Did Senate Candidate Elizabeth Warren falsely Minoritize Herself to Advance her Career?

Massachusetts’s Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren has been in hot water regarding her motley habit of sometimes claiming to have Native American heritage on Law School employment forms. She says her Cherokee lineage is a matter of family lore — there is only a distant relative who is Native American, yet some of her employment forms allegedly claim a mixed descent. Critics are claiming that Warren used her alleged Native American background to advance her career, but she said she only identified herself this way in order to meet people similar to herself.

“The best way to satisfy these questions is for Elizabeth Warren to authorize the release of her law school applications and all personnel files from the various universities where she had tough,” said her opponent in the race for the U.S. Senate, Republican Sen. Scott Brown.

The documents we have give mixed answers to whether she manipulated minority programs. At the University of Pennsylvania, where she taught law from 1987 to 1994, she is listed as a minority, but also that she did not apply for the minority program when applying for law school.

At William A. Schnader, where she worked as professor of commercial law, she was listed as a minority member, and she was recognized as a minority faculty member when she won the Linback Award for distinguished teaching. Harvard listed her as a diversity hire in 1996.

Nevertheless, the campaign officials deny that when Warren minoritized herself she was seeking personal gain:

“At every law school where Elizabeth was recruited to teach, it has been made absolutely clear she was hired based on merit, on her accomplishments and ability,” said spokeswoman Aletha Harney.

Her stay at the University of Houston from 1978 to 1983, and her undergraduate studies at George Washington University do not list her as a minority.