Historians Defend Howard Zinn Against a Former Governor’s Critique

Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images Howard Zinn in 2009.

The radical historian Howard Zinn won a dubious prize of sorts last year when his best-selling “People’s History of the United States” came in second in an informal online poll to determine the “least credible history book in print.”

But now, some of Mr. Zinn’s strongest scholarly critics have rushed to his defense, following the revelation that former Indiana governor Mitch Daniels had, while in office, sent emails to a state education official asking for assurance that Mr. Zinn’s “truly execrable, anti-factual piece of disinformation” was “not in use” in Indiana classrooms.

Mr. Daniels, who is now president of Purdue University, posted a statement on the university’s Web site on July 17 saying that the emails, which were first reported by The Associated Press, “infringed on no one’s academic freedom and proposed absolutely no censorship of any person or viewpoint.”

Many scholars, however, were not reassured. The American Historical Association released a statement deploring “the spirit and intent” of the emails. An open letter signed by more than 90 Purdue professors criticized Mr. Daniels’s comments about Mr. Zinn (who died in 2010), noting: “Whatever their political stripe, most experts in the field of U.S. history do not take issue with Howard Zinn’s facts, even when they do take issue with his conclusions.”

Meanwhile, some scholars whose critiques of Mr. Zinn were cited by Mr. Daniels defended the historian â€" sort of.

Michael Kazin, a professor at Georgetown University and the author of a blistering 2004 critique of “A People’s History,” posted a statement online saying Mr. Daniels “should be roundly condemned for his attempts to stop students from reading Zinn’s big book and for calling Zinn a liar.” And Sam Wineburg, a Stanford historian and the author of another critique, posted to Twitter calling Mr. Daniels’s emails “a shameless attempt to censor free speech.”

In an interview with The Indianapolis Star, Mr. Wineburg said that he assigned Mr. Zinn’s book in his own classes. “This is not about Zinn, per se,” he said of the controversy. “This is about whether in an open democratic society we should be exposed â€" whether you’re in ninth grade or seventh grade or a freshman at Purdue â€" whether you should be exposed to views that challenge your own cherished view.”