Former Harvard disinformation scholar says she was pushed out of her job after college faced pressure from Facebook

A nationally recognized online disinformation researcher has accused Harvard University of shutting the project she led to protect its relationship with mega-donor and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

The allegations, made by Dr. Joan Donovan, raise questions about the influence the tech giant might have over seemingly independent research. Facebook’s parent company Meta has long sought to defend itself against research that implicates it in harming society: from the proliferation of election disinformation to creating addictive habits in children.

Beginning in 2018, Dr. Donovan worked for the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and ran its Technology and Social Change Research Project, where she led studies of media manipulation campaigns. But last year Harvard informed Dr. Donovan it was shutting the project down, Donovan claims.

In a disclosure sent last week to Harvard leaders and US Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and made public on Monday, Donovan alleges that the University began restricting her research after the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative donated $500 million to fund a new university-wide center on artificial intelligence. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is the philanthropy run by Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, who both attended Harvard.

Details of the disclosure were first reported by The Washington Post. CNN has reached out to Harvard and Meta for comment. In comments provided to the Post, Harvard denied Donovan’s core allegations.

“This is a shocking betrayal of Harvard’s academic integrity and the public interest,” Libby Liu, the CEO of Whistleblower Aid, a nonprofit legal group that previously worked with the Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen.

“We’ve seen in the past how Big Tobacco, Big Energy and Big Pharma have succeeded in influencing, undermining, and co-opting research to protect their lies, their profits and evade accountability. Now Meta, with the complicity of a powerful ally, is following the same playbook. 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.

This is a developing story. It will be updated.