Liars for the Cause

JOSEPH J. Ellis may never have been in combat in Vietnam, but he is certainly getting shelled now. In June, the Boston Globe revealed that Ellis, a professor of history at Mount Holyoke College and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, is also a distinguished writer of fictions about himself. He told his students that he served in Vietnam; he didn’t. He told them that when he got back home he became an antiwar activist. Not so. He said that he had done dangerous civil-rights work in Mississippi—another lie. He told a reporter that he had scored the winning touchdown for his high-school football team in the last game of his senior year. The Globe discovered that Ellis wasn’t on the team and that the team had lost its last two games that year anyway.

The Globe described its own report as an “explosive revelation,” and it has been taken as such. The administration at Mount Holyoke has issued a statement criticizing Ellis and launched an investigation of his lies to students and reporters. Colleagues have said they feel “betrayed” by him. Officials at both the American Historical Association and the American Association of University Professors have condemned him in the Globe. Historian David Garrow took to the paper’s op-ed page to write that Ellis should be “barred from ever again teaching history” because of this “horrible scandal.” The call has echoed far and wide. “Ellis should go,” editorialized the Los Angeles Times.

About the Author

Ramesh Ponnuru

Ramesh Ponnuru is the editor of National Review, a columnist for the Washington Post, and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

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JOSEPH J. Ellis may never have been in combat in Vietnam, but he is certainly getting shelled now. In June, the Boston Globe revealed that Ellis, a professor of history at Mount Holyoke College and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, is also a distinguished writer of fictions about himself. He told his students that he served in Vietnam; he didn’t. He told them that when he got back home he became an antiwar activist. Not so. He said that he had done dangerous civil-rights work in Mississippi—another lie. He told a reporter that he had scored the winning touchdown for his high-school football team in the last game of his senior year. The Globe discovered that Ellis wasn’t on the team and that the team had lost its last two games that year anyway.

The Globe described its own report as an “explosive revelation,” and it has been taken as such. The administration at Mount Holyoke has issued a statement criticizing Ellis and launched an investigation of his lies to students and reporters. Colleagues have said they feel “betrayed” by him. Officials at both the American Historical Association and the American Association of University Professors have condemned him in the Globe. Historian David Garrow took to the paper’s op-ed page to write that Ellis should be “barred from ever again teaching history” because of this “horrible scandal.” The call has echoed far and wide. “Ellis should go,” editorialized the Los Angeles Times.