectures by distinguished historians on topics of their special expertise. The lecturers, in turn, donate the modest honorarium of at least $1,000 to the OAH. Beyond that, the local institutions are responsible only for transportation and housing expenses. Nearly 300 of my professional colleagues now participate in that program. It is considered an honor to do so. I was looking over the list of the OAH's Distinguished Lecturers the other day and was delighted to see the names of many truly distinguished historians. In truth, however, it's a fairly mixed lot: Paul Buhle? Christine Heyrman? Ann Lane? What violations of standards of historical practice and professional ethics must one commit in order to be called"distinguished" by OAH authorities these days?

Three years ago, Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes accused Paul Buhle of politically motived dishonesty and obfuscation of the facts in The New Criterion. They repeated the charges in their important book, In Denial: Historians, Communism & Espionage. When I made note of the accusations in an article for the OAH Newsletter, Buhle promised to answer the charges"in some neutral venue." He has not yet kept that promise. In an article for History News Network a year ago, I outlined accusations against Buhle's scholarship in film history that included over five dozen major errors of fact: misidentification of actors, authors, critics, directors and producers and errors of character, chronology, genre, and role. An anonymous critic called his book, Hide in Plain Sight,"a compendium of misinformation, deliberate falsification, bizarre fantasy, incoherent writing, and fraudulent scholarship that is nothing less than shocking and appalling." Nor is his work noted for interesting or important interpretation. Salon's Michelle Goldberg said his book, Radical Hollywood: The Untold Story Behind America's Favorite Movies, did not surpass the sophistication of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. They both saw"a Commie under every bed, a radical consciousness in every twitch of character, and Marxist propaganda in every turn of plot." Buhle only disagreed with HUAC about whether or not those were good things. In my book, that doesn't add up to"distinguished" scholarship.

It can't be easy for a feminist scholar to be known primarily as the sister of one man and the former wife of another, but such is Ann Lane's fate. She's the sister of Mark Lane, the prominent New York defense attorney and conspiracy theorist, whose clients have included Lee Harvey Oswald, James Earle Ray, and Jim Jones of Jonestown, Guyana, fame. She's also the former wife of Eugene Genovese, the Bancroft Prize-winning historian, but that was back when the Bancroft was still worth winning and long before Genovese abandoned the Left for Catholicism and the Right.

There's a certain notoriety in all that, but it doesn't add up to"distinguished" and Lane's opening professional work didn't either. There was substantial plagiarism in her first book manuscript. When some of that was called to her attention, she was tutored by her brother to discourage use of the"p-word" by threats of a lawsuit. Some of the plagiarism was removed from the manuscript before the book appeared, but additional plagiarism was alluded to in reviews of the published book. Somehow, Ann Lane's career survived charges of plagiarism and negative book reviews. There's a case to be made for second chances, based on the fact that she subsequently has published creditable work, but I wonder if"distinguished" isn't too positive a word for a career with such an ignoble launch.

Or, there's the case of Christine Heyrman. She directed Michael Bellesiles's dissertation at the University of California, Irvine. In fact, as I pointed out in an article here at HNN, she led the way for him, down the same path, with the same editor and the same publisher for her book, Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt. Their books even had very similar formats. They looked alike. The authorities who make decisions about Bancrofts liked the look and she got one of them just as he was whipping his Bancroft winning manuscript into shape. As I pointed out two years ago, her book even made errors of the kind, if not the depth, that would make Bellesiles notorious: highly prejudicial definitions of the subject, misusing ellipses to give quotations a meaning the opposite of what they actually said, and major errors in quantitative charts in the book's appendices. The errors in simple addition ought to embarrass a high school graduate. Just as virtually all of Michael Bellesiles's errors were in the direction of his controversial thesis, virtually all of Christine Heyrman's errors vastly understated the crucial role that African Americans played in making an evangelical South. While Bellesiles attempted to correct his mistakes in a revised second edition of his book, Heyrman has done nothing of the sort. She is simply"in denial." Like the early Ann Lane, she gestured at legal action against my accusation, flashed a minimal concession, and refused to correct major errors. Like the late Paul Buhle, she has subsequently stonewalled. In my book, that doesn't qualify as"distinguished" scholarship.

Case #3: Launched in 2001,"TalkingHistory" is one of the more recent initiatives of the Organization of American Historians. It produces a series of half hour programs that are made available to 400 stations here in the United States through the Public Radio satellite system and through the Voice of America overseas. Talking History is primarily a series of interviews with historians and other writers about major issues and major work. Unfortunately, its host, Bryan LeBeau, was recently at the center of his own plagiarism scandal. There have been some consequences for his plagiarism. On request, he has withdrawn from a search for a major administrative position at DePaul. He has been placed on leave from his position as Dean of Arts and Sciences at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. Consequently, he will take a salary cut to remain a member of the History Department there, but there are members of the faculty at UMKC who were surprised to learn from the interim Chancellor's memo than LeBeau's reduced salary of $130,000 a year is commensurate with that of a full professor there. Most full profs at UMKC have yet to see 75% of that. But the question does, naturally, occur to me: will Bryan LeBeau continue to host the OAH's"Talking History" program? Or, is there something about such a position of leadership in the Organization that doesn't hinge on having a clean record?

I have to admit, in conclusion, that I have my own ambivalences about all of this. If the OAH is, like the church, a place for sinners to repair and repent, then I feel quite at home in it, as a fully fledged sinner, myself. Ann Lane is, I suppose, as good an example of the redemptive possibilities of repair and repentance, as I can recall. But, I don't think that the OAH aspires to being a church-like organization. It is a professional organization that has some responsibility for self-policing. It doesn't do that when it mistakenly identifies some of us as having done"distinguished" work, when it is, at best, only hum-drum, and, at worst, violates ethical claims that we're called upon to enforce among our own students.

Sincerely yours,
Ralph E. Luker