Former Harvard disinformation researcher alleges school pushed her from job after Zuckerberg donation  

A prominent disinformation researcher who worked at Harvard University alleged her project was thwarted and her position ended early after the university received a $500 million donation from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, according to a whistleblower disclosure released Monday. 

The researcher, Joan Donovan, alleged that Harvard blocked her and her team at the Shorenstein Center at the Harvard Kennedy School from continuing their research and eventually ended Donavan’s employment before the end of her contract after the Chan Zuckerberg initiative committed a $500 million donation to a university center on artificial intelligence in December 2021.  

Donovan, represented by Whistleblower Aid, the nonprofit group that previously worked with Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, requested an investigation into appropriate influence at the Harvard Kennedy School, according to the disclosure sent last week to Harvard’s president, as well as the U.S. Department of Education and the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office. Details of the disclosure were first reported by The Washington Post.  

The $500 million donation from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative came after Donovan began a project called the “Facebook Archive,” which aimed to make the internal Facebook documents released by Haugen publicly available, the disclosure stated.  

Whistleblower Aid CEO Libby Liu said Meta is following the playbook of “Big Tobacco, Big Energy and Big Pharma,” of influencing and co-opting research to “protect their lies, their profits and evade accountability.”  

“Whether Harvard acted at the company’s direction or took the initiative on their own to protect Meta’s interests, the outcome is the same: corporate interests are undermining research and academic freedom to the detriment of the public,” Liu said in a statement.  

Harvard pushed back strongly on the allegations. James Francis Smith, a spokesperson for the Harvard Kennedy School, said in a statement the disclosure’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,” Smith said. 

Smith said research projects at Harvard Kennedy School need to be led by “faculty members,” and Donovan was hired as a “staff member” to manage a media manipulation project. When the original faculty leader of the project left Harvard, the school unsuccessfully tried to identify another faculty member to lead the project and gave the project “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,” Smith added.  

A spokesperson for Meta declined to comment.  

A spokesperson for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative said in an email, “CZI had no involvement in Dr. Donovan’s departure from Harvard and was unaware of that development before public reporting on it.”

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is a philanthropic organization set up in 2015 by Chan and Zuckerberg, who both attended Harvard.

Donavan worked at Harvard, most recently as director of the Technology and Social Change Research Project, between December 2018 and August 2023.  

The disclosure alleges that in August of last year, Douglas Elmendorf, dean of the Kennedy School, put Donovan on a “hiring and fundraising freeze” and told her she “did not have academic freedom or even the legal ‘rights’ to her own research.”  

Although Donovan was contracted to continue her role through December 31, 2023, on July 12, 2023 she was informed by the Kennedy School that they were ending her program and her employment effective August 31, 2023, according to the disclosure.  

Donovan is now an assistant professor at Boston University’s College of Communications. 

She is also the author of the book, “Meme Wars: The Untold Story of the Online battles Upending Democracy in America,” and has testified before Congress.  

In February, Harvard’s student-led newspaper The Crimson reported that Harvard was ending Donovan’s project and restricting her from raising new funding or conducting additional hiring, which Harvard spokesperson Smith said at the time was due to the project lacking a full faculty member.