Harvard Explains Why Staff E-Mails Were Searched

Harvard and its president made their first public comments on the university’s searching of staff members’ e-mail accounts, and offered a qualified apology for keeping the searches secret from most of the employees involved.

University officials acknowledged the searches and explained their reasoning. The statement eased the concerns of some faculty members but did not alleviate them completely, and professors said they expected that e-mail privacy would be the topic of a full-throated discussion at the next faculty meeting, in early April. In her first comment on the matter, Harvard’s president, Drew Gilpin Faust, said that she did not know about the searches at the time, but that having been apprised, “I feel very comfortable that great care was taken to safeguard the privacy of all concerned.”