Anonymous charges can't be trusted

When Chanakya Sethi interviewed me for a story in the 'Prince' ('Isenberg case reveals discord, controversy', March 29), I talked to him about the secrecy of the tenure process here. Candidates for tenure do not know what is said about them or who is saying it. Defenders of this system, like all defenders of secret information as an executive privilege, argue that only secrecy can produce the unvarnished truth. The raw information the tenure process creates is certainly unvarnished; whether it's truthful is another question entirely.

The story closely replicated the tenure process: Historians — one speaking anonymously — made a preposterous charge against my scholarship. The 'Prince' printed that charge without giving me a chance to respond. Without intending it, the 'Prince' thus revealed the abuses to which the tenure process is liable.

The charge — which is entirely without merit — was that part of my book, "The Destruction of the Bison," published in 2000 by Cambridge University Press, resembles an article, "Bison Ecology and Bison Diplomacy," by Professor Dan Flores of the University of Montana published in 1991. Regardless of what Prof. Flores thinks about it, there are significant differences of geography, depth, periodization, emphasis, scope and argument between our works. Some of those differences are quite pointed. Not least of all, Prof. Flores' article is concerned with only the southern plains between 1800 and 1850. My book takes into account the entire plains region from 1750 to 1920. Even in the overlapping period, my book investigates topics — nomadism, gender, smallpox, commerce between Indians and Euroamericans — that are only marginal concerns to him.

Moreover, while I respect Prof. Flores' work, I take issue with a pair of his main points. My book challenges his idea that bovine disease was a significant factor in the decline of the bison population, and it argues that Euroamerican hide hunters had more to do with the near-extinction of the species that Flores concedes.

At least Prof. Flores was willing to speak on the record. The article quotes another historian who, speaking on the condition of anonymity, impugned the originality of my book. The historian — whoever it is — was well advised to maintain his or her anonymity, because the comment betrays a staggering ignorance. The interpretive differences between my work and that of all other environmental historians who have written on the bison aside, my doctoral dissertation, on which my book is based, was nearly complete in 1991 when Flores' article appeared. By that time, I had already outlined my major ideas in academic conference papers.

But such is the nature of anonymous charges: One can say whatever one wants, no matter how absurd or damaging, without ever having to take responsibility for one's actions. That this historian declined to speak for attribution should have aroused the suspicions of the reporter and the 'Prince' editors. If a scholar is unwilling to be held publicly accountable for such extreme views of the work of another scholar, those views cannot be trusted. For the Record gives subjects of 'Prince' coverage a chance to respond with their concerns.