Correspondence

I regret that Professor Paul Buhle took offense at my reference to a critique of his work in "Where Do We Go From Here?" (OAH Newsletter, August 2002). The article simply called attention to a half dozen recent instances of American historians severely criticized, commonly by journalists or academics who are not historians.

Buhle may object to finding himself in the small company of other American historians who have received more widespread and intense scrutiny, but his innocuous characterization of charges brought by Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes in "Radical History," New Criterion, June 2002, obscures what is at stake. Klehr and Haynes accuse him of politically motivated intellectual dishonesty. Buhle counters that their critique is politically motivated. It seems likely that the charge and counter-charge about motive are a wash.

What remains is not mere "gossip," but a charge of intellectual dishonesty. Like Michael Bellesiles, Buhle is accused of obfuscating, refusing to supply inquirers with sources of evidence for claims made in his work and ignoring a very large body of inconvenient evidence. If, for example, the American Communist Party was giving covert aid to Israel, as Buhle claims, why would it publish reports of such aid in the Daily Worker, as Buhle assures us it did. He promises in his Letter to the OAH Newsletter, November 2002, to be more forthcoming in a "full discussion in a neutral venue."

Until then, there is no finding of guilt or innocence in the "Buhle Case" and we are obliged to hold him innocent until proven guilty. Despite his claim that there is no "Buhle Case," however, Klehr and Haynes have put in the record evidence which demands and awaits his answer.