Fired engineer who wrote the Google manifesto listed a PhD program on his LinkedIn page that has now disappeared

James Damore / Facebook

James Damore, the fired Google engineer who wrote the now-infamous memo on diversity at the company, has removed mention of PhD studies in biology from his LinkedIn profile.

The removal comes after Wired writer Nitasha Tiku confirmed with Harvard that Damore has not completed his PhD. A Harvard spokesperson confirmed to Business Insider that while Damore was enrolled in the PhD program, he hasn't completed the degree, but did receive a master's in biology. The spokesperson would not say why Damore left the program, but it's not uncommon for people to put their PhD studies on pause.

Damore's biology studies became a crux of a right-wing argument that he had credibility in claiming biological differences between men and women could account for lacking gender diversity at Google. However, those claims were backed up with shoddy data from Wikipedia and various news articles. Business Insider's Dana Varinsky was able to debunk many of Damore's scientific claims.

Google fired Damore earlier this week, saying his claims about gender violated the company's code of conduct.

Here's what Damore's LinkedIn profile looked like earlier this week:

LinkedIn

And here's what it looks like now, after he removed mention of his PhD studies and added mention of his completed master's degree:

LinkedIn

Damore hasn't responded to several requests for comment this week. Google is not commenting on the matter beyond CEO Sundar Pichai's memo to employees Monday from night.

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