Joseph Ellis

SPOTLIGHT REPORT

Professor's past in doubt

Discrepancies surface in claim of Vietnam duty

By Walter V. Robinson, Boston Globe Staff, 6/18/2001

SOUTH HADLEY - At Mount Holyoke College, Joseph J. Ellis has never been more revered. He is a beloved mentor to many students, and perhaps the college's most popular and engaging professor. Now he has become a national literary icon for his 1997 Jefferson biography and the Pulitzer Prize in History he just
received for his latest bestseller, ''Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation.''

Yet Ellis's historical focus extends beyond the country's early days. For years now, his course on Vietnam and American Culture has been one of the school's most popular - enriched, say his students, by his sometimes detailed recollections of his own Army service in Vietnam.

But Ellis did not serve in Vietnam at all, according to military records obtained by the Globe and interviews with his friends from the 1960s. He spent his three years in the Army teaching history at the US Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. Ellis also appears to have exaggerated the extent of the involvement he claims to have had in both the antiwar and civil rights movements.

Last Thursday, Ellis agreed to an interview about the discrepancies. But Mount Holyoke spokesman Kevin
McCaffrey quickly canceled the interview. Ellis, he said, would not discuss any of the issues.

Friday evening, from the front stoop of his Amherst home, Ellis shook his head ''no'' when asked by a Globe reporter whether he would address the contradictions. ''I'll have to suffer the consequences of this,'' Ellis said.

Before cutting short the brief discussion, Ellis added: ''I believe I am an honorable man.''

Holyoke president Joanne V. Creighton released a brief statement to the Globe praising Ellis, but not
addressing any of the newspaper's questions. During nearly 30 years at Mount Holyoke, she said, Ellis
''has earned a reputation for great integrity, honesty and honor ... The College is proud to have him on our
faculty.''

McCaffrey, asked whether any of Ellis's Mount Holyoke colleagues had been suspicious of his Vietnam claims, said he had never heard anyone question Ellis's resume in McCaffrey's seven years at the school.

A review of records and Ellis's statements reveals that in interviews, lectures to students and statements to friends, he has embellished his accomplishments during the 1960s - even recounting for a Globe reporter last year how he scored a winning touchdown for his high school football team. But the school yearbook does not indicate that he was on the team.

Perhaps inevitably with his increasing fame, the two biographies of the 57-year-old Ellis have collided. Now, the small college here is left to grapple with the fact that it has long been misled into believing Ellis was an airborne soldier in Vietnam when, itturns out, he was actually safely ensconced in graduate school at Yale.

The biographer's official Mount Holyoke resume omits any mention of Vietnam, though Ellis's own choice of words at times would not raise eyebrows among those he led to believe he served in the war. For example, in a 1999 article he wrote for the Washington Post, Ellis cited ''my military experience during the Vietnam War.''

For years, Ellis's tales of war appear to have been confined mostly to classrooms on the campus of this
prestigious women's college, and to nearby Amherst College, where he has also taught about Vietnam. And
students who have heard those tales - and believed them - said he seldom offered more than scant detail
about his purported tour in Vietnam.

But his growing national prominence over the last decade has also widened his audience. And despite the
obvious risks, Ellis has recently publicly reiterated his claims about Vietnam.

Last year, he told Globe reporter Mark Feeney that he went to Vietnam in 1965 as a platoon leader and
paratrooper with the 101st Airborne Division. That year, the division's first brigade was one of the first Army units sent to the war zone by President Johnson.

In that interview, Ellis also drew attention to his civil rights work, and said that after returning from
Vietnam, he joined the peace movement while at Yale - motivated to do so by what he had seen in Vietnam.

Those assertions were included in the subsequent Globe article. But other claims were not. For example, Ellis told Feeney that his Vietnam service also included duty in Saigon on the staff of General William C.
Westmoreland, the American commander in Vietnam. And he said he later shared his observations about
Westmoreland with David Halberstam, the author of the 1972 best-selling book, ''The Best and the Brightest.''

But an extensive public record review by the Globe, as well as the accounts of Ellis's friends from those
years, contradict his assertions that he served in Vietnam. For his part, Halberstam said he has no
recollection of ever meeting Ellis, and that Ellis was not a source for his book.

To be sure, Ellis was in the ROTC at The College of William & Mary, and was commissioned an Army second lieutenant when he graduated in 1965. But his active duty was deferred for four years, until August 1969, according to his military records. The reason: Ellis spent those four years at Yale, according to the
university and his friends, earning two master's degrees and a doctorate in history.

In the 1965-66 academic year - the period Ellis claimed in a 1997 Globe interview to have been in Vietnam - his first year of graduate study was being funded by a Woodrow Wilson fellowship, according to the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.

Ellis's military records, obtained from the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, show that he
did not begin his active service until August 1969, with a two-month assignment to an officer's basic
course at Fort Gordon, Ga. In October 1969, he joined the history faculty at West Point. In June 1972, he
was discharged from the Army as a captain.

Egon R. Tausch, a San Antonio lawyer who joined the West Point history faculty in 1969 after serving as an
infantry company commander in Vietnam, recalled in an interview that Ellis once told him that he was in the
military because he had no other choice.

Paraphrasing Ellis, Tausch said his fellow officer said to him, ''Why should I go be a ground-pounder in
Vietnam when I can polish my academic credentials here at West Point?''

Tausch, who said Ellis was an outstanding teacher, added: ''There were some others there who chose that
route. There was no shame in it. They didn't burn their draft cards or flee to Canada.''

Also perplexing to Ellis's friends from the 1960s, are his claims of participation in the antiwar and civil rights movements.

In his remarks to the Globe last year, and to students, Ellis says he was motivated to oppose the war because of his experiences in Vietnam.

Katherine Clouse, who graduated from Mount Holyoke last month, and who audited his Vietnam course last year, recalled Ellis's view of the war from what he said in class. ''He was the veteran who came back and participated in the antiwar movement. So his perspective is very liberal,'' she said.

Although Ellis said in a 1975 interview that he thought the war was wrong, the Globe could find no evidence that he was in any visible way part of the antiwar movement. At Yale, two faculty members who knew him well - the administrator of the graduate program and Ellis's thesis adviser - said they cannot recall Ellis being involved in any antiwar activity.

''Joe was a superb student. But an antiwar activist? I don't recall anything like that,'' said Gaddis Smith,
a Yale history professor who oversaw graduate programs and who has written about the antiwar movement at Yale.

Edmond Morgan, an emeritus professor of history who was Ellis's thesis adviser, also expressed surprise at
the notion that his friend was involved in antiwar activities. ''I don't recall him being active at all,'' said Morgan.

Ellis's statements about his civil rights work are also puzzling. On the Ellis resume posted on Mount Holyoke's Web site, it states, ''Coordinator, Yale Intensive Studies Program for Minority Students (1969).'' And in a 1975 interview with a William & Mary alumni publication, Ellis said he recruited black students in the South in 1967 and 1968 for a Yale summer program. Indeed, the Globe has learned that he did visit the South to enlist students for the Yale program.

Yet in his remarks to the Globe, and to some of his students, Ellis has used bolder brush strokes to describe his role.

In last year's Globe interview, Ellis was quoted as saying he spent a summer doing civil rights work in Mississippi. ''An interesting time,'' he called it, citing instances in which local police pounded on his door at night and State Police followed his car.

The Globe article last year also noted that Ellis had played football. That was based on his detailed
representation to reporter Feeney, which was not published, that he was a running back at Gonzaga College High School in Washington, D.C. Ellis told Feeney that he scored the winning touchdown in the last game of his senior year.

That fall, however, according to Gonzaga's yearbook, the team lost its final two games. And Ellis is not
included in the team picture, which even lists those who were not there for the photograph. His yearbook
listing contains no mention that he played any sports.

The autobiographical revisionism appears to have occurred at Mount Holyoke, where Ellis has been for 29
years. Here, he has forged a career as scholar, teacher, and author that has been without public blemish.

''Joe Ellis has been a star, our star, from the time he came to Mount Holyoke in 1972,'' says an article the college posted on its Web site after he won the Pulitzer in April. And a meteoric rise it has been: Within six years of his arrival, he was chairman of the history department. From 1980 to 1990, he was also Dean of Faculty. He even served as the college's interim president for eight months in 1984.

If the resume embroidery causes collateral damage, it is likely to fall most heavily on his students. Unaware of the deception, several of them described Ellis in interviews this month as an unusually charismatic teacher. His dynamism in the classroom, said Brooke Thomson, a May graduate, ''envelops'' students ''in a conversation about the topic that makes them want to learn more.''

It appears that Ellis did not begin referring to himself as a Vietnam veteran until the 1980s. In the 1975 interview for the William & Mary Alumni Gazette, Ellis recounted, accurately, how he postponed his military obligation after his 1965 college graduation so he could do graduate work at Yale.

While he was at Yale, Ellis said in 1975, ''I knew I didn't want to go to Vietnam because it was all wrong.'' Instead, he said he arranged the West Point teaching assignment.

With the 1993 publication of his John Adams biography, Ellis became a nationally prominent historian, raising the prospect of awkward moments on a national stage before two separate audiences of people who know him, but who have different understandings of his resume.

Something of that sort occurred during a 1993 appearance on the popular C-SPAN program ''Booknotes.'' His description of his military service was rhetorically on the fence; thus it would not alarm those who know he spent his Army service at West Point or those he had led to believe he fought in Vietnam.

Asked about his background, Ellis said on the program: ''Undergraduate, College of William & Mary, entered the Army after that, eventually went to graduate school at Yale. Then, after that, still owed the Army and spent three years teaching on the faculty at West Point.'' In fact, he had no Army service between William & Mary and Yale.

Yet to seven Mount Holyoke and Amherst students interviewed by the Globe - and likely to countless others over the years - Ellis's accounts of his experiences in Vietnam have animated class discussions, and provided a realistic backdrop to historical discussions.

''The course was something so central to him because he did serve there, while his experience with Jefferson and Adams is otherworldly, so distant in comparison,'' said Erich C. Carey, an Amherst senior
who said he was impressed by Ellis's Amherst course, the Literature on Vietnam.

''When he is teaching,'' said Mount Holyoke's Thomson, ''he uses different anecdotes from his own personal experience in Vietnam ... to help us understand it better. But he doesn't want to force feed the class his personal views. He does have a very objective view of the war. He is able to step back from his own war experience in Vietnam.''

Amherst student Carey said Ellis's citing of his own service in Vietnam ''changed the dimension of the course. His having that personal experience gave the course more gravity.

''He was honest about his experience in the war and its effect on him as a person,'' Carey said. ''The
course allowed me to imagine myself in the circumstances he faced. Having the course taught by someone who was there helped.''

Carey described a moving moment during one class, when, he said, Ellis ''told us about a fellow, a strong jock, a college football player, who was drafted and came to Vietnam. They were out in the field, and this guy was reading Emily Dickinson poems that brought him to tears. That was the kind of stress these men were placed under.''

''The course was very meaningful for me,'' Carey added. ''I'm staring down the barrel of graduation, and I think back to that course and how the war was a test of his manhood ... It almost made me a tad jealous of people who had that choice to make - whether to go or not. He had gone, taken the test of manhood, and passed it.''

In a subsequent interview yesterday, Carey said he was offended and shocked to learn that Ellis did not serve in Vietnam. But regardless of what Ellis said, ''We did read genuine testimonies from people who were there. We still touched on something that was real.''

Peter Juran, an Amherst senior who took the same class and recalled Ellis talking about how he had served
honorably in Vietnam out of a sense of duty, said he too was shocked and perplexed at the deception. ''It
never would have occurred to me that he was being disingenuous,'' said Juran, adding, ''It seems incongruous that he would be living a lie like this.''

''He has all the right credentials. There was no need for him to fabricate any of this,'' Juran said.

Walter Robinson's e-mail address is wrobinson@globe.com. Globe Spotlight Team Reporters Sacha Pfeiffer and Matthew Carroll contributed to this report.

This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 6/18/2001.

College notes regret on falsities by professor

By Walter V. Robinson, Globe Staff, 6/20/2001

Mount Holyoke College President Joanne V. Creighton yesterday expressed regret at ''the effect'' of the misrepresentation by the college's Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, Joseph J. Ellis, who in the classroom and in newspaper interviews has made false claims that he served in Vietnam.

Meanwhile, the college said Ellis has decided that he will no longer teach the Vietnam and American Culture course, where he had led students to believe he had served in Vietnam.

Creighton's brief statement stopped short of criticizing Ellis for the misrepresentation itself and offered no hint that Ellis would be disciplined for the deceptions, although she said she and Ellis ''will talk further and begin to repair the damage.''

Ellis apologized for the Vietnam misrepresentations and ''other distortions'' about his personal life after the Globe disclosed on Monday that he had falsely claimed to have served in Vietnam with the 101st Airborne Division, an experience he also claimed led him to join the antiwar movement. He had also said that he spent a summer working for the civil rights movement in Mississippi, where he asserted he had been followed by law enforcement officials.

The college spokesman, Kevin McCaffrey, said it was Ellis's decision to give up the course.

Creighton and Ellis have both refused to be interviewed. And McCaffrey late yesterday refused to say whether Creighton still stood by her statement on Monday - before Ellis admitted the deceptions - in which she applauded his integrity.

In the Monday statement, Creighton said Ellis ''has earned a reputation for great integrity, honesty, and honor.'' In her new statement yesterday, Creighton said Ellis ''has earned a reputation as a beloved teacher and one of the nation's most prominent historians.''

Noting that Ellis has now acknowledged making a ''serious mistake'' and ''offered his deepest apologies,'' Creighton said: ''I too deeply regret the effect of his misrepresentation on students, colleagues, and the public.

''We at Mount Holyoke take this matter seriously and are committed to the highest standards of academic integrity. In the weeks ahead, Professor Ellis and I will talk further and begin to repair the damage,'' the statement read.

Ellis had also taught a course on the literature of the Vietnam War at nearby Amherst College. Three students told the Globe that Ellis talked about his Vietnam experiences in that class too. And yesterday, the Globe quoted a Mount Holyoke graduate who said Ellis did the same thing in a third course, on 20th century American foreign policy.

The Amherst course is not scheduled for the next academic year, and Amherst officials have yet to comment about Ellis's misrepresentations in their classrooms.

On Monday, the executive director of the American Historical Association said the organization's ethical guidelines prohibit professors from misrepresenting their experiences in the classroom.

In April, Ellis won the Pulitzer Prize for history for his best-selling book, ''Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation.'' Previously, he had won the National Book Award for a 1997 biography of Thomas Jefferson.

Your search results:

JOSEPH ELLIS IS A WINDOW TO THE PAST

Published on 06/22/2001. Article 1 of 162 found.

PROFESSOR JOSEPH ELLIS TEACHES AT ONE OF THE SEVEN SISTERS COLLEGES WHERE STUDYING DEAD WHITE MEN MIGHT BE CONSIDERED AS SOCIALLY APPROPRIATE AS ERECTING A NUCLEAR POWER PLANT IN THE MIDDLE OF CAMPUS. BUT MOUNT HOLYOKE WOMEN FLOCK TO ELLIS'S CLASSES, EAGER TO UNCOVER JOHN ADAMS AND THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Sitting in his classroom overlooking the spans of the Mount Holyoke green, I would have believed him had he told us that he himself had sat with Jefferson as the Founder decided to write "pursuit of Click for complete article (197 words)

PROFESSOR FACES INVESTIGATION AT MOUNT HOLYOKE

Published on 06/21/2001. Article 2 of 162 found.

SOURCE: By Walter V. Robinson, GLOBE STAFF Mount Holyoke College officials said yesterday they will investigate admissions by Pulitzer prize-winning historian Joseph J. Ellis that he deceived his students into believing he served in Vietnam. They expect to resolve the issue before students return for the fall semester.

Meanwhile, Vincent Ferraro, a professor of political science and one of Ellis's friends on the faculty, said last night that he and other faculty members are angry that Ellis has "betrayed the principles we all stand for," an Click for complete article (595 words)

A SERIOUS ACADEMIC MATTER

Published on 06/21/2001. Article 3 of 162 found.

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS CONCERNING JOSEPH ELLIS HAVE BEEN VERY DIFFICULT FOR THE MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE COMMUNITY, WHERE HE HAS A DISTINGUISHED BACKGROUND AS A SCHOLAR, TEACHER, COLLEAGUE, AND MENTOR (``PROFESSOR'S PAST IN DOUBT,'' PAGE A1, JUNE 18).

                       To my knowledge, during Professor Ellis's 29 years at Mount Holyoke, no one has previously brought to the college's attention any allegations about misrepresentation of his military record, and I presumed his innocence when I first heard of this matter.                     Click for complete article (190 words)

                      COLLEGE NOTES REGRET ON FALSITIES BY PROFESSOR

                       Published on 06/20/2001. Article 5 of 162 found.

SOURCE: By Walter V. Robinson, GLOBE STAFF Mount Holyoke College President Joanne V. Creighton yesterday expressed regret at "the effect" of the misrepresentation by the college's Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, Joseph J. Ellis, who in the classroom and in newspaper interviews has made false claims that he served in Vietnam.

Meanwhile, the college said Ellis has decided that he will no longer teach the Vietnam and American Culture course, where he had led students to believe he had served in Vietnam. Click for complete article (480 words)

DESPITE FABRICATIONS, ELLIS DID SERVE AS OFFICER DURING VIETNAM

Published on 06/20/2001. Article 6 of 162 found.

JOSEPH ELLIS'S ADMISSION THAT HIS PURPORTED VIETNAM SERVICE WAS FICTIONAL (PAGE A1, JUNE 19) IS WELCOME. HOWEVER, YOUR STATEMENT THAT ELLIS HAD NO ARMY SERVICE BETWEEN WILLIAM & MARY AND YALE IS MISLEADING (``PROFESSOR'S PAST IN DOUBT,'' PAGE A1, JUNE 18).

Upon commissioning as second lieutenants in the Army Reserve at graduation, both Ellis and I applied for a "delay in call to active duty" that detached us from active Army service and placed us in a file drawer in St. Louis. We received no pay, Click for complete article (296 words)

AT WAR WITH THE TRUTH

Published on 06/20/2001. Article 7 of 162 found.

JOSEPH J. ELLIS, revered history professor, distinguished scholar and writer, was a success story that needed no editing, but, sadly, he didn't read it that way.

As Boston Globe reporter Walter V. Robinson revealed this week, Ellis fabricated his military background, telling Mount Holyoke and Amherst College students in his popular courses on the Vietnam War that he fought in that conflict when he actually spent his Army years teaching history at West Point. Click for complete article (400 words)

PROFESSOR APOLOGIZES FOR FABRICATIONS

Published on 06/19/2001. Article 9 of 162 found.

SOURCE: By Patrick Healy, and Walter V. Robinson, Globe Staff

Declaring that mistakes are made "even in the best of lives," Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Joseph J. Ellis yesterday issued an apology for fabricating a Vietnam War record and for "other distortions" in his personal life.

His statement came after the Globe reported yesterday that Ellis, a nationally regarded historian, has for years cited his experiences in Vietnam during classroom discussions and newspaper interviews, even though his Army service was confined to a teaching post at West Point. Click for complete article (1123 words)

PROFESSOR'S PAST IN DOUBT DISCREPANCIES SURFACE IN CLAIM OF VIETNAM DUTY

Published on 06/18/2001. Article 11 of 162 found.

SOURCE: By Walter V. Robinson, GLOBE STAFF SOUTH HADLEY - At Mount Holyoke College, Joseph J. Ellis has never been more revered. He is a beloved mentor to many students, and perhaps the college's most popular and engaging professor. Now he has become a national literary icon for his 1997 Jefferson biography and the Pulitzer Prize in History he just received for his latest best seller, "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation."

Yet Ellis's historical focus extends beyond the country's early days. For years now, his course on Vietn Click for complete article (2415 words)

Report Questions Pulitzer Winner
Story Filed: Monday, June 18, 2001 2:25 AM EDT

SOUTH HADLEY, Mass. (AP) -- A Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer who has said he spent time in Vietnam during the war while in the Army never went overseas, according to a published report. Mount Holyoke College professor Joseph J. Ellis, who won a 2001 Pulitzer for history for his book, "Founding
Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation,'' also embellished his involvement in the antiwar and civil rights movements, The Boston Globe reported Monday. The Globe did not question the historical integrity of Ellis' books. The newspaper reviewed public records and interviewed some of Ellis' friends and colleagues. Ellis, 57, did not immediately return a message left at his Amherst home by The Associated Press Sunday night. Ellis, a respected colonial-era historian who has been at the women's college for almost 30 years, received the 1997 National Book Award in Nonfiction for "American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson,'' and has written five other books as well as dozens of scholarly articles. In an interview with the
Globe last year, Ellis said he went to Vietnam in 1965 as a platoon leader and paratrooper with the 101st Airborne Division. In the same interview he said his Vietnam service also included duty in Saigon on the staff of Gen. William C. Westmoreland, the American commander in Vietnam. Mount Holyoke and Amherst College students who talked to the newspaper said Ellis' lectures in courses about the Vietnam War made it appear as if he had served in Vietnam. Ellis was in the ROTC program at The College of William & Mary, and was commissioned an Army second lieutenant when he graduated in 1965. But his active duty was deferred four years, until August 1969, according to his military records, because he spent that time at Yale earning two master's degrees and a doctorate in history. Ellis' military records, obtained from the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, show that he did not begin his active service until August 1969, with a two-month assignment at Fort Gordon, Ga. In October 1969, he joined the history faculty at West Point. In June 1972, he was discharged from the Army as a captain. Ellis also appears to have exaggerated his involvement in the antiwar and civil rights movements. At Yale, two faculty members who knew him well said they cannot recall Ellis being involved in any antiwar activity. "Joe was a superb student. But an antiwar activist? I don't recall anything like that,'' said Gaddis Smith, a Yale history professor who oversaw graduate programs and who has written about the antiwar movement at Yale. Edmond Morgan, an emeritus professor of history who was Ellis' thesis adviser, said he did not recall Ellis being active in the antiwar movement. Ellis was scheduled to talk to the newspaper about the discrepancies
Thursday, but the college canceled the interview. When approached by a Globe reporter at his Amherst home Friday, Ellis refused to discuss the discrepancies and said "I'll have to suffer the consequences of this,'' before adding, "I believe I am an honorable man.'' Mount Holyoke president Joanne V. Creighton released a statement praising Ellis, but not addressing the inconsistencies.

On the Web: Mount Holyoke College,
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/offices/comm/profile/ellis.html
<http://www.mtholyoke.edu/offices/comm/profile/ellis.html>
Copyright © 2001 Associated Press Information Services

www.thetimes.co.uk

WEDNESDAY JUNE 20 2001

Top US scholar invented role in Vietnam War

FROM BEN MACINTYRE IN WASHINGTON

ONE of America's most celebrated history scholars, who is renowned for vividly recreating the past, has admitted fabricating chapters of his own life, including the claim that he fought in Vietnam.

Joseph Ellis, whose latest book, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, won a Pulitzer Prize this year and has been on the bestseller list for 26 weeks, conceded that he had misled his students at the
women-only Mount Holyoke College into thinking that he had served as a paratrooper in Vietnam, when in fact he remained in the United States during the war.

Professor Ellis, 57, who teaches a course on the Vietnam War, issued a statement saying: "Even in the best lives, mistakes are made. I deeply regret having let stand and later confirming the assumption that I went to Vietnam. For this and any other distortions about my personal life, I want to apologise to my family, friends, colleagues and students."

The incident illustrates how Vietnam war service, already a deeply emotive issue in US politics, has intruded into academia, but it also provides a remarkable insight into the dividing line between recording the history of others, and making it one's own.

The Boston Globe also accused Professor Ellis of exaggerating his role in the civil rights movement and anti-war protests.

Professor Ellis was accused of including in his lectures accounts of his own "interesting" military service in Vietnam and telling a reporter that he had served as a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne Division before joining the anti-war movement.

He also allegedly spoke of duty in Saigon under General William Westmoreland, the American commander in Vietnam. Military records show that Professor Ellis's active duty was deferred and that his three years of army service were spent teaching history at West Point military academy.

"One of the great things about his writing is that he recreates past situations with amazing vividness," Eric Foner, a history professor at Columbia University, told The New York Times. "Maybe he has become a victim of his own ability to do that."

Colleagues said that Professor Ellis had always taken a firm line on the need for strict factual accuracy in historical scholarship. "I remember him saying: 'You can't make it up,' " John Demos, of Yale University, said. "I think he was very strong and very persuasive on this."

One of the traumas left over from Vietnam may be the compulsion, among those growing up at the time, to invent their pasts by defining themselves against the great moral divisions of the era - a tendency to which historians may be particularly prone.

"This was essentially our passage to adulthood," David Oshinsky, an historian, said. "It was the way we defined ourselves. Some people actually went to Mississippi (during the civil rights struggle) and some people went to Mississippi in their heads."

Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, the oldest all-women college in the United States where Professor Ellis has taught for 30 years, stood by the historian yesterday, describing him as "one of the most respected scholars, writers and teachers in the nation".

He won the 1997 National Book Award for nonfiction for his book American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson.

He was confronted by reporters at his home in Amherst, Massachusetts, but would say only: "I'll have to suffer the consequences of this. I believe I am an honourable man."

/www.telegraph.co.uk/

ISSUE 2218 Thursday 21 June 2001

Professor quits over his Vietnam tall tales
By Philip Delves Broughton in New York

A PRIZE-WINNING American professor stood down from teaching history yesterday after admitting making up his own past. Joseph J Ellis informed Mount Holyoke College, a private university in Massachusetts, that he would no longer be teaching Vietnam and American Culture. His decision came after he confessed to lying to students about his own role in the Vietnam War.

Prof Ellis, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, told
undergraduates that he had served in South-East Asia with the 101st Airborne Division and that his
experiences led him to join the anti-war movement. But although he was in the army he did not do a tour of
duty in Vietnam.

Joanne Creighton, president of Mount Holyoke, said Mr Ellis had acknowledged making a "serious mistake" and "offered his deepest apologies".

dailynews.yahoo.com

Wednesday June 20 08:06 PM EDT
JEFFERSON MET HEMINGS IN VIETNAM
By Ann Coulter

So now it turns out that Thomas Jefferson was having sex with Sally Hemings while serving in the 101st
Airborne during the Vietnam War.

In a stupendously humiliating episode this week, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian -- and author of the
pre-impeachment report, "Jefferson Fathered Slave's Last Child" -- was exposed in The Boston Globe as
having lied about his service in Vietnam, in the civil rights movement, and even on the football field.

For years, Mount Holyoke professor Joseph "Full Metal Jacket" Ellis had been regaling students, interviewers and friends with gripping stories of his service in Vietnam. He claimed to have been a platoon leader and paratrooper with the 101st Airborne Division. He said he served in Saigon under Gen. William Westmoreland.

Ellis was recently forced to apologize for "having let stand" the "assumption" that he served in Vietnam.
Ellis whiled away the Vietnam War in his college dorm room, presumably, like most academics, smoking pot and listening to the Beatles' "White Album."

Among the "assumptions" Ellis had "let stand" was his claim that after witnessing the horror of Vietnam, he came home and enlisted in the anti-war movement. He also boasted of having helped David Halberstam with his 1972 best seller, "The Best and the Brightest," by sharing his vivid recollections of Vietnam.

He had no involvement in the anti-war movement, and Halberstam says he's never talked to Ellis.

The fantasy life of this deskbound Walter Mitty didn't stop at Vietnam. He has also bragged about his work in the civil rights movement. He claims that while on the Freedom Trail in Mississippi, he was the victim of
racist Southern cops banging on his door late at night and following him in his car. He wistfully recalled
his years as a high school football star, describing to a reporter last year how he once scored the winning
touchdown.

He wasn't in Mississippi, and his greatest moment on the football field involved a clarinet.

Between 'Nam flashbacks and Freedom Rider reunions, Ellis co-authored the groundbreaking 1998 report,
"Jefferson Fathered Slave's Last Child." You may remember this report if you weren't on the moon when
it was released. It was the Clinton flacks' giddiest "Gotcha!" moment. The report was unveiled to instant
acclaim -- as luck would have it -- just weeks before the House impeachment vote.

Bill Clinton wasn't a pervert, liar and felon after all! Rather, he was part of an honorable history of
venerable men molesting the help. As report co-author Ellis put it: "It is as if Clinton had called one of
the most respected character witnesses in all of U.S. history to testify that the primal urge has a most
distinguished presidential pedigree." Ellis claimed the new testing proved "beyond any reasonable doubt
that Jefferson had a long-term sexual relationship with his mulatto slave."

As the author of the award-winning "American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson" -- and a Vietnam veteran -- Ellis spoke with some authority on the matter. He dismissed the likely protestations from "die-hard Jefferson worshippers," proclaiming the debate over. "Now we know," he said.

Unfortunately, proof of a Jefferson-Hemings liaison was as fanciful as Professor Ellis' war service. Two
months after the report's "findings" had been published in every news outlet where English is spoken, there was a slight correction. One of Ellis' co-authors, pathologist Eugene Foster, admitted to the British science journal Nature that they had not proved Thomas Jefferson fathered any children by Sally Hemings. What they meant to say was "Jefferson could have fathered the slave's last child." Just like Ellis could have served in Vietnam.

The scientists had compared the DNA from descendants of Hemings' last son to the DNA of descendants of one of Jefferson's paternal uncles. The report established only that some Jefferson male had fathered a child with Hemings.

That isn't as incriminating as it might sound. There were 25 Jefferson males with the same DNA alive when
Hemings conceived her last son. Seven of them were at Monticello during the relevant time period. The
report's title was a lie.

This point was being screamed from the rooftops by various Jefferson scholars -- presumably the "die-hard
Jefferson worshippers" ridiculed by war hero Ellis. But their protestations didn't get much farther than
the rooftops. The American press wasn't interested.

Nor was the American press interested when the co-author of the study later disavowed the report's
purported conclusion in Nature. Only eight newspapers even mentioned the correction, and only four admitted that the report had actually narrowed the paternity list to Jefferson ... or one of seven other
Jeffersons.

Around the time that Ellis was promoting the phony Jefferson report, he pompously declared in The New
York Times that "a poll of the Founders would produce a clear majority" opposing Clinton's impeachment. So now I'm wondering -- did he meet those guys in 'Nam?

Lies About Vietnam

By KATHLEEN MEGAN
The Hartford Courant
June 20, 2001

David Oshinsky suspects there are a lot of "Joe Ellis'' clones out there: people who fabricate tales
of their war efforts or anti-war or civil-rights activism during the '60s.

"The era was so emotional that you basically got credibility by associating yourself with the movements
that people thought mattered,'' said Oshinsky, a history professor at Rutgers University. "For those who didn't get involved, there's both a guilt and a yearning to re-create that later."

Joseph J. Ellis is the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian who admitted this week that he misled his Mount Holyoke students into believing that he served in Vietnam when he actually did not.

Ellis - whose latest book, "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation," has been a national
bestseller for 26 weeks - also has been accused of exaggerating his role in the anti-war and civil-rights
movement during the 1960s, according to stories this week in The Boston Globe.

Oshinsky said he believes that Ellis is "only the tip of the iceberg" when it comes to the numbers of people
who have embellished stories of their role during the 1960s.

This is ironic, Oshinsky said, because not so long ago Vietnam veterans were the focus of societal scorn.
"There were no parades. People called you a baby killer."

But now, he said, people are regarded as "morally bankrupt if you weren't struggling with these issues"
on one side or the other.

"During the campaign, [George W.] Bush was battered for being a superficial, uncaring Yalie at the time
the war was raging and the great civil-rights movement was on," said Oshinsky. "He was sort of a normal
college student. But he was roasted by the press because these issues were so enormous that you had to
be on one side or the other and if you weren't, you were in a vacuum."

According to The Globe, Ellis, 57, frequently told his students in a course on Vietnam and American Culture
that he had served in Vietnam. The Globe also said that Ellis told a reporter last year that he was a platoon leader and paratrooper in 1965. The Springfield Union-News also reported this week that in 1994, Ellis told that newspaper that he was a 2nd lieutenant in the Army's 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam.

The Globe also interviewed several of Ellis' former students, who said the professor told them he was
involved at operations near or at My Lai.

Ellis apologized this week for what he called a "distortion,'' saying that he deeply regretted "having
let stand and later confirming the assumption that I went to Vietnam.''

Vincent Ferraro, a Mount Holyoke professor who co-taught a class with Ellis, said that he never heard
Ellis mention anything about Vietnam experiences.

"He's an unbelievable teacher,'' said Ferraro. "He's very clear, he's very precise and he really knows his
stuff.'' Ferraro said. "I'm sort of stunned, like everyone else.''

Dr. Lawrence Hartmann, a professor at Harvard Medical School and a former president of the American
Psychiatric Association, said it is not that unusual for a distinguished and successful person to embellish
his or her past.

"Being very successful does not mean you are quite as successful as you would like,'' said Hartmann. "If you are a very good teacher or writer, you may feel you want to be more of a dramatic or emotional presence to your pupils in the classroom.''

"The fact that professors are on the whole very concerned with truth makes this a news story,'' said
Hartmann. "We don't like to have someone concerned with the truth be untruthful.''

www.thescotsman.co.uk
June 21, 2001

Deceit leaves Pulitzer writer's reputation in tatters

Robert Tait in Washington

A PROMINENT US historian who won this year's Pulitzer prize has been forced to apologise for inventing an imaginary past of military service in the Vietnam war to burnish his lectures.

Joseph Ellis, author of several books about America's revolutionary founders, told his students at Mount
Holyoke College in Massachusetts that he had served in a US infantry unit in Vietnam and that he had been near the scene of the infamous My Lai massacre. He repeated and expanded on the assertions in newspaper interviews.

However, this week Mr Ellis, one of the country's most distinguished historians, was forced to admit that his experiences were fictitious after the Boston Globe revealed that he had spent the entire war in academia and had never served in Vietnam.

His entire military service, stretching from 1969 to 1972, was spent teaching history at the West Point
military academy. Before that, from 1965 to 1969, Mr Ellis had been granted a deferment to study for his
PhD at Yale.

In a statement released after the revelations in the Globe, Mr Ellis said: "I deeply regret having let
stand and later confirming the assumption that I went to Vietnam.

"For this and any other distortions about my personal life, I want to apologise to my family, friends,
colleagues and students. Beyond that circle, however, I shall have no further comment."

The "other distortions" Mr Ellis mentioned apparently referred to reports that he exaggerated his activity
in the anti-war and civil rights movements.

It was not clear yesterday whether Mount Holyoke, an élite liberal arts college traditionally attended by
women, would take any action against Mr Ellis.

The college's president, Joanne Creighton, issued a statement questioning the Globe's motives and saying
she was proud to have Mr Ellis on the staff.

"Professor Joseph Ellis is one of the most respected scholars, writers and teachers in the nation," the
statement said. "In his nearly three decades of teaching at the college, he has earned a reputation
for great integrity, honesty and honour."

Matters of academic integrity are treated with deadly seriousness in the United States and Mr Ellis stands
to lose much of his carefully crafted public credibility.

A rising star of the American celebrity historian community, his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Founding
Brothers, has been on the best-seller lists for six months.

His previous book, American Sphinx, about Thomas Jefferson, won the National Book Award.

Mr Ellis is a frequent contributor to television history programmes and to many prestigious publications, including the New York Times and the New Republic magazine.

Among his most extravagant claims now shown to be false was one that appeared in a newspaper interview
in which he claimed to have spent time in Saigon on the staff of William Westmoreland, commander of US
forces in Vietnam.

He said he had discussed his experience with the author David Halberstam, who wrote The Best and The
Brightest, recognised as one of the seminal books on Vietnam.

However, Mr Halberstam told the New York Times: "To the absolute best of my knowledge, I've never talked to him in my life about Vietnam. If I've met him, I don't remember it."

Distributed through the P.O.W. NETWORK in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107.