June 23, 2001 Saturday

A Historian's Embellished Life; Joseph Ellis Took Meticulous Care With Facts -- Except His Own Story

Pamela Ferdinand, Special to The Washington Post

SOUTH HADLEY, Mass.

Mount Holyoke College Professor Joseph J. Ellis, a beloved instructor and acclaimed author, made his name for impeccable scholarship on the back of historical truth. With an eye for the telling detail and unsparing research reflected in hundreds of footnotes and references throughout his work, he rose to national prominence with his 1997 biography of Thomas Jefferson, which won the National Book Award, and his latest bestseller, "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation," which won this year's Pulitzer Prize for history.

Ellis, at 57, was clearly a man at the top of his game: A happily married father of three, a tenured professor at one of the top all-women's colleges, where students clamored to enroll in his history courses, and a winner of two top literary prizes in the past four years alone. His job was to tell it like it was. Yet for reasons perhaps unknown even to himself, Ellis could not resist telling his own life the way he wanted it to be.

Mount Holyoke College officials this week announced they will investigate admissions by Ellis that he deceived his students -- as well as his family and colleagues -- into believing he served in Vietnam. Allegations against the renowned historian first appeared Monday in a Boston Globe front-page article, which reported that he had long made false claims about his wartime service and that he also embellished other aspects of his life, including his involvement in anti-war and civil rights movements in the 1960s.

Last night in Washington, Ellis made a brief statement about his ordeal before delivering a lecture on his new book at the National Archives:

"When I agreed several weeks ago to be here tonight, I had no idea how difficult this occasion would be. As you know there's been a great deal of media attention in recent days on my own personal failings. And I once again want to repeat that I deeply regret having let stand and later confirmed any assumption that I served in Vietnam. After fulfilling tonight's commitment to the National Archives, my focus will be -- must be -- on my family as well as on my own personal shortcomings."

The revelation has shaken Mount Holyoke, a close-knit community of roughly 2,000 students in the heart of the Connecticut Valley, and astonished academics nationwide who are now left to pick over questions of professional ethics and personal psychology. Re[acute]sume[acute] padding is nothing new, but history as a vocation is widely perceived as a moral cut above politics or business in its mission to uncover the truth.

"This is quite unique," said Arnita Jones, executive director of the American Historical Association in Washington, whose ethical guidelines posit "intellectual honesty" as a primary responsibility of professors. "History teachers generally have a very high regard for the truth. That's what they spend their lives pursuing."

The Globe did not question the integrity of Ellis's scholarship. As one of the nation's foremost early American history scholars, Ellis has published a wide array of articles and books and delivered numerous public lectures. In his nearly 30 years at Mount Holyoke, he has served as dean of faculty and history department chairman, helping to recruit respected faculty such as former national security adviser Anthony Lake.

Acting on an anonymous tip, however, Globe reporter Walter V. Robinson found that Ellis embroidered the truth in and out of classrooms at Mount Holyoke and nearby Amherst College. So consistent, though seemingly sparing, was the deception that not even his wife knew until now that her husband did not serve in Vietnam, said one college source.

In a 1997 Globe interview to publicize the Jefferson biography, Ellis told the reporter he was considering writing a book about the year 1965 -- the same year he was in Vietnam. Last year, while promoting "Founding Brothers," Ellis told another reporter, Mark Feeney, that he was a platoon leader in Vietnam. Compared to being in ROTC, he said, "They did pay an extra $ 110 a month, and if you're going to do it, you might as well do it."

Feeney recalled how Ellis detailed time spent at Gen. William C. Westmoreland's headquarters in Saigon and how the general had half a dozen sets of fatigues freshly laundered and starched each day. Ellis mentioned discussing his service with author David Halberstam, who told the New York Times he has no recollection of such a talk.

When Ellis asked him to downplay his experience in Vietnam, Feeney said he interpreted the request as modesty.

Ellis wrote at least two articles for The Washington Post. In one, he referred in passing to "my military experience in the Vietnam War." In another piece in 1999, he took historian Edmund Morris to task for using fiction as a technique in a supposedly nonfiction biography of Ronald Reagan. "It was almost too good to be true," Ellis wrote. "Well, since history is almost always too good to be true, I should have known better."

His penchant for stretching the truth extended to the classroom, said students who recalled that Ellis related personal experiences in his popular Vietnam and American Culture course. Angel Kozeli, 24, who graduated from Mount Holyoke last year and attended his 20th Century U.S. Foreign Policy class, said Ellis claimed his unit was near My Lai shortly before the massacre of 1968. The firsthand account, although short on specifics, lent his seminar gravitas and heightened her respect for him, she said.

"I recall this ominous silence when he said that," she said. "I know what was on my mind was, 'Wow, how does a man live with that? He's been there.' "

She was stunned to hear otherwise: "I find myself saying, 'Why, Joe? You had all the credentials.' "

Ellis may have regaled students with war exploits, but military records show he never left the East Coast, according to the Globe. He served in ROTC at William and Mary, then enrolled in graduate school at Yale from 1965 through 1969 before teaching history at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. He was discharged from the Army in 1972 as a captain, the Globe reported. (Ellis graduated in the Class of 1961 from Gonzaga College High School in D.C., according to Joe Reyda, director of special events at the high school. He was on the honor roll throughout his four years )

Robinson, head of the Globe's investigative team, said the Boston newspaper had no choice but to publish its findings, given Ellis's growing stature. (The Globe banished columnist Mike Barnicle for shoddy reporting and columnist Patricia Smith for fabricating stories.)

"Ellis was not maybe on the same rung as [historian David] McCullough, but he was certainly getting there," Robinson said. "We almost expect to be deceived by our politicians, but for our children in the classroom, we want and still expect much more."

Mount Holyoke President Joanne V. Creighton, who initially defended Ellis, announced later this week that the college would investigate the allegations. Mount Holyoke has a strict honor code among its students, who are allowed to take self-scheduled exams in unmonitored rooms.

"Misleading students in the classroom is a serious academic matter, and claiming service in Vietnam falsely is disrespectful, especially to all who have served," she said in a letter to the editor, which cited the college's "commitment to the highest standards of academic integrity."

So close is the faculty that one of Ellis's longtime friends compared the shock to discovering a spouse had led a double life. Another saddened friend said Ellis, known for his principled nature and good humor, was in tremendous pain, and it was premature to discuss any consequences of his alleged actions. The average salary for a full-time professor is $ 94,000 a year.

"He's probably wondering how he could have messed up so badly," Donal O'Shea, the dean of faculty, said yesterday. "He cares so deeply about students. I find it hard to believe he was deliberately misleading them."

"We're all a bit shell-shocked," agreed Christopher Pyle, a politics professor who has known Ellis for 25 years. "There is a strong sense in this community that we should not rush to judgment."

Ellis decided this week that he will no longer teach his Vietnam and American Culture course. Last night, the lecture room at the National Archives was standing room only with about 100 historians, students and buffs and half a dozen reporters. Archives staff would not let reporters approach Ellis, who signed books afterward, and he brushed past reporters when he was done signing. The books were on sale for $ 21.

The audience seemed forgiving. They laughed heartily at jokes he made during the one-hour address, and gave him strong applause. "I think we all make mistakes, and the most important thing is how Professor Ellis lives the rest of his life, and I wish him well," said Ed Raines, a historian employed by the U.S. Army.

"It's sort of like President Bill [Clinton]," said Raoul Kulberg, a history buff and retired university librarian. "How could someone that smart do something that dumb? I don't think it diminishes his scholarship any more than I think Clinton's peccadilloes diminish his achievements as president."

Ellis is hardly the only exalted person to have felt the effects of fib-telling. Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden was forced to give up his presidential bid after plagiarizing remarks. U.S. chief of naval operations Jeremy Boorda killed himself rather than face allegations that he wore undeserved decorations.

Most recently, a University of Oklahoma professor apologized for lying to students about being a Navy SEAL. And a California Superior Court judge was recently found by a state panel to have falsely claimed to be a CIA agent and lied about his Vietnam war exploits to get appointed to the bench, according to news reports. His lawyers invoked an epidemic worthy of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel: Pseudologica fantastica, which causes a deliberate mixing of fact with fiction to protect self-esteem.

Some of Ellis's colleagues said that he made self-deprecating remarks and often seemed vulnerable, and more than one fellow scholar has noted the parallels to Thomas Jefferson, the subject of Ellis's award-winning biography titled "American Sphinx."

In the book, Ellis compared himself to Jefferson, another man who learned how to disguise insecurities. He noted the third president's "psychological agility, his capacity to play hide-and-seek within himself" and "his quite remarkable powers of deception and denial."

Jefferson exhibited the kind of duplicity, said Ellis, that is "possible only in the purest of heart."

Staff writer David Montgomery in Washington contributed to this report.