Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is lecturing Republicans about transparency in the hiring process, despite her own dubious distinction as a “Native American” professor at Harvard University.
“If you’re going to #draintheswamp, prove it, @SenateGOP,” Warren posted to Twitter Wednesday. “Protecting 2 men who lied during their job applications isn’t the way to start.”
If you’re going to #draintheswamp, prove it, @SenateGOP. Protecting 2 men who lied during their job applications isn’t the way to start.
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 1, 2017
Warren’s comments presumably refer to Trump cabinet picks currently undergoing confirmation hearings in the Senate, but they take on a special kind of irony in light of her claim to be Native American while teaching at Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania in the 1990s.
Warren confirmed during her 2012 Senate campaign that she identified herself as Native American as she secured highly paid professorships at the schools, despite the fact that she doesn’t meet the federal definition, The Boston Globe reported.
Warren also listed herself as a Native American minority in an Association of American Law Schools directory designed to help schools find racially diverse faculty.
Warren has defended her alleged Native American heritage, which she claims is based on “family stories” passed down by her parents and grandparents, but has never provided any proof of her ancestry.
“I am very proud of my heritage,” Warren told NPR in 2012. “These are my family stories. This is what my brothers and I were told by my mom and my dad, my mammaw and my pappaw. This is our lives. And I’m very proud of it.”
“As a kid, I never asked my mom for documentation when she talked about our Native American heritage. What kid would? But I knew my father’s family didn’t like that she was part Cherokee and part Delaware, so my parents had to elope,” she said in a 2012 campaign ad, according to CNN.
Warren also famously said a family trait of “high cheek bones” also serves as evidence she’s got Indian blood in her veins.
“I have lived in a family that has talked about Native Americans, talked about tribes since I had been a little girl,” she told CBS News. “I still have a picture on my mantel and it is a picture my mother had before that – a picture of my grandfather. And my Aunt Bea has walked by that picture at least a 1,000 times remarked that he – her father, my Papaw — had high cheek bones like all of the Indians do. Because that is how she saw it and your mother got those same great cheek bones and I didn’t. She that thought was the bad deal she had gotten in life.”
“Being Native American has been part of my story, I guess, since the day I was born,” Warren continued.
Warren’s opponent in 2012 Senate race, Scott Brown, thankfully exposed Warren’s claims for what they were.
“Professor Warren claimed that she was a Native American, a person of color,” to further her academic career, Brown said. “And as you can see, she’s not.”
Folks on Twitter quickly called Warren out on her hypocritical tweet Wednesday.
“Like you were honest on your job application fauxahontis?” FLnative replied. “Give it up honey your no more Indian than I.”
“Says the lady who lied about being a Native American to get a job at @Harvard,” Kandi Rider wrote.
“Like claiming you’re part Native American?” JWF posted.
“She’s 0% Cherokee,” The Chris Coon added. “She’s a blonde, blue-eyed, privileged, dishonest woman.”
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