(Newser)
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For the first time since the controversy broke, Elizabeth Warren acknowledged last night that she did tell Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania she was Native American. Previously, Warren had only copped to identifying herself as a minority in a legal directory. A campaign official says she did not address questions about the universities before now because she had forgotten the details. Still, she insists race had nothing to do with her recruitment or hiring by the Ivy League schools, the Boston Globe reports.
"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. "My Native American heritage is part of who I am, I’m proud of it, and I have been open about it." Harvard's law school started reporting a Native American female professor in its ranks during the first year Warren worked there, stopped reporting such a professor while she did not work there, and listed one again when she returned. But two people involved in her recruitment say they were not aware of her heritage when they hired her. Warren has not met any of the federal standards defining herself as a Native American or offered any evidence of her heritage, the Globe notes.
