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Where are Nancy MacLean’s Defenders?

In a comment in a Facebook thread on why no notable left-leaning professional historian has yet weighed in to criticize the countless criticizable parts of Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains, David Bernstein (a GMU colleague from over in the Scalia School of Law) observes that no prominent historian has, as yet, come to MacLean’s defense (at least none that David is aware of; I, too, am unaware of any such defense).

David’s observation is a good one.  Might the reason be that, while not wishing to criticize someone who criticizes the Kochs (however shabby and without evidence that criticism might be), any decent and self-respecting historian understands that he or she would imperil his or her own professional reputation by attempting to defend the intellectual merits of a book that has no such merits to defend?

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