College Suspends Professor

Disgraced historian Joseph J. Ellis will be suspended from Mount Holyoke College for a year because he lied to students about serving in Vietnam, the school announced Friday.

In a statement, college President Joanne V. Creighton said: “I strongly rebuke professor Ellis for his lie about his military experience.”

Ellis, who has taught at Mount Holyoke for 29 years, will receive no pay from the school during his suspension. He also will relinquish his endowed chair, a measure of academic distinction.

Ellis, a Pulitzer Prize winner and the author of several best-selling history books, admitted in June that he had fabricated his stories to students about serving in Vietnam. Ellis, one of the most popular professors at the small women’s college in western Massachusetts, taught several courses that dealt with the war in Vietnam. Students said he frequently enlivened his lectures with vivid descriptions of his Army service in Southeast Asia.

But an investigative report by the Boston Globe revealed that, while Ellis had served in the Army, he never went overseas. The newspaper story was prompted by Ellis’ own statement of his intention to write a book about his Vietnam service.

The 57-year-old scholar issued an apology in June. On Friday, his Boston attorney released a “further statement” in which Ellis accepted responsibility for his long pattern of prevarication.

“By misrepresenting my military service to the students in the course on the Vietnam War, I did something both stupid and wrong,” Ellis wrote. “I apologize to the students, as well as to the faculty [of Mount Holyoke], for violating the implicit covenant of trust that must exist in the classroom.”

Ellis’ statement also extended his apology to “those Vietnam veterans who have expressed their understandable anger about my lie.”

Ellis was commissioned as an Army second lieutenant when he graduated from college in 1965. His active duty was deferred for four years while he finished graduate school. He completed his Army service by teaching at West Point from 1969 to 1972.

In an interview Friday, Creighton said students returning to Mount Holyoke this fall will receive a letter explaining Ellis’ suspension and encouraging them to discuss the matter with faculty members.

She said the move to suspend Ellis followed an intensive inquiry by a faculty committee. Creighton emphasized that “the [final] decision was mine, as president.”

She called the punishment “fair and just and consistent with our honor code for students.”

Creighton said she hopes the suspension will not be the end of Ellis’ academic career.

“I believe he made a serious mistake, and I cannot condone it. Misrepresenting oneself to students is wrong, and we have to condemn it in no uncertain terms,” Creighton said. “But he has apologized, he has had a distinguished career as a scholar and teacher and college citizen, and has been an enormous contributor. In keeping with our honor code for students, where we hope that people can learn from their mistakes and grow beyond their mistakes, we hope he can do this as well.”

Ellis, who was not available for comment, won the 2001 Pulitzer for history for “Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation.”