You should not be using the VWP to enter the US as a visiting scholar. The VWP comes instead of B1/B2, while the status you're interested in is J1. You should get a proper visa and then you won't have to worry about what happens if you get caught breaking the terms of your stay.

Since apparently there's a lot of ignorance on the matter, here's the official quote from the US State Department:


  Citizens from a country participating in the Visa Waiver Program (VWP)
  who want to enter the U.S. temporarily as exchange visitors, must
  first obtain a an exchange visitor visa. Exchange visitor program
  participants cannot travel on the VWP, nor can they travel on a
  visitor (B) visa.


Here's the chart of visa types matched to visit purpose. As you can see, visiting scholar requires J type visa.

Here's the terms and conditions of the VWP program. As you can see, it is explicitly limited to tourism or business(B1/B2 visa):


  The purpose of their stay in the United States is 90 days or less for
  tourism or business (Visitor (B) visa) purpose of travel.


Do visits to conferences while a visiting scholar reset the 90 days under VWP?
How is application pool implemented in IIS?


Is each application pool equivalent to a .Net AppDomain?
Or it is a equivalent to a .Net process?
How is Application pool related to IIS w3wp.exe? 

