Harvard Secretly Searched Deans' Email 113
theodp writes "Taking a page from HP's playbook, Harvard University administrators secretly searched the emails of 16 deans last fall, looking for a leak to reporters about a case of cheating. The deans were not warned about the email access and only one was told of the search afterward. Dean and CS prof Michael Smith said in an email Sunday that Harvard will not comment on personnel matters or provide additional information about the board cases that were concluded during the fall term. Smith's office and the Harvard general counsel's office authorized the search, according to a Boston Globe report. Smith's Harvard bio notes that his entrepreneurial experience included co-founding and selling Liquid Machines, where Smith coincidentally invented a software technique designed to keep unauthorized people from reading electronic documents."
Re:All places I worked (Score:5, Interesting)
Apparently, according to TFA this was made explicit contractually for Harvard faculty that they enjoyed greater freedom from intrusion than this,(and more generally, in the traditions of academia) Faculty, tenured ones doubly so, are treated as a very special flavor of employee, one whose independence, so much as it can be preserved while still getting them to show up for scheduled classes and not perv out on undergrads, is considered to be one of their major valuable features.
It's one of the curious tensions of academic structures: the students are 'customers'; but part of the 'product' can consist of giving them what they don't want(shitty grades, failing them for academic misconduct); faculty are 'employees'; but part of the value of a really good and prestigious faculty is the appearance(and ideally the reality) that, while the university signs paychecks and schedules classes and other administrative work, the faculty are free to pursue their research and teaching, and new faculty are 'peer reviewed' through the tenure process, rather than being hirelings beholden to HR.
Re:No privacy (Score:4, Interesting)
You do when policy clearly states a degree of confidentiality and due process for breaching it, both which were not followed. This will likely become a big deal, with the administration coming down hard to Protect The Brand.
It's particularly a big deal when you do it to a substantial number of Deans. I'd assume that a number of people in the administration will be without jobs before too long, and maybe also a change of general counsel too. Not that anyone will say anything nasty; there will just be a general agreement that some people need to... well... move on; personality clashes, changing priorities, that sort of thing. And that perhaps it is time to ring the changes with who provides legal advice. No fault implied. No public link with this incident at all.
In a commercial organization, I'd expect more recriminations in public for spying on the executive members of the board (damn close to what's happened here, in explicit contravention of their own policies). Universities tend to prefer to keep things a bit quieter. But no amount of union membership or past history of good relations is likely to save those responsible for authorizing this. A key rule of university politics is this: unless you have cast-iron evidence of wrong-doing, you DO NOT MESS WITH ANYONE WHO CAN TAKE YOUR BUDGET AWAY. Or who can replace the person with that power.
Pass the popcorn. I'm going to enjoy watching this from afar.