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_______________RIGHT ON! THE VAST LEFT-WING CONSPIRACY BY DAVID HOROWITZ (01/02/99)
	David Horowitz is entitled to his political opinions, but in the course of criticizing the statement circulated by Historians in Defense of the Constitution, and the nearly 500 historians who have signed that statement, he makes numerous factual errors. These ought to be noted, if only for the record. Horowitz's most serious errors have to do with the historians' credentials regarding constitutional issues. The three organizers of the historians' effort, and chief authors of the statement, were Arthur Schlesinger Jr., C. Vann Woodward and myself. Horowitz has every right to disagree with Professor Schlesinger, but it should at least be acknowledged that Schlesinger is widely regarded as the leading living authority on the history of the American presidency. That reputation owes principally to his books on the presidencies of Andrew Jackson, Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, not to mention his book "The Imperial Presidency." Professor Woodward, meanwhile, is not only the preeminent historian of the American South but also the editor and co-author of a crucially important historical study of presidential misconduct, impeachment and related matters, completed at the request of the House Judiciary Committee in 1974 in connection with the impeachment proceedings against President Nixon. As for me, I would never dream of comparing my achievements to those of my distinguished fellow organizers. Still, I have written at some length on the founding generation and on constitutional issues in my co-authored study of William Manning, in my textbook on problems in the history of the early republic and in numerous essays on subjects ranging from the Bill of Rights to Thomas Jefferson to John Quincy Adams. I am also currently writing a book, "The Rise of American Democracy, 1787-1860," that deals with these larger subjects in great detail. Horowitz similarly misdescribes the historical credentials of several other people whose names appear in his article. As I say, he is entitled to disapprove of the historians' work and of their judgment about the present impeachment (though his essay does little to explain the substantive grounds of his disagreement). The question of credentials, however, is another matter. -- Sean Wilentz David Horowitz writes that Sean Wilentz stopped speaking to me when (together with Joanne Landy) I organized a petition drive ("Impeach Bill Clinton for the Right Reasons: Not for Lewinsky, But Rather for the Illegal Bombing of Iraq, Afghanistan and Sudan," published in the Nation, Feb. 22, 1999) at odds with the Schlesinger-Wilentz-Woodward "Historians in Defense of the Constitution" ad in the Oct. 30 New York Times. This is inaccurate. Wilentz has always responded to my not unfriendly e-mails, sometimes (but not always) angrily. His anger seems understandable, given the depth of the political and historical disagreements between us (see my "Anti-Impeachment Historians and the Politics of History," Chronicle of Higher Education, Dec. 4, 1998). But I have never given up on this old friendship, and I am glad to have heard from Wilentz that he hasn't either. -- Jesse Lemisch New York David Horowitz responds: I stand corrected by Jesse Lemisch. A mutual friend told me that Sean Wilentz had stopped speaking to him. I tried to call to confirm this, but failed to reach him. I should have just dropped the reference at that point. I apologize to both of them for not doing so. Wilentz's points are also well taken. I never meant to suggest that none of the 400 historians had expertise on the Constitution, and should have been more generous in my descriptions of the three main authors -- especially that part of their work that did pertain to the issue at hand. However, it wouldn't matter to my argument if only five of the signers had no such expertise, or if all of them did. The point is that there can be no such hard and fast consensus on issues like this, or on this issue in particular, and for scholars to convey the impression that there can ill-serves them, their profession and their cause. SALON | Feb. 10, 1999

R E C E N T L Y+| BLACK BUT NOT LIKE ME BY JILL NELSON

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