"Harvard secretly searched deans’ e-mail; Chasing leak in cheating scandal may have invaded privacy" by Mary Carmichael | Globe Correspondent, March 10, 2013
Harvard University central administrators secretly searched the e-mail accounts of 16 resident deans last fall, looking for a leak to the media about the school’s sprawling cheating case, according to several Harvard officials interviewed by the Globe.
The resident deans sit on Harvard’s Administrative Board, the committee charged with handling the cheating case. They were not warned that administrators planned to access their accounts, and only one was told of the search shortly afterward.
The dean who was informed had forwarded a confidential Administrative Board message to a student he was advising, not realizing it would ultimately make its way to the Harvard Crimson and the Globe and fuel the campus controversy over the cheating scandal.
All the Harvard officials interviewed by the Globe declined to identify the dean, although one said no punishment had been involved.
The other 15 deans were left unaware their e-mail accounts had been searched by administrators until the Globe approached Harvard with questions about the episode on Thursday, having learned of it from multiple Harvard officials who described it in detail.
Those officials asked for anonymity out of fear of reprisal.
Harvard administrators said they had informed the remaining deans Saturday — almost six months after the search.
And just before the article was published.
The deans have two Harvard e-mail accounts – one primarily intended for administrative duties, and another for personal matters.
Only the first category of accounts was searched....
News of the episode could nonetheless anger Harvard faculty members, whose privacy in electronic records is protected under a Faculty of Arts and Sciences policy.
Resident deans are not professors, but they teach. At issue is how much privacy they should expect.
As for you and me, readers, the answer is none.
“If reading the deans’ e-mail is really OK by the book, why didn’t they just ask the deans who leaked the memo, threatening to read their e-mail if no one came forward?” said Harry Lewis, a former dean of the college, who helped draft its current e-mail privacy policy for faculty. “Why not tell them what was being done, if it was really an OK thing to do?”
That faculty policy was drafted in part because some professors feared that the previous president, Lawrence Summers, was monitoring their correspondence.
He's a real piece of work, isn't he?
The Globe requested interviews with several members of Harvard’s central administration regarding the situation. In response, the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Michael Smith — whose office authorized the search along with the Harvard general counsel’s office — released a statement to the Globe on Friday.
The statement did not specifically acknowledge the administration’s actions or say who had initiated them. But it appeared to defend them on grounds that the leak might have compromised the Administrative Board’s confidential disciplinary process....
Greg Morrisett, who heads the Faculty of Arts and Sciences standing committee on information technology, agreed that the resident deans would qualify for protected status and said that a lot of faculty members are going to be angry.
“Speaking for myself, I would certainly include instructors, preceptors, visiting faculty, a wide range of people,” Morrisett said. “And I would be extremely upset to learn that somebody is [searching electronic records] without following the policy.”
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Related:
"Harvard defends e-mail searches, offers limited apology; Dispute over how deans were notified" by Mary Carmichael | Globe Correspondent, March 12, 2013
Harvard University officially confirmed Monday that it had secretly gained access to the e-mail accounts of 16 resident deans and apologized for the discomfort it caused, but said that doing so was necessary to safeguard the privacy of students caught up in last year’s cheating scandal.
The university’s statement — released by Michael Smith, the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Evelynn Hammonds, dean of the college — did not fully quell the controversy on campus and drew an emphatic response from a key figure in the case.
Senior resident dean Sharon Howell disputed a portion of the statement that said administrators had told her about the search shortly after it took place.
Howell maintained that she had not been officially informed until last week, after the Globe approached Harvard asking about the search, which was sparked by the leak of a confidential e-mail about last year’s cheating scandal.
On Monday afternoon, Howell sent an impassioned letter to Harvard president Drew Faust on behalf of many of the resident deans, asking Faust to directly address the matter and begin a “new conversation about integrity at Harvard.”
Late Monday afternoon, Faust said in a statement that she felt “very comfortable that great care was taken to safeguard the privacy of all concerned” in the incident, but that she shared “the view that questions about whether more resident deans should have been informed sooner are fair to ask.”
“I believe that debates about the rights and responsibilities of members of our community are healthy,” she said....
Notice if you are an important person your privacy is important?
Harry Lewis — the former dean of the college, current computer science professor, and frequent thorn in the administration’s side — wrote on his blog that he would “probably, after four decades, respond by moving most of my personal and frivolous e-mail” to a Google mail account.
Lewis also raised a concern about the privacy of other Harvard e-mail account holders, including the thousands of graduates who maintain alumni addresses. “Given the university’s encompassing view of its rights to scan ‘employee’ e-mail, including faculty e-mail when the faculty have administrative responsibilities,” he wrote, “I would not assume that the university would feel constrained.”
On another blog, two other Harvard computer science professors — Michael Mitzenmacher and Greg Morrisett — wrote that they felt the episode had been “blown out of proportion.”
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Sandra Korn, a junior who participates in many activist groups, said the episode had reminded her of a worry she had heard in years past but dismissed as unrealistic.
While organizing the 2011 Occupy Harvard protest, she said, she had been told by graduate students not to write about the group’s plans on her Harvard e-mail account. “I think the undergraduates were skeptical that the administration would be poking through our e-mails,” she said. “I still doubt that anyone was doing that. But I guess it was good we were cautious.”
Another student, who was implicated and later exonerated in the cheating case, said he felt that in gaining access to the resident deans’ accounts, administrators might have compromised the student privacy they were seeking to protect, because students use those accounts to communicate confidentially with their resident deans about disciplinary issues.
As for the cheating scandal as a whole, he added, with an air of exasperation, “I didn’t think it could get any more ridiculous.”
At least the kid is getting an education on how the real world works.
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Related: Harvard cheating inquiry raises concerns
Harvard Basketball Players Foul Out
Hey, at least they made the tournament again.
"Harvard details suspensions in massive cheating scandal" by Martine Powers and Katherine Landergan | Globe Staff and Globe Correspondent, February 02, 2013
CAMBRIDGE — The disclosure was the most extensive accounting of what is being called the Ivy League’s largest cheating scandal in recent times....
The official announcement came as no surprise to many undergraduates, who saw dozens of classmates, teammates, and friends quickly disappear from campus without explanation throughout the fall semester....
Some implicated in the case maintain that the Administrative Board used unfair practices to determine students’ guilt or innocence. Many have taken issue with allegations that students copied one another’s tests; they say similarities in exams arose because they shared notes with classmates, a practice expressly encouraged by the professor....
The parent, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of harming his son’s chances of being readmitted, said, “They should be exonerating these kids and looking hard at themselves and realizing they are the cause of this situation.”
*************************************
On campus Friday, opinions among students were mixed.
Michael Constant, 19, said he thinks the college wanted to make a statement. Not punishing students, he said, would have been the same as condoning the behavior.
“I think it’s fair,” said Constant, who is studying neurobiology, said of the board’s decision. “They made the choice to cheat.”
But Georgina Parfitt, 22, said the punishment was too harsh, and that many students in the class could have been confused about the policy.
“Sending someone away for a semester or a year, it’s awful,” said Parfitt, an English major. “It changes someone’s life.”
Harold Eyster, 19, said students who cheat should be punished, but he was disappointed by the college’s response....
I certainly am by the spying.
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And speaking of cheating:
"Oprah + Harvard: A bad match?" by Kevin Hartnett | Globe Correspondent, March 10, 2013
When Harvard announced Monday that Oprah Winfrey will deliver this year’s commencement address, much of the focus was on her celebrity: When two of the world’s biggest brands finally meet, would she overshadow the event?
But a more substantive concern came from longtime Harvard figure Harry Lewis. A professor of computer science who also served as dean of Harvard College, Lewis looked beyond Oprah’s success to the actual ideas touted on her show, and on Monday wrote sharply on his blog that Harvard has no business inviting—and (presumably) awarding an honorary degree to—a “major purveyor of pseudoscience.”
What, see touting global warming?
Oprah has long been criticized for the unscientific health remedies she has promoted over the years. She has provided a prominent platform to Jenny McCarthy and other leading voices in the anti-childhood-vaccination movement, and has used her influence to promote scientifically unproven ideas from acupuncture to celebrity diets to vitamin megadosing. In an e-mail to the Globe, Lewis wrote that in honoring her, Harvard “legitimates the nonsense on which she has so successfully built her career and made her fortune.”
See what happens if you tell the truth? Even Oprah gets attacked.
Of course, her choice of books is another matter.
Yeah, some lies don't elicit such a demonstrative response.
Commencement speakers are often subjects of controversy, though in most cases it’s because students object to a businessperson or government official who runs afoul of their politics.
Oprah?
In his e-mail, Lewis actually praised the practice of having controversial figures who will spark important debates address graduates (he cited the example of Stanford University choosing New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg as its commencement speaker this spring).
Oh, so he is okay with an agenda-pushing Jew s***, but a black woman.... sigh.
Is Harvard just innately racist, or does it come with the elitism?
But with Winfrey, he explained, the disqualifying offense lies less with the content of her ideas and more with her semi-magical style of thinking.
“The notion that there is a parallel universe denied by science where wonderful things happen,” Lewis wrote, “is fundamentally at odds with the university’s fundamental commitment to the rule of evidence and reason as opposed to superstition and ignorance.”
Lewis speculated that by choosing the wildly popular Winfrey, Harvard may have been looking for an inoffensive figure who would “excite no protests.” And while Winfrey’s selection has gone over well with graduating seniors, it seems that there may be at least one person picketing in Cambridge this spring.
And the Globe noticed the protest?
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Related: Harvard University, clerical union reach pact
At least someone will be cleaning up the place.
