published: March 27, 2011 New York Times
人文与社会编辑小组译校：
最近威斯康辛大学的一位历史教授威廉·克罗农决定在威斯康辛州的政治风波中出点力，他开设了“公民学者”这个博客，首篇博文探讨了琵琶遮面的美国立法交流委员会如何在州这个层次推动强硬的保守派立法。然后他在泰晤士报发表了一篇观点文章，提及威斯康辛的共和党州长背弃了本州“睦邻友居、正直体面、互相尊重”的悠久传统。Recently William Cronon, a historian who teaches at the University of Wisconsin, decided to weigh in on his state’s political turmoil. He started a blog, “Scholar as Citizen,” devoting his first post to the role of the shadowy American Legislative Exchange Council in pushing hard-line conservative legislation at the state level. Then he published an opinion piece in The Times, suggesting that Wisconsin’s Republican governor has turned his back on the state’s long tradition of “neighborliness, decency and mutual respect.”
共和党是怎么回应的呢？他们要求得到一份克罗农先生用大学电邮信箱发出和收到的提及一系列覆盖面很广的关键词中的任何一个（包括“共和党”和一些共和党领导人名）的所有邮件副本。So what was the G.O.P.’s response? A demand for copies of all e-mails sent to or from Mr. Cronon’s university mail account containing any of a wide range of terms, including the word “Republican” and the names of a number of Republican politicians.
你要觉得这无所谓，就是没看到问题的要点。强硬右翼--现在差不多就是共和党的同义词--处理执不同意见学者时有一套常规手法：别管实质内容，赶紧给对方抹黑(smear)。要求获取克罗农邮件副本就是希望能从中得到能按常规处理克罗农的一些东西，甚至任何东西。If this action strikes you as no big deal, you’re missing the point. The hard right — which these days is more or less synonymous with the Republican Party — has a modus operandi when it comes to scholars expressing views it dislikes: never mind the substance, go for the smear. And that demand for copies of e-mails is obviously motivated by no more than a hope that it will provide something, anything, that can be used to subject Mr. Cronon to the usual treatment.
克罗农事件又一次显示了我们的两个伟大政党之一已经变得多么条件反射式地喜欢报复、多么不美国。The Cronon affair, then, is one more indicator of just how reflexively vindictive, how un-American, one of our two great political parties has become.
持续对气候科学与科学家的抹黑最近主要借助电邮中发现的所谓“有损信誉”的内容，这和要求获取克罗农邮件如出一辙。
The demand for Mr. Cronon’s correspondence has obvious parallels with the ongoing smear campaign against climate science and climate scientists, which has lately relied heavily on supposedly damaging quotations found in e-mail records.
2009年对气候变化执怀疑态度的人们获取了英国东安格利亚大学气候研究中心研究人员之间的上千份电邮。这些邮件没有显示任何不当科研行为，最多我们就是知道了--我知道各位会很吃惊的--科学家也是人，他们偶然也会用恶毒的话说说那些他们不喜欢的人。
Back in 2009 climate skeptics got hold of more than a thousand e-mails between researchers at the Climate Research Unit at Britain’s University of East Anglia. Nothing in the correspondence suggested any kind of scientific impropriety; at most, we learned — I know this will shock you — that scientists are human beings, who occasionally say snide things about people they dislike.
但这没有阻止那些惯犯们宣称他们发现了“气候门”，一个能否定一系列人类造成气候变化证据的所谓科研丑闻。这个伪丑闻表明了共和党原本对克罗农先生打算做的是些什么。
But that didn’t stop the usual suspects from proclaiming that they had uncovered “Climategate,” a scientific scandal that somehow invalidates the vast array of evidence for man-made climate change. And this fake scandal gives an indication of what the Wisconsin G.O.P. presumably hopes to do to Mr. Cronon.
毕竟，如果你通过阅读大量邮件来寻找可能被解读得不利对方的内容，你肯定能找到些什么。事实上在“气候门”档案中，令人吃惊的是批评者找到了如此少量的所谓证据：大量的抹黑集中用了仅仅一封电邮，信中一个研究者谈及用“手段”来“掩藏（一个特定系列中的）下降”。上下文显示他是在说怎么才能做出一个有效的显示图，而不是在谈隐藏证据。但是右翼想要一个丑闻，他们不会让“没有”成为结果。
After all, if you go through a large number of messages looking for lines that can be made to sound bad, you’re bound to find a few. In fact, it’s surprising how few such lines the critics managed to find in the “Climategate” trove: much of the smear has focused on just one e-mail, in which a researcher talks about using a “trick” to “hide the decline” in a particular series. In context, it’s clear that he’s talking about making an effective graphical presentation, not about suppressing evidence. But the right wants a scandal, and won’t take no for an answer.
还有人怀疑威斯康辛的共和党不是在希望针对克罗农先生获得同样的“胜利”吗？在这个案例中，他们可能没希望了。克罗农先生博客说他一直谨慎地不用大学电邮谈个人事务，他表现出的审慎既不是学界常见的，也不是被期望的。（完全解密：我有时用大学邮箱提醒妻子喂猫，确认和朋友的晚餐，等等。）
Is there any doubt that Wisconsin Republicans are hoping for a similar “success” against Mr. Cronon?
Now, in this case they’ll probably come up dry. Mr. Cronon writes on his blog that he has been careful never to use his university e-mail for personal business, exhibiting a scrupulousness that’s neither common nor expected in the academic world. (Full disclosure: I have, at times, used my university e-mail to remind my wife to feed the cats, confirm dinner plans with friends, etc.)
此外，克罗农先生--美国历史协会的当选会长，在专业内地位稳固。他的杰作《大自然的都会：芝加哥与大西部》是我读过最好的经济与商业史著作--要说这方面著作，我可真读了不少。因此我们不必担心克罗农先生--我们应该非常担心的是他面对的这种攻击所具有的广泛影响。
Beyond that, Mr. Cronon — the president-elect of the American Historical Association — has a secure reputation as a towering figure in his field. His magnificent “Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West” is the best work of economic and business history I’ve ever read — and I read a lot of that kind of thing.
So we don’t need to worry about Mr. Cronon — but we should worry a lot about the wider effect of attacks like the one he’s facing.
法律上共和党有这个权利：威斯康辛州的开放记录法让大众能看到政府雇员的电邮，但这条法律明显适用州政府官员而不是大学教授。当学者们知道说了共和党不喜欢的话将会惹来政治迫害，他们会不寒而栗。一个像克罗农先生这样的人能顶住压力。但不那么杰出和成熟的学者不仅仅会在作为有关怀的公民发言和参与当前讨论时犹豫，他们甚至会被威慑，不愿进行可能带来麻烦的研究项目。
Legally, Republicans may be within their rights: Wisconsin’s open records law provides public access to e-mails of government employees, although the law was clearly intended to apply to state officials, not university professors. But there’s a clear chilling effect when scholars know that they may face witch hunts whenever they say things the G.O.P. doesn’t like.
Someone like Mr. Cronon can stand up to the pressure. But less eminent and established researchers won’t just become reluctant to act as concerned citizens, weighing in on current debates; they’ll be deterred from even doing research on topics that might get them in trouble.
这里的关键是我们是否会有一个公开的全国讨论，学者们可以按照他们所有的论据自由表态，为大众对问题的理解做出贡献。威斯康辛和其他地方的共和党们正在试图压制这种讨论。让他们失败的责任就在除了他们以外的我们所有人肩上。
What’s at stake here, in other words, is whether we’re going to have an open national discourse in which scholars feel free to go wherever the evidence takes them, and to contribute to public understanding. Republicans, in Wisconsin and elsewhere, are trying to shut that kind of discourse down. It’s up to the rest of us to see that they don’t succeed.
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