Bewildered, and at times angry, faculty members at Harvard criticized the university on Sunday after revelations that administrators secretly searched the e-mail accounts of 16 resident deans in an effort to learn who leaked information about a student cheating scandal to the news media. Some predicted a confrontation between the faculty and the administration.
"I was shocked and dismayed," said the law professor Charles J. Ogletree. "I hope that it means the faculty will now have something to say about the fact that these things like this can happen."
News of the e-mail searches prolonged the fallout from the cheating scandal, in which about 70 students were forced to take a leave from school for collaborating or plagiarizing on a take-home final exam in a government class last year.
Harry R. Lewis, a professor and former dean of Harvard College, said, "People are just bewildered at this point, because it was so out of keeping with the way we've done things at Harvard."
"I think what the administration did was creepy," said Mary C. Waters, a sociology professor, adding that "this action violates the trust I once had that Harvard would never do such a thing."
Last fall, the administrators searched the e-mails of 16 resident deans, trying to determine who had leaked an internal memo about how the deans should advise students who stood accused of cheating. But most of those deans were not told that their accounts had been searched until the past few days, after The Boston Globe, which first reported the searches, began to inquire about them.
Rather than the searches being kept secret from the resident deans, "they should've been asked openly," said Richard Thomas, a professor of classics. "This is not a good outcome."
Though some professors were disinclined to speak to a reporter, they showed less restraint online, where sites were buzzing with the news, and several professors said the topic dominated the faculty's private conversations.
On his blog, which is closely followed by many people at Harvard, Dr. Lewis called the administration's handling of the search "dishonorable," and, like some of his colleagues, said the episode would prompt him to do less of his communication through his Harvard e-mail account, and more through a private account.
Timothy McCarthy, a lecturer and program director at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, posted about the e-mail search on Facebook. "This is disgraceful," he said, "even more so than the original cheating scandal, because it involves adults who should know better — really smart, powerful adults, with complete job security."
Harvard's spokesmen declined to comment on Sunday about the criticism. On Saturday, the university would not confirm or deny that the e-mail searches had taken place. It was unclear whether the issue would blow over or if it might escalate into a major confrontation between the faculty and the administration.
A resident dean generally has two Harvard e-mail accounts, a general one and one specifically for the post of resident dean. A Harvard official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a matter the university considers confidential, said the searches had been limited to the resident dean accounts and limited to message headers indicating whether the leaked e-mail had been forwarded to anyone; the official said no one had looked at the content of any e-mails.
The resident deans are employees who live in Harvard's residential houses, alongside undergraduates, and counsel them on a range of matters. They also have appointments as lecturers — people who teach classes but are not on the tenure track for professors — and serve on various faculty bodies.
Several Harvard faculty members speculated that the administration had felt free to search the e-mail accounts because it regarded the resident deans as regular employees, not faculty members; Harvard's policies on electronic privacy give more protection to faculty members. The prevailing view from professors seemed to be that the resident deans are faculty members.
"If their role as administrative deans means that they can be treated like staff," Dr. Waters said, "then I do think that the e-mails of the president, provost and dean of the faculty should be turned over to the Faculty Council to investigate who ordered this witch hunt. "If the resident deans don't have protection as faculty, neither should any other faculty serving in an administrative capacity."
Jess Bidgood and Tara Merrigan contributed reporting.
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