1. Robert Sean Wilentz, better known as Sean Wilentz is an American historian who serves as the George Henry Davis 1886 Professor of American History at Princeton University, where he has taught since 1979.
22 Facts About Sean Wilentz
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Sean Wilentz has written several award-winning books and articles, including The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln, which was awarded the Bancroft Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for History.
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Sean Wilentz has co-authored books on nineteenth century religion and working class life in the USA.
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Sean Wilentz's goal was to revive the reputation of Andrew Jackson and Jacksonian democracy, which was under attack from the left because of Jackson's support for slavery, pursuit of escaped slaves, and his harshness toward Native Americans, including his forced removals of Indian populations from land confiscated by populations of European ancestry.
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Sean Wilentz returned to the pro-Jackson themes of Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
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Sean Wilentz received a Grammy Award nomination and a 2005 ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for the liner notes Wilentz contributed to the album The Bootleg Series Vol.
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In 2010, Sean Wilentz published Bob Dylan In America, which placed Dylan in the context of American twentieth century history and culture.
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Sean Wilentz is a long-time family friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton, and has been a staunch public defender of the Clintons.
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Sean Wilentz's testimony cheered Democratic partisans, but was criticized by The New York Times, which lamented his "gratuitously patronizing presentation" in an editorial.
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Sean Wilentz followed up during the 2008 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.
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In 2008, Sean Wilentz was an outspoken supporter of then US Senator Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president.
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For Sean Wilentz, Obama was untested, cloudy, and problematic, with liberal intellectuals giving him a free ride.
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Sean Wilentz was criticized by bloggers and others for his criticism of Obama.
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In January 2014, Sean Wilentz took issue with those involved in the 2013 NSA leaks, including those related to Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, and Julian Assange.
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In October 2020, Sean Wilentz called US President Donald Trump "the worst president in American history" for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and political polarization of the country.
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Sean Wilentz further wrote that Trump and Attorney General William Barr had created the greatest "existential crisis for American democracy" since the American Civil War through their alleged politicization of the US Department of Justice and attempted delegitimization of the 2020 presidential election, comparing Trump's ideology to the Confederacy and calling it "a bacillus of racism and authoritarianism".
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Sean Wilentz claimed Barr was advancing "an Americanized version of something more akin to Generalissimo Francisco Franco's Spain" and "a theocracy, overseen by a president who more closely resembles an elected monarch".
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Sean Wilentz compared Trump to John C Calhoun and Richard Nixon.
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Sean Wilentz corrected the frequent misquote attributed to Jackson regarding the court, provided the documented history of related aspects of the Jackson presidency, and discussed how strongly Jackson supported the rule of law.
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Sean Wilentz enumerated the articles of the Constitution of the United States of America that are being violated by Trump and his administration.
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Sean Wilentz has two children from his first marriage, to the historian Christine Stansell.
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Sean Wilentz is a Princeton Athletics Fellow for the Princeton Tigers baseball team.