The scandale militaire involving biographer Paula Broadwell and General David Petraeus has generated much handwringing over the ethics of biography in recent weeks. By all accounts, sleeping with your subject is unethical; keeping it a secret is worse. The Leon Levy Center for Biography (LLCB) at the Graduate Center, CUNY, will address these and related issues with a panel discussion led by award-winning writer and biographer Gary Giddins, LLCB’s executive director. The remarkable lineup includes two Pulitzer Prize–winning biographers, David Levering Lewis (W. E. B. Du Bois) and John Matteson (Louisa May Alcott); the MacArthur “genius grant” ethicist Carol Levine; and the American novelist Benjamin Anastas, whose new memoir, Too Good to Be True, has triggered a firestorm about telling too much.

The event will take place on Monday, December 10, at 5:30 p.m. in the Skylight Room (9100). Admission is free, but reservations are required.