FILE - In this June 1, 2018 file photo, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., speaks at the 2018 Massachusetts Democratic Party Convention in Worcester, Mass. Warren has released results of a DNA test showing Native American ancestry in an effort to diffuse the issue ahead of any presidential run. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)
The first-term Democratic senator's critics have accused Warren of advancing her career by claiming minority status as a descendant of Cherokee and Delaware tribes. Warren, 69, was born in Oklahoma and went on to become a professor at Harvard Law School.
It's not clear Warren's hiring there or anywhere else had anything to do with her heritage. She's denied using it to get ahead.
Warren acknowledged that she had identified herself as a minority in a legal directory for nearly a decade, and she was listed as a Native American in federal forms filed by the law schools at Harvard University and University of Pennsylvania where she worked, The Boston Globe reported in 2012.
Harvard University's decision to hire Warren as a law professor in the 1990s was not based on any assertion that she has Native American heritage, The Globe found. The newspaper reported that interviews and documents show the issue was not considered by Harvard Law faculty or those who admitted Warren to law school at Rutgers or to jobs at The University of Houston, The University of Texas, and the University of Pennsylvania.
