Democratic Senate Candidate Elizabeth Warren has been all over the newspapers the past several days after a revelation that Harvard Law School identified her as a Native American faculty member in the mid-1990s. The claim to Native American status came as a shock to the media and the Scott Brown campaign.

Warren contends that she was unaware of the designation by HLS, and that it played no role in her hiring. Warren asserts that her Native American heritage is family lore, and based on what she has been told not any specific documentation she is aware of.

Subsequently, David Bernstein discovered that in annual reports by the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) from 1986-1994, Warren was listed as a minority faculty member. Since AALS bases such information solely on what faculty self-reports, the information must have come from Warren herself. The AALS directories, however, only identify whether the faculty member is “minority,” not what minority status is claimed.

There seems to be some uncertainty in news reports as to whether Warren filled out the AALS forms, and if so, whether she identified as Native American, with the Brown campaign demanding that she “come clean.”

I spoke this afternoon with Alethea Harney, Warren’s campaign press secretary, and confirmed several key details.

Harney acknowledged that the minority status reported by Warren to AALS was Native American, and that while Warren does not remember the precise forms, she believes there was a box or other designation to be selected for Native American.

The AALS reporting was the only time Warren self-identified as Native American as far as Warren currently is aware, according to Harney, and Warren never has joined any Native American groups, or asserted any tribal memberships.

According to Harney, Warren’s Native American status did not come up in connection with her hiring by HLS, and in fact she was recruited and did not apply.

Elizabeth Warren says she told Harvard, Penn of Native American heritage

Elizabeth Warren acknowledged she had told Harvard and Penn that she was Native American. When the issue first surfaced, Warren said she only learned Harvard was claiming her as a minority when she read it in the Boston Herald.

By Mary Carmichael and Stephanie Ebbert
Globe Staff
May 31, 2012
bostonglobe.com

Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren acknowledged for the first time late Wednesday night that she told Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania that she was Native American, but she continued to insist that race played no role in her recruitment.

“At some point after I was hired by them, I . . . provided that information to the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard,’’ she said in a statement issued by her campaign. “My Native American heritage is part of who I am, I’m proud of it and I have been open about it.’’

Warren’s statement is her first acknowledgment that she identified herself as Native American to the Ivy League schools. While she has said she identified herself as a minority in a legal directory, she has carefully avoided any suggestion during the last month that she took further actions to promote her purported heritage.

When the issue first surfaced last month, Warren said she only learned Harvard was claiming her as a minority when she read it in the Boston Herald.

Warren’s new statement came after the Globe asked her campaign about documents it obtained Wednesday from Harvard’s library. The documents show that the university’s law school began reporting a Native American female professor in federal statistics for the 1992-93 school year, the first year Warren worked at Harvard, as a visiting professor.

A campaign official said they had no records indicating that she had informed Harvard of Native American heritage that year.

The official further said that Warren had been unable to answer questions about the issue before now because the events occurred years ago, and many of the details had been forgotten, so she had asked her campaign to thoroughly review the evidence. The campaign declined to say whether Warren provided the information to Harvard and Penn verbally or by checking a box on a form.

Harvard’s records do not list a Native American during the two years Warren returned to her post at the University of Pennsylvania, but begin to list one again in 1995-96, when she returned to Cambridge as a tenured professor.

Two key people who recruited her to Harvard have said they did not know of her purported heritage or take it into account when hiring her. The school did not promote her as a Native American when she was hired, despite the fact that it was under intense pressure to diversify its faculty with more minorities.

Federal statistics like those in the Harvard records, which were compiled for the Department of Labor, rely on a definition of “Native American’’ that requires both ancestry and an official affiliation with a tribe or community. The 1992-93 and 1995-96 Harvard reports indicate the university relied on that definition during those years as well as the years since.

Warren has not met any of those standards. Though she continues to consider herself Native American, she has not provided any genealogical evidence.