William Cronon was born on September 11, 1954. He is an American environmental historian and holds the title of Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas Research Professor of History, Geography, and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In 2012, he served as president of the American Historical Association (AHA).

Early life and career

William Cronon was born in New Haven, Connecticut. His father, E. David Cronon (1924–2006), was a history teacher at Yale University. In 1962, the elder Cronon began working as a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He held the position of dean, which means he led a department or school, from 1974 to 1988.

Cronon earned a bachelor’s degree in both history and English from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1976. He later received two master’s degrees in American history from Yale University in 1979 and 1980. In 1981, he completed a PhD in British urban and economic history from Jesus College at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. He also earned a PhD in American history from Yale University in 1990.

In July 1985, Cronon was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. He currently serves on the board of directors for The Trust for Public Land, a national group that works to protect land. He has been a member of the Wilderness Society since 1995. As of 2014, he held the position of vice chair on the organization’s governing council.

Scholarship

William Cronon is best known for his first book, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (1983). This book was based on a paper he wrote for his Yale professor, Edmund Sears Morgan. In it, Cronon argued that how different cultures understand property and ownership has a major influence on both economies and natural environments. He also showed that Native Americans actively worked to shape the ecosystems they lived in, which is different from what many historians had previously believed.

His second major book, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (1991), helped environmental historians expand their focus beyond forests and public lands to include cities. Cronon explained that Chicago and the growth of capitalism changed the open countryside of the Midwest. In one section, he described how grain farming changed over time. At first, farmers sold grain in sacks with their family names printed on them. Later, grain became a standardized product, sold in bulk and stored in silos based on quality. This book won several awards, including the 1992 Bancroft Prize, the 1993 George Perkins Marsh Prize, and was a finalist for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for History.

In Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature (1995) and an essay titled "The Trouble with Wilderness: Or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature," published in The New York Times in August 1995, Cronon examined how the idea of wilderness has been understood in American history. He argued that the belief in untouched, perfect wilderness is not realistic, because all parts of nature are connected.

Cronon was also featured in Ken Burns’s 2009 documentary The National Parks: America’s Best Idea.

'Scholar as Citizen' blog

During the 2011 Wisconsin protests about the state budget, William Cronon created a blog named "Scholar as Citizen." He began by examining statements made by then-governor Scott Walker about public unions. His first blog post, published on March 15, 2011, claimed that a national group called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) was involved in efforts to influence lawmakers. This group, linked to the Koch network, worked to persuade Republican legislators to support laws that favored private businesses. Anthony Grafton of The New Yorker wrote that Cronon used not direct proof to argue that ALEC had played a major role in Governor Walker's criticism of public employee unions in Wisconsin. He also stated that while such political activities are legal, they should be conducted openly.

On March 17, Stephan Thompson of the Wisconsin Republican Party requested access to emails sent from or to Cronon’s taxpayer-funded University of Wisconsin-Madison account. The request focused on emails containing keywords related to the political situation, such as "Republican," "Scott Walker," "recall," "collective bargaining," "AFSCME," "WEAC," "rally," "union," and the names of 12 Republican senators who supported Walker’s bill.

Cronon also wrote an article criticizing Walker for The New York Times, which was published on March 21, 2011.

On March 24, Cronon posted another blog entry about the Republican Party’s request for his emails. He claimed the party’s action aimed to "embarrass, harass, or silence a university professor." He cited Wisconsin’s tradition of protecting academic freedom and asked the party to cancel the request. The party did not withdraw its request, and on April 1, the university provided some of Cronon’s emails to the public, following state laws about access to public records.

John Dowling, senior legal counsel for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, included a statement with the released documents explaining why some emails remained hidden. Chancellor Carolyn "Biddy" Martin later explained the university’s decision in an email to the campus community. She emphasized the university’s commitment to protecting the right of academics to freely share ideas.

In response to these events, the University of Wisconsin-Madison Faculty Senate passed a resolution on April 4 to support academic freedom. The group, led by University Committee Chair Judith Burstyn, stated the university needed to publicly defend academic freedom after the freedom of information request targeting Cronon. Political scientist Howard Schweber, who helped write the resolution with Donald Downs, said, "The university cannot change the law, but it can take a strong position to support public employees and show that this action is wrong. What started as a way to increase transparency has become a tool to target individual public workers."

As of August 5, 2011, the Wisconsin Republican Party had not shared details about the contents of Cronon’s emails. The party also made other requests for public records. The American Association of University Professors, quoting Cronon, called the party’s actions an "obvious assault on academic freedom."

Honors

• In 1985, he received a MacArthur Fellowship.
• In July 2017, Cronon was chosen to be a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), which is the UK's national organization for studying humanities and social sciences.

Published works

• Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England, 1983; 20th anniversary edition, Hill & Wang, 2003.
• Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, W. W. Norton, 1991. ISBN 978-0-393-30873-0
• "Telling Tales on Canvas: Landscapes of Frontier Change," in Discovered Lands, Invented Pasts: Transforming Visions of the American West (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992).
• "A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative," Journal of American History 78:4 (March, 1992), p. 1347–1376.
• "The Uses of Environmental History" (Presidential Address, American Society for Environmental History), Environmental History Review, 17:3 (Fall 1993), p. 1–22.
• Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature. W. W. Norton. 1995. ISBN 978-0-393-31511-0.
• "The Trouble with Wilderness: Or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature," Environmental History, 1(1) (January 1996), pp. 7–28. read online
• "Only Connect…: The Goals of a Liberal Education," The American Scholar (Autumn, 1998), p. 73–80.
• "Why the Past Matters," Wisconsin Magazine of History, 84:1 (Autumn 2000), p. 2–13. Awarded the William Best Hesseltine Award for the best article published in the Wisconsin Magazine of History in 2000–2001. pdf
• "The Riddle of the Apostle Islands: How Do You Manage a Wilderness Full of Human Stories?" Orion (May–June 2003), 36–42.
• "The Densest, Richest, Most Suggestive 19 Pages I Know," Environmental History, 10 (4) (Oct., 2005), pp. 679–681.
• "Storytelling" (AHA Presidential Address), The American Historical Review (2013) 118 (1): 1–19.
• "Can history and geography survive the digital age? University of Wisconsin-Madison academic says disciplines, despite initial stumbles, might be better suited than some think" by Matthew Reisz read online