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Robert Sean Wilentz (Template:Pron-en) is the Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Professor of History at Princeton University, where he has taught since 1979.

Background

Born in 1951 in New York City, where his father Eli owned a well-known Greenwich Village bookstore, the Eight Street Bookshop, Wilentz earned one B.A. at Columbia University in 1972, before earning another at Oxford University on a Kellett Fellowship. In 1980, he earned his Ph.D. at Yale University, under the supervision of David Brion Davis. His historical scholarship has focused on the importance of class and race in the early national period, especially in New York City. Wilentz has also co-authored books on nineteenth-century religion and working-class life. He has more recently turned his scholarship to modern U.S. history. His latest book is The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008, published in May 2008. A contributing editor at The New Republic, Wilentz writes widely on music and the arts as well as history and politics, and has received a Grammy nomination, and a Deems Taylor Award for musical commentary from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers for his work on Bob Dylan.

Wilentz is a long-time family friend of the Clintons.. Wilentz has also intervened in contemporary politics as a staunch defender of Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton. He appeared before the House Judiciary Committee on December 8, 1998 to argue against the Clinton impeachment. His testimony — he told the House members that, if they voted for impeachment but were not convinced Clinton's offenses were impeachable, "history will track you down and condemn you for your cravenness" — cheered Democratic partisans but was criticized by the New York Times, which lamented his "gratuitously patronizing presentation" in an editorial.

Wilentz has prominently criticized the George W. Bush administration. In 2006 he wrote an article about the George W. Bush presidency, titled "The Worst President in History?" which appeared in Rolling Stone magazine. The article received immediate national attention and negative responses from conservatives; National Review attacked Wilentz's analysis as "blinkered" and called him "the modern Arthur Schlesinger Jr."

Wilentz followed up during the 2008 general election with another article in Rolling Stone, describing how the failures of the Bush administration had caused a "political meltdown" of the Republican Party, with potentially enormous long-term effects.

In 2008 Wilentz was an outspoken supporter of Sen. Hillary Clinton. He wrote an essay in the New Republic analyzing Sen. Barack Obama's campaign, charging Obama with creating "manipulative illusion" and "distortions," and having "purposefully polluted the contest" with "the most outrageous deployment of racial politics since the Willie Horton ad campaign in 1988." During the Democratic National Convention, Wilentz charged in Newsweek that "liberal intellectuals have largely abdicated their responsibility to provide unblinking and rigorous analysis" of Obama. "Hardly any prominent liberal thinkers" have questioned his "rationalizations" about his relationship to his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., or "his patently evasive accounts" of his "ties" to the "unrepentant terrorist William Ayers." For Wilentz, Obama is untested, cloudy, problematic — and liberal intellectuals have given him a free ride. Wilentz was criticized by bloggers and others for his criticism of Obama. He has also come under fire for the alleged historical inaccuracy of his attacks on the idea of nullifcation.

Wilentz lives in Princeton, New Jersey and is married to University of Chicago historian Christine Stansell.

Awards

• 1984 Beveridge Award from the American Historical Association for Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850
• 2006 Bancroft Prize for The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln

Writings

• "On Class and Politics in Jacksonian America," Reviews in American History, Vol. 10, No. 4, The Promise of American History: Progress and Prospects (Dec., 1982), pp. 45–63 in JSTOR
• "Against Exceptionalism: Class Consciousness and the American Labor Movement, 1790-1920," International Labor and Working Class History, 26 (Fall 1984): 1-24,
• Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850 (1984)
• Merrill, Michael, and Sean Wilentz, eds. The Key of Liberty: The Life and Democratic Writings of William Manning, "A Laborer," 1747-1814 (1993)
• Johnson, Paul E., and Sean Wilentz. The Kingdom of Matthias. (1994) excerpt and text search
• Andrew Jackson (2005) excerpt and text search
• The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (2005) excerpt and text search
• Wilentz, Sean and Greil Marcus, eds. Rose and the Briar: Death, Love and Liberty in the American Ballad (2005)
• Wilentz, Sean, and Jonathan Earle, eds. Major Problems in the Early Republic (1992; 2nd ed. 2007)
• The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008 (2008) excerpt and text search

About Wilentz

• Altschuler, Glenn C. "Democracy as a Work in Progress," Reviews in American History, Volume 34, Number 2, June 2006, pp. 169–175 in Project Muse, review of The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln
• John Ehrman, "There He Goes Again: A review of The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008, Sean Wilentz" The Claremont Institute (2008), review by conservative scholar

References

1. "Robert Wilentz" , History Department, Princeton University
2. "The Charisma Mandate" The New York Times
3. "Immobilizing Lies", The New York Times, 1998-09-12
4. "The Worst President in History? One of America's leading historians assesses George W. Bush", Rolling Stone, 2006-04-21
5. [http://newsbusters.org/node/5028, "Olbermann Plugs 'Bush Worst President' Rolling Stone Article", Newsbusters, 2006-04-22
6. http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Sean+Wilentz+is+the+modern+Arthur+Schlesinger+Jr.--an+Ivy+League...-a0145635337 "Sean Wilentz is the Modern Arthur Schlesinger Jr.," National Review, 2006-05-22
7. http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/22665562 "How Bush Destroyed the Republican Party,Rolling Stone, 2008-09-04
8. "Making the Case... for Hillary Clinton", by Sean Wilentz, Newsweek.com, 2007-11-16
9. "Race Man", by Sean Wilentz, The New Republic, 2008-02-27
10. Sean Wilentz, "A Liberal's Lament," Newsweek issue of Sept. 1, 2008, online
11. Russell Jacoby, "Sean Wilentz, Out on a Partisan Limb," Chronicle of Higher Education issue dated September 19, 2008 online
12. Thomas Woods, Jr., The Ivy League Hates Nullification, LewRockwell.com (2010-04-06)

External links

• Princeton bio
• Wilentz interview from 2005

• Living people
• 1951 births
• Columbia University alumni
• People from New York City
• Princeton University faculty
• Yale University alumni