As controversy has swirled around the map almost since its acquisition, authorities at Yale University chose not to comment on the authenticity of the parchment document, other than to say they watch the debate with unusual interest. "We regard ourselves as the custodians of an extremely interesting and controversial document," said Yale librarian Alice Prochaska in 2002, "and we watch the scholarly work on it with great interest." More recently, Yale's Chester D. Tripp Professor of History, Paul Freedman, has stated that the map is "unfortunately a fake".