He received a Doctor of Philosophy in British urban and economic history from the Jesus College of the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar in 1981.

[4] Cronon is best known for his first book Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (1983), based on a seminar paper he wrote for his Yale adviser Edmund Sears Morgan.

Most of all, it means practicing remembrance and gratitude, for thanksgiving is the simplest and most basic of ways for us to recollect the nature, the culture, and the history that have come together to make the world as we know it.

His first blog post, on March 15, 2011, pointed to an out of state, national campaign by a group called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

[6] According to Anthony Grafton of The New Yorker, "Cronon argued from indirect evidence that ALEC had played a major role behind the scenes in Governor Walker's attack on public employee unions in Wisconsin.

[11] University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Carolyn "Biddy" Martin expounded up on this decision in an email to the UW-Madison campus community on the same day: We are excluding students because they are protected under FERPA.

We are excluding exchanges that fall outside the realm of the faculty member's job responsibilities and that could be considered personal pursuant to Wisconsin Supreme Court case law.

[12] In response to these events, on April 4 the Faculty Senate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison passed a resolution to protect academic freedom.

What was begun as a classic notion of sunshine being the best disinfectant has turned into a law that's used as a weapon to target not government officials and offices but individual public employees.

[15][16] The American Association of University Professors (quoting Cronon) said that "this action by the Wisconsin Republican Party is an 'obvious assault on academic freedom'".