John H. Works, Jr. P.O. Box 807 Locust Valley, N. Y. 11560 1-713-703-1469 johnhworks@aol.com
July 4, 2001 Dean Richard A. Matasar New York Law School 57 Worth Street New York, NY 10013-2960
Dear Dean Matasar: The recent disclosures concerning the dishonesty of Pulitzer Prize winning historian Joseph Ellis reminds me of the unfinished matter of the doctored transcription used by another anti-Jefferson scholar, Professor Annette Gordon-Reed of your faculty. As you know, Professors Ellis and Gordon-Reed were the two most prominent advocates of the allegation that Thomas Jefferson fathered children by Sally Hemings. As I suspect you also know, on April 12th of this year a panel of more than a dozen very senior scholars from various disciplines and major universities across the country released the results of their year-long study on the Jefferson-Hemings issue and concluded that Thomas Jefferson was probably not the father of any of Sally Hemings children. This conclusion is consistent with the findings of generations of previous distinguished Jefferson scholars, including Dumas Malone and Merrill Peterson. If you have not seen it, the full report is available at: http://www.mindspring.com/-tjshcommission/. The doctored transcription used by Professor Gordon-Reed is as follows. A letter from Jefferson's granddaughter Ellen Randolph Coolidge was printed in Professor Gordon-Reed's book, but 12 words had been changed in a key sentence to totally reverse Ms. Coolidge's original clear meaning . Ellen clearly wrote "no female domestic ever entered his chambers except at hours when he was known not to be there and none could have entered without being exposed to the public gaze." However, her letter was altered to read , "no female domestic ever entered his chambers except at hours when he was known not to be in the public gaze." Since this disclosure was made, based upon press accounts, Professor Gordon-Reed apparently does not see this as a serious matter at all . If she did not fabricate the evidence, then she presumably knows who did and owes her readers and explanation and an apology for having misled many people. There has been no apology from Professor Gordon-Reed, who apparently is not even embarrassed that her deception has been disclosed. There is a material difference between the way her book portrays the key evidence and the truth. It seems highly unlikely that this was simply a typo - that no fewer than 10 words were changed, and others rearranged, to totally reverse the meaning of the document. The effect of this has been to mislead some very senior scholars. I am a lawyer and businessman, not a scholar. But from my perspective, altering historical documents is a more serious offense than plagiarism , as it misleads other scholars in their search for the truth. In contrast, plagiarism merely appropriates the work of another--without deceiving the reader as to the substantive truth of any statements of face in the appropriated material.
2 A person's scandal and deceit amounts to a serious matter when their actions go to the very heart of the public trust they purport to fulfill. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s plagiarism had no direct relationship to his service in the cause of civil rights. Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky had no direct relationship to his conduct of the office of President. Bob Kerrey's actions in Vietnam had no direct relationship to his service as a U.S. senator Ronald Reagan's claim that he was there when the death camps were liberated had no direct relationship to his conduct of foreign affairs. All of these actions were unfortunate, mistaken, even stupid. Nevertheless, they did not go to the essence of what was the man's job. But a scholar's stock in trade is his honesty and truthfulness about past history. Not every 'M>rd a scholar writes is footnoted and documented for verification. We reply upon them to be honest, and for them to betray that ~rust is to violate everything they stand for, everything they represent in the public eye. Professor Gordon-Reed has violated the public trust in ways that the other mistake-makers did not. Professor Gordon-Reed's lack of concern for these inaccuracies and comments that they didn't change anything should cause one to wonder about her interpretations of other evidence, too. It surely indicates a negligence of academic integrity and responsible scholarship. In candor, I am not a disinterested observer. I am a direct descendant of Thomas Jefferson and a former President of The Monticello Association, the organization of lineal descendants of Thomas Jefferson. But I am also not alone in being outraged over the disclosure that Professor GordonReed's highly touted book, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, was based in part upon historical "evidence"; that has clearly been altered. My first question is whether you, and your school, believe that it is professionally improper for a scholar to alter evidence in this manner? My second question is, if the answer to this question is yes, what have you done or what do you intend to do about this situation? Before I take this matter to the press, I thought I owed you the courtesy of at least making sure that you were aware of the charge and to give you an opportunity to either investigate and take appropriate disciplinary action, or should you decide her behavior is acceptable at your school to give you an opportunity to carefully prepare a response to press inquiries that will likely follow. For your information I also enclose an Op-Ed article that appeared in the July 3, 2001 edition of The Wall Street Journal.
cc: Professor Annette Gordon-Reed