Etica accademica

Sull’interminabile saga di Harvard, il Corriere pubblica un articolo che andrebbe completato, trovo. Cronologia:

– 14 maggio 2012, un prof avvisa il Comitato disciplinare, detto anche amministrativo, che decine di studenti hanno copiato un esame che aveva dato loro da fare a casa;

– 30 agosto 2012, la notizia salta fuori sul Crimson, il quotidiano fatto da studenti:

Harvard College’s disciplinary board is investigating nearly half of the 279 students who enrolled in Government 1310: “Introduction to Congress” last spring for allegedly plagiarizing answers or inappropriately collaborating on the class’ final take-home exam.

– 31 agosto 2o12, l’amministrazione conferma. L’indomani, il Crimson riassume un’email di Jay Ellison, segretario del Comitato amministrativo:

Ellison wrote on Aug. 16 that if the Ad Board votes to require a student in this case to withdraw from the College for a year—a known penalty for academic dishonesty at Harvard—that penalty would likely take effect immediately, allowing the student to return for the Fall 2013 semester. He discussed the possibility that some students, especially those who believe themselves to be guilty, might choose to take a voluntary leave of absence at the start of the term, before the board adjudicates their cases. Such a leave would likely be converted to a required withdrawal on their records if they were later convicted, the email said.

– 3 marzo 2013, dal Boston Globe :

Harvard University central administrators secretly searched the email 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.

Chiedere ai resident deans, scusate, avete per caso girato la mail a qualcuno? era troppo difficile.

– 10 marzo, alcuni prof trovano che sia stata una violazione della loro privacy, altri dicono che il leak andava tappato per tutelare quella degli studenti, comunque i prof andavano avvisati:

the faculty need to pressure administrators into greater transparency…

– 11 marzo, il Com. amm. fa sapere che a suo avviso il leak è stato involontario e che ha fatto del suo meglio

Some have asked why, at the conclusion of that review, the entire group of Resident Deans was not briefed on the review that was conducted, and the outcome. The question is a fair one. Operating without any clear precedent for the conflicting privacy concerns and knowing that no human had looked at any emails during or after the investigation, we 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.

Expeditiously un corno, gli studenti hanno saputo se erano estromessi o meno a fine gennaio.

– 11 marzo, Crimson (link aggiunti)

Professors suggested that the email searches could be symptomatic of a larger shift in the balance of power away from faculty and toward the administration. Though they were careful not to tie the email searches too closely with that perceived shift, they said that a recent string of top-down decisions have left faculty uncertain about their role in the University hierarchy.

“The concern that I think many faculty members feel has to do with questions of trust,” Jasanoff said.

Government professor Theda R. Skocpol, former dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, put it more bluntly. “Whoever designed this entire cheating scandal in all of its many investigative aspects fits better at the Hoover era FBI.”

Dal New York Times:

Some of the resident deans said they considered the lack of notice — and even the searches, themselves — a violation of trust, but they refused to speak for the record because they lack job protection.

Sulla prepotenza dell’amministrazione, cf. Harry Lewis; My biased coin; sulla burocrazia pletorica e strapagata, cf. NY Review of Books, The Economist, Bloomberg ecc.

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