Yeah the guy is a dum-dum. Academia is a special place. People compartmentalize like crazy, turning off the parts of their critical approach to thinking as needed. An example is when a young earth creationist gets a PhD in something biological. This also applies to every other field, including history. And it is actually more prevalent there, as funding and promotion mechanisms reward liberal apologists and anticommunism, but not young earth creationism. So this guy can do a bunch of highly specific historical work and do an okay job at it, get published, have students, etc etc, but also say the goofiest crap and get away with it because it is for a lay audience or at a conference with th3 Black Book of Communism guy. They are not hounded out, but are instead rewarded because this part of their work provides a baseline for the freedom burger eagle institute to continue villifying the left. And people like this control the peer review process.