Facebook files she considers the most important documents in internet history.
The actions impacting Joan Donovan's work coincided with a $500 million donation to Harvard 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» from Harvard's general counsel, the Massachusetts attorney general's office and the US department of education.
The CEO of Whisteblower Aid, a legal nonprofit supporting Donovan, called the alleged behaviour by Harvard's Kennedy School and its dean a «shocking betrayal» of academic integrity at the elite school.
«Whether Harvard acted at the company's direction or took the initiative on their own to protect (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 rejected the disclosure's allegations of unfair treatment 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 said in a statement.
The Whistleblower Aid statement quotes Donovan accusing Dean Douglas Elmendorf of subjecting her team to «death by a thousand cuts» after she began making robust plans