Honesty -- The Lost Value

Last June, a Boston Globe article revealed that Joseph J. Ellis, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and professor since 1972 at Mount Holyoke (the women's college in western Massachusetts), had for years lied to his students and others about having been a combat soldier in Vietnam.

As the New York Times reports:

The lectures in his course "Vietnam and American Culture" were sprinkled with personal anecdotes from the time when, he said, he was a paratroop platoon leader. In reality, his military service consisted of three years of teaching history at West Point.

("College Suspends Professor for Vietnam Fabrications," August 18, 2001.)

This story is not in itself a cultural indicator -- it's news because Prof. Ellis represents an abnormality. The article notes that "Professor Ellis's fabrications [have] sparked a national debate about academic integrity."

It's the comments by the peripheral players quoted in the same article, in particular Mount Holyoke's president, Joanne V. Creighton, that offer a striking reflection of the state of our culture today. The same article reports:

Ms. Creighton's strong rebuke [of Prof. Ellis] is an about-face from her staunch defense of Professor Ellis in June, when she criticized journalists, saying, "We at the college do not know what public interest The Globe is trying to serve through a story of this nature." Yesterday she said in an interview that she regretted that statement.

"When I first heard of this matter, I genuinely believed that it was erroneous, that it was an accusation that would prove to be false," she said. "I genuinely respect the right of the press to pursue the truth."

Unless one is terribly optimistic, it is evident that Ms. Creighton's statement is almost surely a lie. But it's not a careless lie, like Prof. Ellis's Vietnam stories. It has deniability (even if implausible). It is thus the accepted, expected behavior of public personages, even college presidents, and even when the subject under discussion, ironically, is dishonesty as an ethical breach.

The article also contains a remarkable quotation from Mary Burgan, general secretary of the American Association of University Professors, who seems to have missed the heart of the issue:

[She] said the punishment [suspension for a year without pay] seemed fair. "The situation shows the danger of becoming the center of the discourse rather than having the texts and evidence be the center," Ms. Burgan said. "Teaching is, in some ways, like acting. We really worry when it becomes overdramatic and autobiographic."

An Aug. 17 Times article on the same subject quotes the familiar "move on" adjuration that always attends the public defense of matters dubious: "Eleanor Claus, chairman of the college's board of trustees, said the board supported Creighton. 'We think she's a fine president and we want to move on.'"