Congressional Candidate Evan Low’s Harvard Graduation Claims

The 16th Congressional District stretches across coastal San Mateo County into the Silicon Valley and San Jose area of Santa Clara County. Currently, the seat is up for grabs thanks to Congresswoman Anna Eshoo (D-CA) announcing that she would not run for reelection this year. As the district is virtually a lock for a Democratic candidate, multiple candidates came out earlier this year to run in the March primary. Former San Jose Mayor and current Stanford professor Sam Liccardo (D) easily won first place.

Second place turned out to be a bit of a hassle though. California saw a rare Congressional primary tie, with both Assemblyman Evan Low (D-Campbell) and Santa Clara County Supervisor and former state Senator Joe Simitian (D) tying for second. However, a recount in April managed to have Low come out in second by just 5 votes. In the end, Liccardo won with 38,492 votes, or 21.1% of the vote, with Low getting only 30,261 votes, or 16.6% of the vote.

With both candidates now in it for the general election this November, they are now being scrutinized more. This includes education. For Liccardo, this means a Bachelor’s degree from Georgetown and both a law degree and public policy degree from Harvard.

As for Low, it’s a bit of a question mark. For sure he has an Associate’s Degree from De Anza College and a Bachelor’s degree from San Jose State. But then comes the question of Harvard.

According to Low’s official Assembly campaign site, he “went on to graduate from the Senior Executives in State and Local Government Program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.”

His Assembly page says a similar “He went on to graduate from Harvard University’s Senior Executives in State and Local Government Program.”

Some outlets also note this, even saying he has a degree from Harvard. In a 2011 article, the Daily Kos said “Spending over a decade in community service is an impressive feat for a 28 year old, and with a degree from Harvard, Evan could have taken any kind of cushy Washington job that he wanted.”

But outside his official pages, there is pretty much no evidence of a degree from Harvard or graduating as he has claimed. Neutral sites like Wikipedia have no mention of this at all, with many California lawmaker pages only recording his degrees from De Anza and San Jose State. What did happen, and what Low muddled up, was a three-week certificate course that Low took and completed in 2008. Harvard University as well as his own LinkedIn confirm this. What Low has is no degree or any kind of graduation from Harvard. All he has is a three week Senior Executives in State and Local Government Program certificate that is offered to virtually anyone and is 100% online.

As Harvard University itself has noted “Our understanding is that you have asked about the executive education program in State and Local Government. This is not a degree program. We instruct participants to describe this as follows:

“(Name) was awarded a certificate of completion for the [Insert Program Name] Program, [Insert Program Month/Year], John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, Executive Education.”

Harvard graduates give even further confirmation of this.

“Yeah, don’t say you got a degree from Harvard or graduated from Harvard when you just went for the certificate program,” explained Matt Riley, a Harvard Law graduate who is also familiar with the certificate program to the Globe on Friday. “It’s cool that you did that, but be honest about it. You got a certificate from there on state and local government. A degree is a big-time commitment, no matter where you go.”

“I can’t speak for why Low did this. You said the other guy [Liccardo] has two degrees from Harvard? Well, he may be trying to compete, with that. But by looking at Low, he has a Bachelor’s from San Jose State. Honestly, he should be promoting that. A lot of people within a state love it when you decided to graduate in-state. Oh, and there is also the Ivy burn, where people gloss over you because you went to Harvard or Princeton or another Ivy.”

“He needs to stop saying he graduated from there and just say he completed a certificate from there. It isn’t as impressive, but it is honest and, if he is running for office and saying this, it’s kind of disappointing. Say you got a certificate and move on. You can’t say you graduated from a certificate program. That doesn’t happen. And he’s saying this on his Assembly page no less.”