A group of 90 Purdue University professors on Monday sent a letter to Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., the institution’s president and Indiana’s former governor, questioning his continued criticism of the historian Howard Zinn. The criticism came to light last week, when the Associated Press published an article and e-mails suggesting that, as governor, Mr. Daniels had sought to keep the work of Mr. Zinn, who died in 2010, from being taught in the state’s classrooms.
Mr. Daniels denied trying to censor Indiana’s universities and said that he was trying to prevent Mr. Zinn’s popular textbook, A People’s History of the United States, from being “foisted” upon students in elementary and secondary schools. Though Mr. Daniels said he would have defended Mr. Zinn’s right to publish and teach what he wanted, he maintained his criticism of the scholar’s work. The university’s board backed Mr. Daniels in the dispute, rejecting the AP’s article as “misleading.”
“However much we disagree with your past statements,” the Purdue professors wrote in their letter on Monday, “we are more troubled by the fact that you continue to express these views today, especially since you are now speaking as the chief representative of Purdue University with the responsibility to embody the best of academic inquiry and exchange.”
The letter questioned Mr. Daniels’s assessment of Mr. Zinn’s work and said his public statements could have a chilling effect on untenured scholars. The matter “transcends one author and one book,” the authors wrote, adding that it “concerns the very legitimacy of academic discourse.”
