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Boston University hires Harvard disinformation scholar Joan Donovan

Donovan’s dismissal from the Harvard program she’d directed since 2019 stunned many in the research community that studies social media’s role in U.S. politics

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Updated August 15, 2023 at 8:06 p.m. EDT|Published August 15, 2023 at 6:00 p.m. EDT
Joan Donovan at Harvard in late 2020. (Cidgy Bossuet for The Washington Post)
4 min

SAN FRANCISCO — Boston University has hired prominent disinformation expert Joan Donovan to a tenure-track position in its College of Communication after her dismissal as a Harvard University research director stoked fears about attacks on academic freedom.

The private Boston university said Donovan would start as an assistant professor on Sept. 1, a day after Harvard’s formal termination of her role at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. She will teach in the journalism department and the division of emerging media studies, which offers the only doctorates in the college.