a professor at Princeton, Wilentz was Elena Kagan's senior thesis advisor. Music As a contributing editor at The New Republic, Wilentz has published essays about music, the arts, history, and politics. He received a Grammy nomination, and a 2005 ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for the liner notes Wilentz contributed to the album The Bootleg Series Vol. 6: Bob Dylan Live 1964, Concert at Philharmonic Hall. In 2010, Wilentz published Bob Dylan In America, which placed Dylan in the context of American 20th century history and culture. The book contained essays on Dylan's relationship to Aaron Copland, Allen Ginsberg and the Beat generation, and the recording of Blonde on Blonde. Politics Wilentz has prominently engaged in current political debate. He is reportedly a long-time family friend of the Clintons. He has appeared in public venues as a staunch defender of Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton: he appeared before the House Judiciary Committee on December 8, 1998 to argue against the Clinton impeachment. He told the House members that if they voted for impeachment but were not convinced Clinton's offenses were impeachable, "...history will track you down and condemn you for your cravenness." His testimony cheered Democratic partisans but was criticized by The New York Times, which lamented his "gratuitously patronizing presentation" in an editorial. In 2006, he wrote an article denouncing the George W. Bush presidency, titled "The Worst President in History?" which appeared in Rolling Stone magazine. The article received a response from National Review, attacking Wilentz's analysis as "blinkered" and calling him "the modern Arthur Schlesinger Jr." Wilentz followed up during the 2008 general 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. In the wake of the October, 2013 federal government shutdown, he authored another article in Rolling Stone on what he called a "crisis" within the Republican Party, claiming the party was gradually descending into extremism. In 2008 Wilentz was an outspoken supporter of Senator Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee for the presidency. He wrote an essay in the New Republic analyzing Senator Barack Obama's campaign, charging Obama with creating "manipulative illusion[s]" and "distortions," and having "purposefully polluted the [primary electoral] contest" with "the most outrageous deployment of racial politics since the Willie Horton ad campaign in 1988." During the 2008 Democratic National Convention, Wilentz charged