Just to wrap up the Joseph Ellis matter from September, I’ll note:

1) Pulitzer Prize winner Joseph Ellis lectured at Williams in September as part of a series on the Founding Fathers. (The original news announcements about this have disappeared from the Williams server.) Ellis was paid for his time. My problem with Ellis is that he has, for years, lied about his past to the undergraduates he teaches.

2) No one at the College would tell me what fee was paid to Ellis. Although this is a small matter, I’ll note that the easiest way to run an honest institution is to be as transparent as possible in your affairs.

3) Jack Rakove, another speaker in the same series, declined to say how much the College paid him, but suggested that a) academics don’t get much for these sorts of talks and b) Ellis probably got more than he did.

4) Other academics that I talked to suggested that a “typical” fee for something like this would be anywhere from 0 to $2,000 with really big names commanding much more.

In any event, my main concern is that Williams, by the very act of inviting Ellis to speak, honors him. The money is a secondary concern. By honoring Ellis, Williams implies that lying to undergraduates — or perhaps lying in general — is no big deal. I think that this is not a good message to send to either undergraduates or to the larger community.

Surely there was an honest and responsible scholar who could have lectured in Ellis’s place . . .