BELLESILES UPDATE: Ralph Luker notes:

Ten months ago, responding to the report of Emory University’s panel of outside reviewers in the case of Michael Bellesiles, the Organization of American Historians announced that: “The editorial board of the Journal of American History will consider a commissioned essay or a roundtable to address the ethical issues of this and other recent cases and how much historians rely on trust in practicing their craft.” As of this date, the editorial board of the JAH has given no indication, to borrow the language of Watergate, of what it intends to do or when it intends to do it.

There’s “deliberate,” and then there’s just plain slow, fading over to “unmoving.” As Luker notes, the OAH was embarrassed by its inability to deal with the Bellesiles matter, and by the way amateurs outperformed it. Now they seem to hope that the whole thing will just go away.