There's little point in rehashing the extent to which Carlin allegedly was forced to resign.  My guess is that people formed their opinions on this a year ago based on any number of considerations.  I don't know how much information you all had because I was not subscribing to this List then.  If anyone wants to read Bruce Craig's account of the resignation letter, see

http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=H-NCH&month=0404&week=d&msg=7UhaKiMm/gmZYfN5YKVWdQ&user=&pw=

Bruce represents the National Coalition for History.

With Carlin gone now, the more interesting question for me is how people debate issues in public forums.  A few thoughts.

1.   The Carlin issue came up in the context of Listserv discussions.  Absent the ability to post an in-depth interview with Carlin, I doubt everything surrounding his departure can be resolved here or on the Archives List.  My experience with the Archives List was that most people were willing to listen to each other without attacking individual List posters.

2.  Bruce Craig generally takes a cautious view in his newsletter.  He is a lobbyist who represents a number of groups.  Moreover, he is an historian.  One sees plenty of qualifiers in his reports, they are not just gossip or rumor.

2.  NARA's people do not have a history of airing out lots of issues in the press.  If someone told Bruce something for the newsletter, it is worth considering in that context.  Someone within NARA must have felt strongly about the issue to talk to Bruce.

2.  I talked to a number of people at NARA last year.  We discussed Carlin's situation.  No one told me that he was not forced to resign prematurely.  I know more about the context than I'm willing to get into here, but I did not talk to Carlin himself about why he left before his expected departure date of June 2005.

5. What if you had a boss who suddenly was removed from his position but had done nothing wrong that you knew of?  Let's say it is not a situation where he can be removed totally without cause.  (Keep in mind the legislative history of the NARA independence legislation).  Your boss probably would appreciate people speaking out on his behalf rather than sitting back and saying, yikes, keep me out of this, too scary, I'm keeping my head down.  But obviously, there are situations where a person might decide that he just couldn't speak out.

If you did speak up publicly on the issue, you probably would expect that as an insider -- or former insider -- your views should carry more weight than those of outsiders who are just guessing or projecting.  And you certainly would want people to assess the risks that you took in speaking out.  On the Carlin issue, I give more weight to what a NARA insider tells me or tells Bruce Craig for his newsletter than what someone such as Steve says from outside.  But the reverse would be true if it were Steve's boss who was removed.  If the issue centered on Steve's office, and Steve spoke up on the List to provide context, I'd give his opinion more weight than that of an outsiders.  Isn't that natural?

List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html
Contact [log in to unmask] for assistance