NP - Joseph J. Ellis

[David Morris]

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/19/national/19ELLI.html

June 19, 2001
Prominent Historian Admits Fabricating Vietnam Record

By JANNY SCOTT

Joseph J. Ellis, the Pulitzer Prize- winning historian whose latest book, 
"Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation," has been a national best 
seller for 26 weeks, admitted yesterday that he had misled his students at 
Mount Holyoke College into believing that he was an airborne soldier in 
Vietnam when in fact he never served in Vietnam.

Professor Ellis, a well-known scholar of early American history and a Mount 
Holyoke professor who teaches a popular course on Vietnam and American 
culture, had also been accused in an article in yesterday's editions of The 
Boston Globe of exaggerating his role in the antiwar and civil rights 
movements and otherwise embellishing his experiences in the 1960's. The 
Globe said these statements were made to students and in interviews.

[...]

One historian, Eric Foner, a professor at Columbia University and a former 
president of the American Historical Association, said of Professor Ellis: 
"One of the great things about his writing is that he recreates past 
situations with amazing vividness — a moment in Congress in debate, a 
confrontation with Hamilton and Burr. Maybe he has become a victim of his 
own ability to do that."


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