Warren Doesn't Know How Harvard Came To List Her As Native American

Elizabeth Warren said she doesn't know how Harvard came to list her as Native American.

"I don't know more than that," Warren told reporters at a Brighton event hosted by Boston City Councilor John Connolly.

The chairman of the Massachusetts Republican Party, Robert Maginn, wrote a letter Sunday to Harvard, asking the university to investigate Warren's claim of being a minority.

Warren listed herself as a minority professor in the directory of the Association of American Law Schools from 1986 to 1995, the year she received tenure at Harvard. The directory did not state what minority group Warren belonged to.

In 1996, Harvard Law School spokesman Michael Chmura told the Harvard Crimson that Warren was Native American. Neither the law school nor Chmura, now the director of communications at Babson College, has responded to requests for an explanation of how they made the determination that Warren was Native American.

Last year, a Harvard report on faculty diversity cited one senior faculty member at Harvard Law School as being Native American. Harvard has not responded to a request for the university to explain how it categorizes professors by race.