Ousted propaganda scholar says Harvard bowed to Meta
Aprominent disinformation scholar has accused Harvard University of dismissing her to curry favor with Facebook and its current and former executives in violation of her right to free speech.
Joan Donovan claimed in a filing with the Education Department and the Massachusetts attorney general that her superiors soured on her as Harvard was getting a record $500 million pledge from Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg’s charitable arm.
As research director of Harvard Kennedy School projects delving into mis- and disinformation on social media platforms, Donovan had raised millions in grants, testified before Congress and been a frequent commentator on television, often faulting internet companies for profiting from the spread of divisive falsehoods.
Last year, the school’s dean told her he was winding down her main project and that she should stop fundraising for it. This year, the school eliminated her position. The surprise dismissal alarmed fellow researchers elsewhere, who saw Donovan as a pioneer in an increasingly critical area of great sensitivity to the powerful and well-connected tech giants.
Donovan has remained silent about what happened until now, filing a 248-page legal statement obtained by The Washington Post that traces her problems to her acquisition of a trove of explosive documents known as the Facebook Papers and championing their importance before an audience of Harvard donors that included Facebook’s former top communications executive.
Harvard disputes Donovan’s core claims, telling The Post she was a staff employee and that it had not been able to find a faculty sponsor to oversee her work, as university policy requires. It also denies she was fired, saying she “was offered the chance to continue as a part-time adjunct lecturer, and she chose not to do so.”
Donovan obtained the Facebook documents when they and the former Facebook employee who leaked them, Frances Haugen, were the subject of extensive news coverage in October 2021, with The Post writing that the documents showed Facebook “privately and meticulously tracked real-world harms exacerbated by its platforms, ignored warnings from its employees about the risks of their design decisions and exposed vulnerable communities around the world to a cocktail of dangerous content.”
As the main attraction at a Zoom meeting for top Kennedy School donors on Oct. 29 that year, Donovan said the papers showed Meta knew the harms it was causing. Former top Facebook communications executive Elliot Schrage asked repeated questions during the meeting and said she badly misunderstood the papers, Donovan wrote in a sworn declaration included in the filing.
Ten days after the donors meeting, Kennedy School dean Doug Elmendorf, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, emailed Donovan with pointed questions about her research goals and methods, launching an increase in oversight that restricted her activities and led to her dismissal before the end of her contract, according to the declaration. Donovan wrote that the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s $500 million gift for a new artificial intelligence institute at the university, announced Dec. 7 that year, had been in the works before the donor meeting.
Leaders at the Kennedy School “were inappropriately influenced by Meta/Facebook,” Donovan claims in her declaration. “A significant conflict of interest arising from funding and personal relationships has created a pervasive culture at HKS of operating in the best interest of Facebook/Meta at the expense of academic freedom and Harvard’s own stated mission.”
The filing raises questions about the potential conflict of interest created by Big Tech’s influence at research institutions that are called upon for their expertise on the industry.
“The document’s allegations of unfair treatment and donor interference are false. The narrative is full of inaccuracies and baseless insinuations, particularly the suggestion that Harvard Kennedy School allowed Facebook to dictate its approach to research,” Kennedy School spokesperson Sofiya Cabalquinto said by email. “By policy and in practice, donors have no influence over this or other work.”
Cabalquinto’s email added: “By long-standing policy to uphold academic standards, all research projects at Harvard Kennedy School need to be led by faculty members. Joan Donovan was hired as a staff member (not a faculty member) to manage a media manipulation project. When the original faculty leader of the project left Harvard, the School tried for some time to identify another faculty member who had time and interest to lead the project. After that effort did not succeed, the project was given more than a year to wind down. Joan Donovan was not fired, and most members of the research team chose to remain at the School in new roles.”
Elmendorf declined to comment.