Harvard University has revoked the tenure of Francesca Gino, a celebrated Harvard Business School professor, and terminated her employment.
The Harvard Corporation, the university’s governing body, arrived at the extraordinary decision last week, Boston-area public radio station GBH reported Sunday.
In an ironic and humiliating twist, Gino, who was dubbed the “honesty professor” for her research on ethical behavior, ultimately had her prestigious career cut short after a school investigation cast doubt on the truth of her own work.
The trouble began in August 2021, when Data Colada, a blog run by behavioral scientists, flagged potential data fraud in a paper co-authored by Gino.
This paper was retracted a month later.
Harvard Business School launched an 18-month investigation that uncovered evidence of manipulated data in four of Gino’s studies. The manipulations were done to support Gino’s hypotheses, Harvard concluded.
The findings were damning for Gino, who was placed on unpaid administrative leave in June 2023. The school barred her from campus and revoked her named professorship.
Gino didn’t go quietly.
She filed a $25 million lawsuit against Harvard, university dean Srikant Datar, and the Data Colada bloggers, alleging defamation, gender discrimination, and invasion of privacy. The disgraced academic claimed the people named in her suit tried to ruin her reputation.
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The legal saga has so far had mixed results, but Gino was dealt a major defeat in September 2024 when a federal judge in Boston dismissed the defamation claims, ruling that her work was fair game for scrutiny under the First Amendment.
He left the breach of contract claim untouched and allowed Gino to add Title VII discrimination allegations to her lawsuit.
Tenure, a shield of academic job security, is rarely revoked. The last time a professor at the Ivy League university was stripped of the coveted status was in the 1940s, according to The Harvard Crimson.
The timing couldn’t be worse for Harvard.
With the university locked in a heated battle against the administration of President Donald Trump, the fall of such a renowned professor is sure to open up the school to even more criticism.
Gino stands out for losing her tenure, but she is not the most recent disgrace for the school.
Former university president Claudine Gay’s 2024 resignation came amid plagiarism allegations, but unlike Gino, she retained her tenure.
If Harvard is to win back public funds and public favor, it must first see that the people representing the school at the highest levels are, at a minimum, honest and committed to truth.
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