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

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.

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