William Yandell Elliott (May 12, 1896 – January 9, 1979) was an American historian and a political advisor to six U.S. presidents.
Born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, he served as an artillery battery commander in World War I.
As a Rhodes Scholar, he attended Balliol College, Oxford, where he read Philosophy, Politics and Economics and, among others, would meet the poet William Butler Yeats, the Indian nationalist Krishna Menon, and John Marshall Harlan II, a future Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.
He was a scriptwriter for Republican Richard Nixon's 1960 election run, but Democratic Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson retained him as a US State Department advisor.
Many attendees went on to become heads of state or government in their respective countries, including Yigal Allon in Israel, Yasuhiro Nakasone in Japan, and Pierre Trudeau in Canada.