Harvard muzzled disinformation staff after $500 million Zuckerberg donation, whistleblower alleges

A outstanding disinformation scholar who left Harvard University in August has accused the varsity of muzzling her speech and stifling – then dismantling – her analysis staff because it launched a deep dive in late 2021 right into a trove of Facebook information she considers an important paperwork in web historical past.

The actions impacting Joan Donovan‘s work coincided with a $500 million donation by a foundation run by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan. In a whistleblower disclosure made public Monday, Donovan seeks investigations into “inappropriate influence” by Harvard’s basic counsel, the Massachusetts legal professional basic’s workplace and the U.S. Department of Education.

The CEO of Whisteblower Aid, a authorized nonprofit supporting Donovan, referred to as the alleged habits by Harvard’s Kennedy School and its dean a “shocking betrayal” of educational integrity on the elite college.

“Whether Harvard acted on the firm’s route or took the initiative on their very own to guard (Facebook‘s) interests, the outcome is the same: corporate interests are undermining research and academic freedom to the detriment of the public,” CEO Libby Liu said in a press statement.

In response, the Kennedy School rejects the disclosure’s allegations of unfair therapy and donor interference. “The narrative is full of inaccuracies and baseless insinuations, particularly the suggestion that Harvard Kennedy School allowed Facebook to dictate its approach to research,” spokesman James F. Smith mentioned in an announcement.

The Whistleblower Aid assertion quotes Donovan accusing Dean Douglas Elmendorf of subjecting her staff to “death by a thousand cuts” after she started making strong plans in October 2021 to create a analysis clearinghouse for the so-called Facebook Files, which had been gathered by former worker Frances Haugen to spotlight public harms.

Following the disclosures, Zuckerberg modified Facebook‘s name to Meta.

Despite the company’s public stance that Haugen was blowing inside analysis out of proportion, Donovan and different unbiased researchers thought of the paperwork affirmation that Facebook‘s design had radicalized people, its algorithms fomenting racial animosity, encouraging ethnic cleansing and damaging teen mental health.

“I believed, honestly, that these were the most important documents in Internet history,” Donovan said in an interview Monday. “Our role as academics is not to play favorites. It’s to not do P.R. It’s to inform the reality, irrespective of how uncomfortable it makes us. And sadly, I misplaced my job for it.”

Donovan claimed Elmendorf “made it so that I couldn’t hire and I couldn’t start doing projects,” halting her fundraising, barring her from holding conferences with greater than 30 attendees, and stopping her from launching “a podcast because he didn’t want to, quote unquote, raise my public profile.” She mentioned that led her to halt media interviews and publish opinion items.

“Our plan was to go at the elections in 2024,” Donovan mentioned. ” I had raised. $4.5 million at one level in order that we might do our work via 2024.”

Donovan mentioned that after her contract was minimize brief she refused a severance package deal as a result of she felt she could be complicit “if I were to take in a payoff for my silence.”

Harvard employed Donovan, now an assistant professer at Boston University, in 2018, the place she led the Technology and Social Change Research Project. In May 2020, she was promoted to analysis director of the Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center, the place she lectured.

In its assertion, the Kennedy School denied that Donovan was fired. It mentioned she was a workers member – not a college member – and all analysis tasks on the college have to be led by college members. The college “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” and most members of the analysis staff remained in analysis roles.

Donovan mentioned she was not conscious of any seek for somebody to take over as head of the analysis venture, which she based and for which she mentioned she had raised $12 million.

In its assertion, The Kennedy School mentioned it “did not receive any portion of the Chan-Zuckerberg gift,” which went to Harvard University for work unrelated to its personal.

Both Chan and Zuckerberg went to Harvard, the place Facebook was first launched.

Harvard in the end did launch an archive of the Facebook Files although Donovan mentioned it was significantly much less formidable and open than she envisioned.

Meta was consulted on redactions to the roughly 20,000 pictures in that archive and the Kennedy School staff managing it determined to make about 160 of the greater than 800 redactions requested by the corporate – in practically each case to take away the identify of low-level Meta workers or outdoors individuals for privateness causes, Smith mentioned. He added that the Kennedy School’s Public Interest Tech Lab gave researchers early entry to the archive in May 2023 and it turned extra absolutely public in October.