Talk:Sean Wilentz

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"He is a product of" - sounds biased, as in "he is a product of those liberal bastions." Wiki gods, please fix! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.108.219.172 (talk • contribs).


 * No need to invoke the Wikigods, because:


 * a) they don't exist (I'm a wikiAtheist)


 * b) this is Wikipedia. Anyone can edit an article. Be bold, fix it yourself.


 * Good luck, Gw e rnol 12:02, 25 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Jesus loves you! 136.36.3.253 (talk) 17:22, 1 August 2022 (UTC)


 * "His writings have earned him acclaim as one of the greatest living historians of the United States. But his reputation and influence are not restricted to the academy." From the subject himself, no less! I guess he would know.
 * too bad he does things like this, then, what with his reputation not being restricted to the academy.

Woods critique
I was wrong about Woods--his credential are in order to critique Wilentz, which seems to be based on a forthcoming book by Woods. Rjensen (talk) 01:02, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Dispute about Wilentz quote in article on Alexander Hamilton
see debate at Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard under "Alexander Hamilton"

There is an edit war going on at Alexander Hamilton in which one editor USER:Pmanderson repeatedly removes a quotation about Hamilton by historian Sean Wilentz (who won the Pulitzer prize) saying that it is "defamatory" of Wilentz to quote him. The other editors all disagree and say the quotation is proper and should be kept. The talk page shows Pmanderson had been highly antagonistic for years on the Hamilton article and in 2012 was banned for one year for his disruptions on another article. We need a determination by this board whether the added text is "defamatory" re Wilentz or not. The disputed text is this:
 * Princeton historian Sean Wilentz in 2010 identified a scholarly trend very much in Hamilton's favor, even though Wilentz himself does not go along with it:


 * "In recent years, Hamilton and his reputation have decidedly gained the initiative among scholars who portray him as the visionary architect of the modern liberal capitalist economy and of a dynamic federal government headed by an energetic executive. Jefferson and his allies, by contrast, have come across as naïve, dreamy idealists. At best according to many historians, the Jeffersonians were reactionary utopians who resisted the onrush of capitalist modernity in hopes of turning America into a yeoman farmers' arcadia. At worst, they were proslavery racists who wish to rid the West of Indians, expand the empire of slavery, and keep political power in local hands – all the better to expand the institution of slavery and protect slaveholders' rights to own human property." [ref] Sean Wilentz, "Book Reviews," Journal of American History Sept, 2010 v. 97# 2 p 476[/ref] [end of text] Rjensen (talk) 21:05, 26 November 2013 (UTC)|
 * Alexander Hamilton was first drafted as an effort to put him on Mount Rushmore; the first archive page even says so. Rjensen has been attempting to propagate this POV for some years; a most deplorable practice in a Wikipedia editor. This quotation out of context, and representing Wilentx as the last holdout against the triumphant wave of Federalist partisanship (which is not his view of himself by any means) is merely the latest stage in this effort. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:12, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Pmanderson is now attacking me (for the record, Hamilton was a Federalist; I am not one. My own personal political views combine both Hamilton and Jefferson.) Rjensen (talk) 21:16, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Your edits don't. And this polemic passage doesn't. But I don't care what POV you propagate, as long as it stays out of articles and you don't attempt to selectively quote historians who don't agree. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:33, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

May need updating (after Wilentz's NY Times op-ed on 4-4-2019)
Wilentz has an op-ed in The New York Times on 4-4-2019 ("The Electoral College Was Not a Pro-Slavery Ploy") in which he backtracks on a position he made in a recent book ('No Property in Man: Slavery and Antislavery at the Nation’s Founding').

In the first edition of this book, he stated that it was, but according to the op-ed, he's changed his mind after further research, and lays out his reasons why. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.113.2.41 (talk) 17:32, 4 April 2019 (UTC)