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Massachusetts Democratic Senate hopeful Elizabeth Warren listed herself as white in personnel records at the University of Texas and declined to apply to Rutgers School of Law through a minority program, records show.
Warren, a Harvard Law School professor, is in a tight race with Republican Sen. Scott Brown, who has criticized her for listing herself as a minority in a professional directory from 1986 to 1995 and this week called for her to produce employment records.
Warren has said that she learned of her heritage through family lore; a genealogy expert has said she is at least 1/32 Cherokee.
The Brown campaign and GOP operatives have raised questions over whether she claimed to be a minority to boost her career.
The University of Texas at Austin, where Warren worked from 1983 to 1987, released documents showing Warren listed herself as white on employment records.
In her application to Rutgers Law School, she marked “no” when asked if she was applying as a minority, according to documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal. In a statement, the Warren campaign said the documents supported her claim that she rose in her field on merit.
Harvard University had touted Warren as a minority in 1996 when the school came under fire from critics who accused it of being too white and too male. The university has declined to say why it designated Warren a minority.
Meanwhile, a second school, the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where Warren taught from the late 1980s through the mid-1990s, designated her as a minority in a 2005 diversity report that is available online. The Boston Globe first reported on the controversy.
A spokesman for the University of Pennsylvania declined to comment on the report or how it came to list Warren as a minority.
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