Harvard University

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Harvard’s E-Mail Searches Went Further Than Previously Reported

Harvard University officials disclosed on Tuesday that secret searches of e-mail accounts following a cheating scandal were more extensive than previously acknowledged, according to reports by The Boston Globe and Harvard Magazine.

The new revelations came during a tense meeting of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences on Tuesday afternoon. Harvard had previously acknowledged conducting subject-line searches of the administrative e-mail accounts of 16 “resident deans,” who live in undergraduate residential houses, serve as student advisers, and have some teaching duties in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, or FAS. Resident deans also serve on the Administrative Board, which investigated the cheating allegations, and the initial search reportedly was seeking to discover who had leaked a board document that later appeared in The Harvard Crimson.

But at Tuesday’s meeting, Evelynn M. Hammonds, who is dean of Harvard College and chair of the Administrative Board, acknowledged that she had authorized two additional investigations of the e-mail accounts of a resident dean who had, perhaps inadvertently, forwarded a board e-mail to two students.

Those investigations looked at subject lines in the resident dean’s administrative and FAS e-mail accounts to determine whether the dean had had contact with two students who shared information with the Crimson. No e-mails were opened, Ms. Hammonds said, and no content was searched. Ms. Hammonds told faculty members present that she had made “serious mistakes” and regretted the anxiety and distress that had caused.

Also at the meeting, Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard’s president, said she had determined that the university’s policies regarding electronic communications were “highly inadequate.” She announced that she was asking an outside lawyer to review the e-mail investigations and determine whether all the facts were known. She also announced the appointment of a task force to develop recommendations on e-mail privacy.

Filed under: Technology, e-mail privacy, Harvard University

Harvard Explains Its Search of Deans’ E-Mails in Cheating Case

Two top Harvard University officials on Monday explained the details of an effort to search the e-mail accounts of 16 resident deans in order to identify the source of a leak about a cheating scandal that became public last fall, The Boston Globe reported.

The leaked e-mail contained information from Harvard’s Administrative Board, which investigated the cheating allegations, and eventually made its way to the news media. Some Harvard faculty members criticized the university’s administration on Sunday, after details of the search came to light, according to The New York Times.

The forwarded e-mail was “quite concerning” and “warranted a better understanding of what had occurred, since it threatened the privacy and due process afforded students before the board,” Michael D. Smith, dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Evelynn M. Hammonds, dean of Harvard College, said in a written statement.

Harvard’s information-technology department performed what the two officials called a “a very narrow, careful, and precise subject-line search” of the deans’ administrative e-mail accounts. That search, which examined only subject lines and did not look through the contents of the messages, turned up two e-mails from one sender, whom Harvard did not identify. Campus officials deemed the forwarded message an “inadvertent error and not an intentional breach,” and no further action was taken, according to the statement.

The statement also responded to critics who questioned why the university did not tell the entire group of deans about the search after it was completed, noting that such a question “is a fair one.” Operating without a clear precedent and with the knowledge that no person had looked at any e-mails during the investigation, the Harvard officials said they “made a decision that protected the privacy of the resident dean who had made an inadvertent error and allowed the student cases being handled by this resident dean to move forward expeditiously.”

The statement also offered an apology if any of the deans felt that official communication “at the conclusion of the investigation was insufficient.”

Filed under: Students, Technology, Harvard University

Court Won’t Let Terrorism Victims Claim Persian Artifacts From Harvard

A federal appeals court has ruled that victims of a terrorist bombing in Jerusalem who won a judgment against Iran for the country’s role in the attack cannot seize artifacts at Harvard University that they had claimed were owed to them as compensation, essentially agreeing with a lower court’s 2011 ruling in the matter.

In an opinion handed down on Wednesday, a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled that the plaintiffs had “failed to demonstrate” that any of the roughly 500 antiquities at a Harvard museum met a narrow exception to federal law that could have made them subject to seizure. The ruling represents another setback for the plaintiffs, who in 2011 lost a similar case involving artifacts at the University of Chicago.

The plaintiffs have sought the artifacts, which come from ancient Iranian civilizations such as Persia, on the theory that they belong to the modern nation, and so could be used as assets to satisfy a legal judgment.

Filed under: Global, Harvard University

Most Students in Harvard Cheating Scandal Were Forced to Withdraw

A top Harvard University official said on Friday that more than half of the students who had been investigated by an administrative board in connection with a highly publicized cheating scandal last fall had been forced to withdraw from the institution for a period of time, according to The Boston Globe. The university had previously acknowledged that the cheating, which implicated some 125 Harvard students, occurred during the final examination in a government course. The allegations focused on inappropriate collaboration among students.

Michael D. Smith, Harvard’s dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, wrote in an e-mail to the campus that the institution’s rules meant that it does not report the outcomes of individual cases, but only “aggregate statistics.” In that vein, he added, “somewhat more than half of the Administrative Board cases this past fall required a student to withdraw from the college for a period of time.” Roughly half of the remaining students received disciplinary probation, and the others were not punished, he wrote. Mr. Smith also pointed out that the institution formed an academic-integrity committee 18 months ago to craft recommendations for promoting honesty among students, Bloomberg News reported.

Filed under: Students, Teaching, Harvard University

It’s a Fake, Says Vatican of Harvard Scholar’s Papyrus Citing Jesus’ Wife

Since Karen L. King announced her discovery of an ancient scrap of Egyptian papyrus that she claims mentions Jesus’ wife, some Coptic scholars have cast doubt on its authenticity. Now, after 10 days, the Vatican has added its voice to the skeptics’. The New York Times reports that the Vatican’s official newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, published an editorial on Friday calling the Harvard scholar’s discovery “a fake.”

Ms. King did not claim that the text proves Jesus was married, but she did suggest that some early Christians believed he had been married. Her claims have caused other scholars to question the document’s authenticity as well as her interpretation of its contents. Cable TV’s Smithsonian Channel, which had planned to air a documentary on Ms. King’s discovery on Sunday, has delayed the broadcast until the text undergoes more tests, a spokesman told The Washington Post. She has arranged for a Harvard conservation center to test the chemical composition of the text’s ink in October, according to the Times. In an interview with Time, Ms. King acknowledged her own doubts about the text’s authenticity and said it “needs to be questioned further.”

Filed under: Research, Harvard University

Harvard Professor Finds Scrap of Papyrus Suggesting Jesus Was Married

Karen L. King, a historian of early Christianity at Harvard University’s divinity school, has identified a scrap of fourth-century Egyptian papyrus that contains a reference to Jesus’ wife. The document, if authentic, could show that some early Christians believed Jesus was married, The Boston Globe reports. The fragment is smaller than a business card and appears to have been torn from the pages of a primitive book. Ms. King emphasized that the piece of papyrus—which she calls “The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife”—does not prove that Jesus was married. She will discuss her discovery at a gathering of Coptic scholars in Rome on Tuesday.

Filed under: Research, Harvard University

What They’re Saying About the Harvard Cheating Scandal

Since the news of a possible cheating scandal involving dozens of students at Harvard University broke last week, some of the students have tried to defend themselves in the media. Here’s a glimpse of how their efforts are shaking out so far.

Is Academic Dishonesty on the Rise? — Two Harvard professors say we need to do more to understand what leads students to cheat. Time.com

Editorial: Vague Rules Demand More Clarity — Harvard’s student paper says the university needs to take away the incentives “to cut corners for short-term results.” The Harvard Crimson

Accused Student: Harvard “Out For Blood” — One senior says the university is cracking down on a course that has a reputation for being easy. Salon.com

Harvard Students Defend Themselves — Others say the university’s ground rules were so confusing that they didn’t believe they were doing anything wrong. The Boston Globe

Filed under: Students, Harvard University

Harvard Investigates Dozens of Students for Cheating on Final Exam

Harvard University is investigating roughly half the students in a class of more than 250 for possibly collaborating to cheat on a take-home final examination, according to The Boston Globe. Independent groups of students may have worked together on short questions and an essay assignment, thereby violating a rule that was printed on the exam, the newspaper reported. Jay M. Harris, the university’s dean of undergraduate education, said some students had submitted work that was either identical to their peers’ or “too close for comfort.” The students whose tests were identified as possibly problematic will appear individually before the college’s administrative board. Citing federal privacy laws, Harvard officials declined to identify any of the students or the class involved.

Filed under: Students, Harvard University

Agriculture Department Cites Harvard in Deaths of Lab Mice

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has cited Harvard University in the deaths of 41 mice at a university research lab, reports The Boston Globe. The warning, which is considered an enforcement action, carries no fine or penalty. Animal research at Harvard came under scrutiny as a result of the deaths of several monkeys at the university’s primate facility. But a spokesman for the department said the case of the mice was “totally unrelated” to that of the monkeys. The management and staff of the lab that housed the mice are separate from those of the primate facility. A Harvard spokesman said the university “continues to be committed to the proper treatment and humane care of mice and other animals being used as research subjects,” the Globe reported.

Filed under: Research, Harvard University

U.S. Senate Candidate Admits She Told Universities of Native American Heritage

Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate from Massachusetts, acknowledged for the first time on Wednesday that she told Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania of her Native American heritage, The Boston Globe reported. The re-election campaign of Sen. Scott P. Brown, Ms. Warren’s Republican opponent, demanded last month that she apologize for letting Harvard’s law school identify her as a Native American member of its faculty during the 1990s. (Ms. Warren has not provided proof of that heritage.) When the issue arose last month, Ms. Warren said she did not know that Harvard had been promoting her as a minority faculty member, and that she had identified herself as a minority only in a legal directory. In a statement to the newspaper, Ms. Warren reiterated that she is proud of her heritage, which she said “played no role” in her hiring.

Filed under: Harvard University