Harvard revokes a professor's tenure for the first time in decades

Harvard University revoked the tenure of a prominent behavioral scientist and business professor who was accused of manipulating data in her published work.

A spokesperson for the university confirmed on Tuesday that Harvard Business School professor Francesca Gino’s tenure has been revoked, marking the end of a chapter in the long-running dispute between Gino and the university, which is ongoing in court.

In 2021, fellow scholars in her field published a blog post in Data Colada raising questions about the data in a paper that Gino co-wrote nearly a decade earlier. The paper was subsequently retracted due to questions regarding the validity of the data.

In 2023, Data Colada levied additional accusations of fraud in three other papers that she co-wrote. Harvard Business School also investigated five allegations of wrongdoing and found misconduct in each example.

The Harvard report concluded that Gino “significantly departed from accepted practices of the relevant research community and committed research misconduct intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly.”

Gino has filed a lawsuit against the authors of the blog and Harvard, and parts of the lawsuit remain ongoing.

Gino has adamantly denied accusations of wrongdoing, saying last year that, “while my lawyers have discouraged me from speaking out, I just need to say that I did not — ever — engage in academic fraud.”

“Once I have the opportunity to prove this in the court of law, with the support of experts I was denied through Harvard’s investigation process, you'll see why their case is so weak and that these are bogus allegations. Until then, this is all I can share,” Gino continued in her statement last March.

It is exceedingly rare for a professor’s tenure to be revoked. According to the school newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, no professor is known to have their tenure revoked since at least the 1940s, when the rules were formalized.