Harvard Strips Tenure From HBS Superstar Prof Francesca Gino -

Francesca Gino has lost tenure protection at Harvard

For what many believe is the first time in its long history, Harvard University has stripped a one-time superstar professor at Harvard Business School of tenure.

The decision, announced in a closed-door meeting with business faculty this past week, officially puts to an end Gino’s lifetime employment protections at HBS. Tenure revocation represents the most severe discipline a university can impose.

For Gino, the university decision is a potentially career ending decision unless she can provide evidence that the data at issue was not intentionally falsified. Even if she is able to accomplish her innocence in her $25 million lawsuit against Harvard, this is a huge hit to her career and reputation.

It has been nearly two years since Harvard’s Office of the President notified Gino on July 28 of 2023 that it had begun the process of reviewing her tenure over allegations of research misconduct. The tenure review was initiated by HBS Dean Srikant Datar who by then had 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 loss of tenure represents 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 tenure rules. 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.

ALLEGATIONS OF RESEARCH FRAUD SURFACED FOUR YEARS AGO

Francesca Gino

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 Datar 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.”

TENURE REVOCATION CONFIRMED BY A UNIVERSITY SPOKESPERSON

Neither the university nor the business school made a public announcement of the move. It was first disclosed by GBH News and confirmed by a university spokesperson. Gino, who has vehemently denied that she did anything wrong, has not commented publicly on the decision. Previously, Gino has asserted that she has never “falsified data or engaged in research misconduct of any kind.” Her last LinkedIn post two weeks ago was a promotion of sorts for her book, Rebel Talent. A website, Francesca v Harvard, devoted to her lawsuit has not been recently updated.

Harvard has consistently declined public comment on the case, but after Gino filed her lawsuit, Dean Datar 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.”

Nonetheless, some faculty believed Datar’s treatment of Gino has been unusually harsh. At one point, seven tenured professors at Harvard Business School, remaining anonymous out of fear of retaliation by Dean Datar, say his handling of the Gino case has rocked their confidence in the school’s leadership. In a letter published in The Harvard Crimson, the professors accuse Dean Datar of violating the school’s norms of policy development by pushing through a new process to deal with professors accused of research misconduct without the knowledge or collaboration with the faculty. In fact, according to the professors, the new policy was in place for two years before ever being mentioned to faculty.