John Sununu makes a false claim today in his Boston Globe column, which he devotes to a tiresome defense of Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan.
The former Republican senator writes that Brad DeLong, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley, had called on Harvard University to fire the historian Niall Ferguson over his recent Newsweek cover story on the alleged failures of President Obama. “A Berkeley professor more or less demanded that Harvard ‘fire his ass'” is how Sununu puts it.
That would be a pretty amazing statement by DeLong if it were true. Sununu is claiming, in effect, that DeLong, a member of the academy, is calling on Harvard to violate a colleague’s academic freedom solely because he doesn’t like what he’s written. As I said: If it were true. It’s not.
In the online version of his column, Sununu helpfully provides a link to DeLong’s blog post. And here is what DeLong actually wrote:
Fire his ass.
Fire his ass from Newsweek, and the Daily Beast.
Convene a committee at Harvard to impose proper sanctions on this degree of intellectual dishonesty.
In an “update,” DeLong clarifies his Harvard reference: “Not that I claim to know what the proper sanctions are, you understand. But we should be inquiring into what they are.”
Now, let me hasten to say that I’m troubled by DeLong’s actual position — that Harvard should look into disciplining Ferguson. But that is a long, long way from calling on Harvard to fire him.
And I should note that DeLong and a number of other critics contend that Ferguson went far beyond expressing anti-Obama opinions, veering into deliberate falsehoods in order to bolster his argument that Obama’s presidency is a failure. (Here is the full bill of particulars compiled by the Atlantic, which I found via the estimable Charlie Pierce.) That could be considered academic misconduct, so DeLong is not completely off the mark — though it strikes me as extreme and unwarranted under the circumstances. Banging out a screed for Tina Brown isn’t exactly the same thing as falsifying academic research.
My issue isn’t with DeLong or Ferguson, though. It’s with Sununu, who has blithely and wrongly slimed DeLong. Perhaps because he didn’t name DeLong, he thought it was all right. Perhaps he thought including the phrase “more or less” would get him off the hook.
Finally, what is up with the Globe’s editors? If I can click on Sununu’s link, so could they.
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DK, can we presume then that you grant the substance of Gov. Sununu’s other points? In the pantheon of “sliming” by both parties this year, this is pretty thin gruel. For example, I anxiously await your reaction to the latest slimings by Debbie Wasserman Schultz, (too many to count but Anderson Cooper on CNN is a good start.) Hey, sauce for the goose….
@Rick: I’ll get to Wasserman Schultz the second that Romney explains why he said in 2007 and 2011 that he’d sign a federal personhood amendment, which would ban abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest.
I think he retroactively retired from those positions, Dan.
Leaving it to Niall Ferguson to run Newsweek, which he in effect is doing, and write on economics would be like CNN turning the network over to Sanjay Gupta. With Newsweek just weeks away from shutting down the print edition, it’s no question it has been an utter disaster for both parties. Moreover, this should end any notion that Tina Brown knows anything about running a profitable magazine.
@ Rick Peterson
Nice. You obviously can’t defend Sununu, so you level an unconnected attack against DWS …
So can we presume then that you grant the substance of Brad DeLongs and DK’s points, that Sununu is LYING to defend Ryans gutting of Medicare?
Stick to the point, Ricky!
Well Gwendolyn, the point is that like most ideologues, some folks on this board want, (to paraphrase the great Moynihan), their own facts as well as their own opinions and tend to conflate one into the other. Your OPINION is that Ryan’s plan constitutes “gutting” Medicare. Opinions vary.