If Harvard Succeeds In Revoking Francesca Gino's Tenure, It Would Be History Making

[travesty of the game [7.08(i)]]

Francesca Gino could be the first person ever to be stripped of tenure at
Harvard University

If Harvard Business School is successful in stripping Professor Francesca
Gino of tenure, it could be the very first time any faculty member at
Harvard University has lost the lifetime protection tenure offers a
faculty member.

Harvard’s Office of the President notified Gino that it had begun the
process of reviewing her tenure on July 28 over allegations of research
misconduct, nine years to the month in which she was promoted to a full
professor and granted tenure by Harvard Business School on July 1 of
2014. HBS Dean Srikant Datar had already put Gino on an unpaid
administrative leave, banned her from campus, revoked her named
professorship, and prevented the professor from publishing on Harvard
Business School platforms. Gino’s lawyers, who filed a $25 million lawsuit
against Harvard, HBS Dean Datar and the authors of the Data Colada blog
that initially alleged data fraud in her research, confirmed that the
process had begun.

If Gino loses tenure, it would likely be the first time Harvard University
has forcibly stripped a tenured faculty member’s position since the 1940s,
when the American Association of University Professors formalized rules
around tenure. Tenured faculty have long been considered invincible. More
often than not, professors who are under pressure from a university
administration voluntarily surrender their tenure or simply retire.

GINO COULD BE THE FIRST HARVARD PROFESSOR TO BE STRIPPED OF TENURE EVER
Harvard’s own rules maintain that it has the power to dismiss a tenured
professor “only for grave misconduct or neglect of duty,” though it does
not define those terms.

The Harvard Crimson, the university’s student newspaper, noted the
challenges of the process. “Gino’s tenure review promises to be a complex
process, even without considering the ongoing lawsuit,” according to the
Crimson. “Before the Harvard Corporation — the University’s highest
governing body — makes a final determination, the complaint must pass
through reviews by two separate bodies. First, a Screening Committee must
make an initial assessment of the claims against Gino. If it decides
further action is warranted, this first committee makes a recommendation
to a Hearing Committee. This second committee, composed of tenured
professors, then conducts an investigation and recommends further action
to the Corporation, which has final jurisdiction over tenure revocation.”

That review will occur while Gino’s lawsuit moves forward in U.S. District
Court in Boston. Gino received the notice from Harvard five days before
she filed her Aug. 2 lawsuit alleging defamation, breach of contract and
gender discrimination.

AN HBS COMMITTEE FOUND GINO RESPONSIBLE FOR RESEARCH MISCONDUCT
An award-winning behavioral scientist at Harvard Business School, Gino was
first accused of fabricating data by Data Colada in July of 2021 when
authors of the blog approached Harvard Business School with their
allegations. According to her lawsuit, Dean Datar negotiated a secret
agreement with Data Colada, putting off the publication of their posts
until HBS had the opportunity to investigate the claims. After an 18-
month-long investigation by a three-person committee of former and current
HBS professors, the panel concluded that Gino was responsible for research
misconduct. Dean Data accepted the committee’s verdict and suggested
punishment on June 13th of this year. Gino has maintained her innocence
throughout, raising questions about the fairness of the process as well as
the harshness of the penalties imposed on her.

Word of the school’s findings quickly leaked out. A mere three days later,
in a June 16th article entitled A Weird Research-Misconduct Scandal About
Dishonesty Just Got Weirder, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported
that one of Gino’s co-authors claimed that Harvard found that one study
contained even more fraudulent data than previously revealed and was now
asking the journal to note this new information. It was quickly followed
within 24 hours by more detailed reporting by Data Colada with the start
of a four-part series examining data in four separate studies co-authored
by Gino. “We wrote a report about four studies for which we had
accumulated the strongest evidence of fraud,” the blog authors asserted.
“We believe that many more Gino-authored papers contain fake data. Perhaps
dozens.”

HBS Dean Datar sent an email to the school’s faculty on the Chronicle’s
article. “Last Friday,” he wrote, “the Chronicle of Higher Education
published an article describing concerns that have been raised about the
research of a member of our faculty, Francesca Gino, as well as steps the
School is taking with journals and co-authors to correct the scientific
record. Other outlets are beginning to carry stories as well. While I know
you may have questions, confidentiality is an important consideration in
these matters. I realize this runs counter to our longstanding norms of
transparency and communication but hope that you can appreciate and
understand the reasons for this approach.

DEAN DATAR HAD THE SCHOOL’S WEBSITE MAKE CLEAR THAT GINO WAS PLACED ON
ADMINISTRATIVE LEAVE
“As reflected on Professor Gino’s public Faculty & Research page, she is
now on an administrative leave. We have been taking steps to ensure that
her responsibilities are transitioned-working, for example, with the
Doctoral Programs leadership to support PhD students, and with the leaders
of our educational programs to adjust teaching assignments. I am grateful
to those of you who have stepped up to help. If you have a question about
an activity or collaboration and have not yet been contacted, please let
me know.

“Research integrity is and must be one of our core values as an
institution. I am grateful for your unwavering commitment to advancing
knowledge and for being a vital part of our vibrant research communitv.”

Many in the faculty were shocked, if not horrified. They believed Gino was
a person of high integrity and would never have manipulated data in a
study. In fact, every witness interviewed by the committee that
investigated the charges said exactly that.

Harvard has consistently declined public comment on the case, but after
Gino file her lawsuit, he wrote another email to the faculty defending his
decision to discipline Gino. ” I ultimately accepted the investigation
committee’s recommended sanctions, which included immediately placing
Professor Gino on administrative leave and correcting the scientific
record (a measure incumbent on every responsible academic institution when
research misconduct is found),” Datar wrote. “I did so after consulting
confidentially with a small number of individuals at HBS and Harvard,
including senior faculty members here at the School, as is permitted by
our policy. The sanctions reflect a shared belief that the misconduct
represented a significant violation of academic integrity and that the
evidence not only met but surpassed the applicable preponderance of
evidence standard. I shared my conclusions with Professor Gino and, in
accordance with our policy and consistent with University practice, began
implementing the institutional actions.”

Gino’s lead attorney, Andrew Miltenberg, was little impressed byDatar’s
defense. “Dean Datar’s email to faculty leaves many questions unanswered,”
he told Poets&Quants. “For example, why was a brand new policy put in
place in 2021 for Professor. Gino, and yet it was only now – in 2023 –
being shared with faculty?,” he asks. “And furthermore, why were faculty
not consulted at all on this new policy? Why specifically was Harvard
abandoning its former policy and tailoring a new one specifically for
Professor Gino? And why, after they rushed to put it in place, did Harvard
fail to follow that policy as stated?”

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