Harvard Revokes Tenure and Terminates Professor Over Data Manipulation Allegations

Tenure Revoked for the First Time Since 1940
Harvard Uncovers Four Cases of Data Manipulation After Year-and-a-Half Investigation
Professor Expresses Sense of Injustice

Major U.S. media outlets reported on May 27 (local time) that Harvard University has decided to revoke the tenure and terminate the employment of Francesca Gino, a prominent professor at its business school who has been embroiled in a controversy over research data manipulation.

The Harvard Crimson, the university's student newspaper, stated that this is the first time Harvard has revoked a professor's tenure since the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the American Association of Colleges (AAC) established standards for tenure and dismissal in 1940 to protect academic freedom.

At higher education institutions in the United States, once a professor is granted tenure after undergoing certain evaluations, they generally retain their position until retirement unless there are exceptional circumstances such as serious misconduct or financial crisis.

At some universities, there is no specified retirement age, allowing professors to remain in their positions until they voluntarily declare retirement.

The Harvard Board of Overseers decided to revoke Gino's tenure and terminate her employment at a meeting held earlier this month, and this decision was conveyed to the business school faculty during a closed-door meeting last week.

This development was first reported by WGBH, a public broadcaster in Boston, Massachusetts, on May 25.

Harvard confirmed to WGBH that Gino's tenure had been revoked and her employment terminated, but did not disclose specific details, citing personnel confidentiality.

The university added that such a revocation of tenure is extremely rare and has not occurred in decades.

Born in 1978, Professor Gino joined Harvard Business School as an associate professor in 2010 and has served there since. From 2018 to 2021, she was the head of the "Negotiation, Organizations, and Markets" unit.

NBC reported that Professor Gino's area of expertise is behavioral science, with her main research topics being "honesty" and "ethical decision-making."

Allegations of data manipulation by Professor Gino first surfaced in 2021 when fellow scholars and researchers raised concerns on a blog called "Data Colada."

Based on these reports, Harvard Business School launched an investigation, and after about a year and a half of internal review, concluded that data manipulation had occurred in at least four papers.

Subsequently, in June 2023, Professor Gino was placed on unpaid leave, and the formal process to revoke her tenure began the following month.

Professor Gino has denied the allegations of research misconduct against her, has expressed her sense of injustice, and is currently operating a website to explain her position.