Jump to full article: The Nation, 2010-03-09
Author: J. MATTHEW GALLMAN / JON WIENER . By A Reader & Jon Wiener
Intro: I read this article with interest because I have been on the periphery of some of the events Jon Wiener describes. I would like to take this opportunity to correct the record on a few points.
In April 2008 Dr. Gregg Michel, an historian from Texas, contacted me in my capacity as graduate coordinator in the history department at the University of Florida. . . .
A few months ago I was surprised to learn from a Chronicle of Higher Education reporter that my name appeared in e-mails and legal depositions that were part of a pending case. The tobacco lawyers had charged Proctor with meddling with their case and had deposed both Proctor and Smocovitis. . . .
Now we have Wiener's "Big Tobacco and the Historians." The essay raises a host of interesting issues about what historians should and should not do, but it also raises a few serious concerns in my mind. . . .
My second concern is how Wiener characterizes Proctor and his behavior towards those graduate students. Having interviewed Proctor, Wiener tells us that the Stanford professor is a helpless victim who had not tried to intimidate anyone. He merely wrote an innocent e-mail to Betty Smocovitis about UF students. I do not know Dr. Proctor and cannot look into his soul and determine his intentions (any more than Wiener can). I do know that Judge William A. Parsons of the Seventh Judicial Circuit Court, who presumably has more experience peering into people's souls, reviewed the complex chain of events and the e-mails that Proctor sent--including some that he had apparently tried to destroy--and concluded that "he appears to have used Dr. Smocovitis to generate activity designed to harass, humiliate and cause the graduate students . . .
Reasonable people can disagree about whether historians should ever be paid advocates for Big Tobacco. But it seems to me that when historians like Jon Wiener engage in supporting some historians and attacking others, they should go about their business like professional historians and not like paid advocates.
J. MATTHEW GALLMAN
The historians who testify for Big Tobacco often don't do their own research but rely on students. That's what Gregg Michel did; he's a historian at the University of Texas-San Antonio. For my piece, I wanted to ask Greg Michel what he had told the students he hired. Did he tell them they would be working for tobacco attorneys, who would use their research to argue in court that the companies shouldn't have to pay a smoker because it was her own fault she was dying of cancer? But Gregg Michel declined to answer. The "two recent newspaper stories on this case" don't quote Michel either. He's not talking.
I would have asked the students what they had been told, but the tobacco attorneys who employed the students had already made it abundantly clear that asking the students would be regarded as "harassment."
. . .
The judge in that case, Jeffrey Streitfeld, who recently lowered the award, said the jury's verdict offered "a lesson" for tobacco attorneys: their "blame the smoker" defense "didn't work," he said. "It upset the jury." But Big Tobacco is still blaming the smokers--and historians are still helping Big Tobacco. Matt Gallman says I have failed to provide a "balanced portrait" of this conflict. To that charge, I plead guilty.
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