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“Yesterday was among the craziest of my entire life,” UW-Madison history professor William Cronon wrote on his blog last week, describing how news of the Wisconsin Republican Party records request seeking emails from his university account had “gone viral in a very big way.”

Earlier this week life got a little crazier, too, for faculty and other employees at labor studies departments at three public universities in Michigan – the University of Michigan, Michigan State and Wayne State University. They face a records request that, like Cronon’s, appears to be seeking evidence that faculty breached rules prohibiting use of state computers for political activities.

william cronon

Cronon got his request after writing on his personal blog about the American Legislative Exchange Council, other conservative organizations and their possible ties to legislation in Wisconsin, particularly limitations on public employee collective bargaining now being fought in court. The request actually preceded Cronon’s op-ed in The New York Times that drew parallels between Gov. Scott Walker’s style of politics and those of former Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy and accused the governor of disregarding Wisconsin’s history of political compromise.

It’s not clear what triggered the requests in Michigan, all filed by the conservative Mackinac Center for Public Policy, which says the results could provide material for its Michigan Capitol Confidential newsletter. Unless you count the Wisconsin request, however, which Mackinac has denied is connected to its own.

Cronon and other academics say the requests are attempts to embarrass or silence them, a concern echoed by UW-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin, who said in a statement the university was still weighing whether to hand over the professor’s emails. “We will need to consider whether disclosure would result in a chilling effect on the discourse between colleagues that is essential to our academic mission,” she said.

Ample media coverage of the requests has stirred up accusations of McCarthyism, a position Jack Shafer, media critic for Slate.com, pokes fun at, calling it “a complete overreach. Joe would have never done anything so flatfootedly procedural.” Shafer argues the requests will probably get filled, although he suggests the results, however salacious, will be of little consequence.

“As anyone who has attended college knows, the classroom is not a politics-free environment, so let’s not pretend that it is,” he says.

The Wisconsin request seeks any Cronon emails mentioning a variety of persons connected to the state’s ongoing union debate, many of them Republican legislators, suggesting the party may be seeking evidence that Cronon has helped or endorsed recall efforts. (The party has so far declined to explain its reasons for seeking Cronon’s emails.)

In Michigan, Mackinac wants all emails to or from employees of the labors studies departments that include the terms Scott Walker, Wisconsin, Madison or Maddow, referring to liberal MSNBC host Rachel Maddow. In addition, the group asks for “any other emails dealing with the collective bargaining situation in Wisconsin.”

Meanwhile, Walker himself has joined the war of words surrounding Cronon. Earlier this week, his office released an op-ed the governor had submitted to The New York Times but wasn’t printed. (Governor, we feel your pain, we too have had submissions rejected by the august Times.)

Cronon’s op-ed had accused Walker of defacing the state’s tradition of political cooperation, but the governor interjects, “Sometimes, bi-partisanship is not so good,” referring to the structural imbalance in the state budget enlarged under former Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle.

“The choices we are making now in Wisconsin will make sure our children are not left picking up the pieces of the broken state budget left behind,” Walker wrote.

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