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Harvard Search of E-mail Stuns Its Faculty Members

nytimes.com

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Re: Harvard Search of E-mail Stuns Its Faculty Members

#21

Post by doctorpangloss »

thinkcomp wrote: post #16

The faculty shouldn't be stunned. Harvard has been reading the e-mail of students for a long time. Why should the faculty be any different? I'm fairly certain they read my e-mail in 2003 (which I wrote about in my book). Judith Kidd, then a member of the administration, happened to know that I'd hired lawyers in a meeting before I had ever told her. While it's remotely possible that she learned of this from another s…

> Despite all of the scholarship on the subjects at the law school, due process and transparency remain foreign concepts to these people.

I have to agree with Aaron here: The worst part of this story is that Dean Michael Smith, who authorized the search, teaches a privacy class, CS 105.

Re: Harvard Search of E-mail Stuns Its Faculty Members

#22

Post by obowersa »

Reading the article, what surprises me the most is that they had to search the mail in the first place.

For the information they were after, any relatively primitive mail tracking system would suffice. To be fair, even most outbound spam/virus scanners would log the level of info being looked for.

I can't help but feel as if it's a bit of an overreaction. A very targeted search was done on the mail headers to try and track down a leak. It seems fairly routine work. The lack of notification is a big issue (soon after the event) but even so.

To see the reaction you'd assume that the administrators were going through each persons mailbox reading every single mail.

Re: Harvard Search of E-mail Stuns Its Faculty Members

#23

Post by josephagoss »

cbs wrote: post #9
hnriot wrote: post #2

Read the terms of your employment... This is common practice in any organization. Work email is the property of the company or organization.

I find attitudes like this fascinating. If they were within their legal right to do this, that explains why the resident deans are complaining instead of suing . When did the fact something is permitted become reason to shut down or marginalize discussion on if it should happen and/or be permitted?

Some people are incapable of understanding that some rule out there are wrong and should be questioned. They cannot actually understand how people do this questioning. I guess they sleep easy at night knowing all is right with the world, because those lawyers are on our side.

Re: Harvard Search of E-mail Stuns Its Faculty Members

#24

Post by curveship »

thinkcomp wrote: post #16

The faculty shouldn't be stunned. Harvard has been reading the e-mail of students for a long time. Why should the faculty be any different? I'm fairly certain they read my e-mail in 2003 (which I wrote about in my book). Judith Kidd, then a member of the administration, happened to know that I'd hired lawyers in a meeting before I had ever told her. While it's remotely possible that she learned of this from another s…

> The faculty shouldn't be stunned. Harvard has been reading the e-mail of students for a long time. Why should the faculty be any different?

Are you sure you went to Harvard? :) It's not a surprise that Harvard treats students and faculty differently. It would be a surprise if they did. The caste system is extremely strong, or at least it was when I was there (class of '96).

And that's my read on this tale: the Harvard castes are re-aligning. Traditionally, it's been faculty at the top, with administration below. The administration is now rising, to the point that it feels it can pick off the lower rungs of the faculty, like the resident deans.

This is a shift occurring all over academia, but perhaps a little later at the Ivies.

Re: Harvard Search of E-mail Stuns Its Faculty Members

#25

Post by michaelt »

dmor wrote: post #17
rm999 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that misses the point, and the article discusses why. It's not about what Harvard could do; it's about standard protocol for treating faculty, and it's about trust. In the academic world faculty are usually treated with incredible amounts of respect, and several people interviewed in the article see Harvard's actions as a breach of that standard. This guy puts it well: >Harry R. Lewis, a professor and former…

I don't think it is disrespectful to search their emails though, Harvard is fundamentally an institution funded by donors. This scandal majorly damage the reputation of the institution and was embarrassing to high profile donors and alumni. Protecting that is obviously worth more to Harvard then whether or not professors feel they have academic freedom. The only problem with all of this now is that the public also kn…

  I don't think it is disrespectful to search their emails 
  though, Harvard is fundamentally an institution funded 
  by donors.
In my mind searching someone's e-mail is like searching their pockets as they leave the office, or asking them to take a supervised drugs test: It's technically legal and some employers do it.

On the other hand, the people who work for me are trusted, respected professionals. I'd understand them taking umbrage if I asked them to turn out their pockets, or to piss into a cup, or if I started reading their e-mail.

Re: Harvard Search of E-mail Stuns Its Faculty Members

#26

Post by sc0rb »

hnriot wrote: post #2

Read the terms of your employment... This is common practice in any organization. Work email is the property of the company or organization.

I don't know why you're being down voted? Obviously your employer can look at your work email at any point in time.

I'm not sure if this is right or wrong. I have a gut feeling that this may be right though. I'd like to be able to look through my teams emails if I have a good enough reason (sexual discrimination etc)

Re: Harvard Search of E-mail Stuns Its Faculty Members

#27

Post by a2tech »

dmor wrote: post #7

This seems really silly to me. In large institutions it is very common for this to happen, and the email accounts and all the content in them belongs to Harvard. This is the case with pretty much any employer. A clever faculty member looking to leak to the press should a) not use their Harvard email address or b) better yet, pick up the phone to provide the tip.

As someone that works in a large University, I can tell you this is NOT common at all. Last year a faculty member here had a heart attack and was out of commission for awhile-it was almost impossible to get permission to access his email account and set an out of office response-we weren't allowed to 'see' his email (we had to pretend we didn't see any of his message). At my institution even staff email is not allowed to be read unless we have a subpoena.

Re: Harvard Search of E-mail Stuns Its Faculty Members

#28

Post by pdovy »

Does the university have an established policy for email retention and access to that data? It seems unlikely that they wouldn't, but I don't see it mentioned anywhere. It's never a good idea to rely on goodwill to prevent access to sensitive data - if it's there, a need arises and it's not illegal, it's eventually going to happen.

Re: Harvard Search of E-mail Stuns Its Faculty Members

#29

Post by jessaustin »

thinkcomp wrote: post #16

The faculty shouldn't be stunned. Harvard has been reading the e-mail of students for a long time. Why should the faculty be any different? I'm fairly certain they read my e-mail in 2003 (which I wrote about in my book). Judith Kidd, then a member of the administration, happened to know that I'd hired lawyers in a meeting before I had ever told her. While it's remotely possible that she learned of this from another s…

If I were still a student I might hope that this will be a sort of "it gets worse before it gets better" moment, in that the faculty are the only party even theoretically capable of arresting Harvard's ethical and managerial decline. Experience indicates that having been blind for decades, they're unlikely to see the light now. The Harvard bureaucracy is big enough and old enough that its true purpose is itself. Only the faculty ever had the power to re-focus the bureaucracy's efforts on students and veritas. I wonder if they still have that power now.

Though TFA quotes several professors' criticisms of the administration's actions, I wonder how much of the issue they're really seeing. Mitzenmacher, for example, has in the past defended the Ad Board categorically. (e.g. http://mybiasedcoin.blogspot.com/2008/10/on-ad-board-harvard... ) Prof. Lewis, however, I find an inspiration in every sense: academic, moral, human, etc. I just have the feeling that he is a lone voice of decency in Cambridge.

Re: Harvard Search of E-mail Stuns Its Faculty Members

#30

Post by hnriot »

josephagoss wrote: post #23
cbs wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find attitudes like this fascinating. If they were within their legal right to do this, that explains why the resident deans are complaining instead of suing . When did the fact something is permitted become reason to shut down or marginalize discussion on if it should happen and/or be permitted?

Some people are incapable of understanding that some rule out there are wrong and should be questioned. They cannot actually understand how people do this questioning. I guess they sleep easy at night knowing all is right with the world, because those lawyers are on our side.

Skipping over the pathetic passive aggressive tone, this isn't about some repressed part of society, this is simply a employer/employee relationship.

There's nothing wrong with an employer doing this to protect the organziation. This is exactly what is happening, it's an investigastion into misconduct, not some big civil liberties case.

When you send email using you work account you should not expect that email to have the same privacy as your own email might.

I am perfectly capable of understanding, and the university are in the right, they have every right to investigate what happened.

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