Former Harvard Business School Professor Francesca Gino
‘DENIED DUE PROCESS’
When Gino conveys the facts of her story, Lessig expresses his own outrage. “This is a really critical point and I say that as a member of the Harvard faculty because it just strikes me as outrageous. You have effectively been gagged already. You don’t have an opportunity to talk to the people who could help you put together the evidence you would need to establish what I believe is true…But they think it’s necessary to have an expert to understand the data. The idea that they don’t let you have an expert to understand the data is extraordinary. It would be a violation of due process in a court…You are blocked from being able to have an expert who could help you resist or rebut or interrogate the evidence that comes out from the expert on the other side…That becomes quite significant, because eventually it’s shown this expert’s work is problematic, and they withdraw the expert as the expert they rely on in the tenure revocation proceeding.”
The investigation, of course, would ultimately find Gino guilty of academic misconduct. Gino received the final report from the committee in early March of 2023.
“When you read this you must have been devastated,” says Lessig.
“I think that is a good word for it,” she says. “The process had been hard and I just couldn’t understand why the conclusion they reached was the conclusion. I couldn’t make sense of it.”
“But you are finally understanding the consequence here?,” asks Lessig.
“Yes.”
GOING THROUGH SCENARIOS WHILE WAITING FOR A MEETING WITH THE DEAN
Three months later on June 13th, Gino would be summoned into the office of Harvard Business School Dean Srikant Datar. “It was a day when I was teaching the entire day in executive education and I remember sitting at 5 p.m. in the cafeteria waiting for the 5:30 meeting with the dean. I was just planning scenarios. And I thought that maybe there would be conversations about what do we learn from this experience and what needs to change, to sorry you had to go through this, clearly the wrong conclusion. I’m not even sure if I truly thought through the possibility that I would be asked to leave.”
Counters Lessig: “I don’t think you’re asked. So he brings you to the office. It’s 5:30, June 13th. He tells you not to speak. and he has a letter that he reads to you, right?
“Yep.”
“Is he emotional? Is he uncomfortable?,” asks Lessig.
“He doesn’t look uncomfortable. He doesn’t look emotional.”
DEAN ASKS A COLLEAGUE TO ‘COUNSEL HER OUT’
“And this letter is telling you that you have been put on leave. Unpaid leave. And the research integrity officer then contacts the journals that have published these pieces and shares the data galata data and the Maidstone reports and the conclusions. I take it he didn’t share your responses to it?”
“He did not,” confirms Gino.
“Yeah. And then, the dean reaches out to one of your colleagues, a professor, and asks that colleague to counsel you out. What does that mean?
“That means that the colleague came to me with a recommendation that I resign. And so the deal, in essence, as he was supposed to me, is that if I resigned, this would go quiet”.
“You didn’t take that deal?,” asks Lessig.
“I didn’t take that deal. As I told my colleague, I didn’t commit what I’m accused of.”
‘I WAS RADIOACTIVE’
“So you didn’t go silent,” adds Lessig, “which means that four days later, on June 17th, the news goes to the public. I remember hearing it and I was astonished. I didn’t believe it. But it almost writes itself, the story, right? An academic studying the psychology of fraud, convicted of engaging in fraud. The internet loved it. It was everywhere. Everyone was sure that this powerful Harvard professor, one of the young superstars of the Harvard Business School, turns out to be, as many think, not what anybody believes.”
Francesca’s voice begins to crack on the recording. “It was really hard,” she says in a fragile voice. “I think that summer was full of great low points…the press is going on fire, and reading the stories was really, really hard.
“I’m an endless optimist. And so I remember at the time looking at my husband and saying, ‘It’s okay. We are going to navigate through this, and I’m going to be able to keep my consulting.’ And I was wrong. And what we saw pretty much every day is a client or somebody I was working with calling up and saying that in light of the news, despite the fact that they didn’t believe what they read, I was radioactive, and so they couldn’t keep working with me.”
DON’T MISS: FRANCESCA GINO’S BEST CASE AGAINST THE HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL or AFTER LOSING TENURE, FRANCESCA GINO MAINTAINS HER INNOCENCE
The post Taking Off The Gag: A Podcast Series Dives Deep Into The Francesca Gino Tragedy appeared first on Poets&Quants.