Larger text
Smaller text
Print
E-mail
Disarming Bellesiles
Bellesiles, a history professor at Emory University in Atlanta, won the prestigious Bancroft Prize for history last year. His book challenged the conventional wisdom that guns played a prominent role in the Colonial and early 1800s era.
Immediately a darling of the gun-control crowd, Bellesiles, among other things, cited probate records. But when fellow historians went searching for those same records, they could not be found. In fact, some of the records Bellesiles says he used hadn't existed since the early 1900s. Bellesiles began hemming and hawing about what records he actually reviewed and when.
Now, after months of investigation, a three-person review panel has determined that Bellesiles "willingly misrepresented the evidence … his scholarly integrity is seriously in question. … Every aspect of (Bellesiles') work in the probate records is deeply flawed.'' His response to the charges of research misconduct were "confusing, evasive and occasionally contradictory," the panel said.
Bellesiles has resigned from Emory, effective Dec. 31; he could not "continue to teach in what I feel is a hostile environment," he said. It was an environment, we note, that Bellesiles created himself.
Added Bellesiles in a parting shot: "I believe that if we begin investigating every scholar who challenges received truth, it will not be long before no challenging scholarly books are published."
No, Mr. Bellesiles, not every scholar — just the ones who fabricate history to further a politically correct agenda.
