Elizabeth Warren says — for the first time — that she told Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania that she was Native American.

Boston Globe reports:

Federal statistics like those in the Harvard records, which were compiled for the Department of Labor, rely on a definition of “Native American’’ that requires both ancestry and an official affiliation with a tribe or community. The 1992-93 and 1995-96 Harvard reports indicate the university relied on that definition during those years as well as the years since.

Warren has not met any of those standards. Though she continues to consider herself Native American, she has not provided any genealogical evidence....

Professor Charles Fried, who sat on the committee that recruited Warren, reiterated to the Globe on Wednesday that he was unaware of Warren’s minority status when she was hired. He said that the committee never discussed it and that he does not consult the legal directory in which Warren had listed herself as a minority.

However, Fried acknowledged Wednesday to the Globe, it seemed strange that the issue of her heritage would not come up during the hiring process since she was recruited in the early 1990s, when the school was under intense pressure to diversify its faculty....