Skip to content
ADVERTISEMENT
Sign In
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Events
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle On-The-Road
    • Professional Development
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
  • More
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Events
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle On-The-Road
    • Professional Development
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
    Upcoming Events:
    College Advising
    Serving Higher Ed
    Chronicle Festival 2025
Sign In
Technology

Harvard Researchers Used Secret Cameras to Study Attendance. Was That Unethical?

By Steve Kolowich and Rebecca Koenig November 6, 2014

A high-tech effort to study classroom attendance at Harvard University that used secret photo surveillance is raising questions about research ethics among the institution’s faculty members. The controversy heated up on Tuesday night, when a computer-science professor, Harry R. Lewis, questioned the study at a faculty meeting.

To continue reading for FREE, please sign in.

Sign In

Or subscribe now to read with unlimited access for as low as $10/month.

Don’t have an account? Sign up now.

A free account provides you access to a limited number of free articles each month, plus newsletters, job postings, salary data, and exclusive store discounts.

Sign Up

A high-tech effort to study classroom attendance at Harvard University that used secret photo surveillance is raising questions about research ethics among the institution’s faculty members. The controversy heated up on Tuesday night, when a computer-science professor, Harry R. Lewis, questioned the study at a faculty meeting.

During the study, which took place in the spring of 2013, cameras in 10 Harvard classrooms recorded one image per minute, and the photographs were scanned to determine which seats were filled.

To some professors, it was an obvious intrusion into their privacy—and their students’.

“My faculty colleagues here in computer science are mostly—not uniformly, but I would say predominately—outraged,” Mr. Lewis said in an interview on Wednesday.

But to the researchers who conducted the study, it was an innovative way to measure attendance, as part of an effort to explore the effectiveness of lectures in light of reports that students often skip such classes.

“We were not tracing students, but seats,” said Peter K. Bol, vice provost for advances in learning and a professor of East Asian languages, in an email interview.

It’s not Harvard’s first brush with privacy concerns. Both Mr. Lewis and Peter J. Burgard, a professor of German, drew comparisons to a 2012 incident in which administrators searched email messages of 16 resident deans. But the professors added that the situation disclosed this week seemed less egregious.

Still, Mr. Lewis said, “I shouldn’t have thought we needed another learning experience.”

The Harvard institutional review board’s committee on the use of human subjects in research concluded that the study did not constitute human-subjects research, according to a statement Mr. Bol prepared for the faculty meeting, so the study was not referred to the full board for review.

That the board approved the study, however, has not alleviated professors’ worries.

ADVERTISEMENT

“When you spy on someone, you take an adversarial position toward them,” Mr. Burgard said. “This seems totally at odds with what a college should be about.”

Not all faculty members feel so strongly. Mr. Lewis, who raised the issue at the faculty meeting, said some colleagues had shrugged their shoulders.

“There were some whose feeling is, ‘No harm, no foul,’ and they’re glad it’s been undone,” said Mr. Lewis.

Gonzalo Giribet, a professor of zoology and organismic and evolutionary biology, said in an email that the study did not amount to spying.

ADVERTISEMENT

“There were no names associated to any of the students, the study only counted the number of empty and full chairs in a classroom, and all the images were destroyed after the experiment,” he said. “I definitely do not consider that spying, especially since the purpose was not knowing what specific individuals did, but just trying to assess attendance to class by anonymous individuals.”

A Norm In Online Learning

Moreover, at a time when many universities use online learning platforms to measure a student’s every click, an effort to track attendance with secret cameras might strike some people as quaint.

“In terms of low-level data, the lowest possible level is attendance,” said George Siemens, a learning-analytics expert who directs the LINK Research Lab at the University of Texas at Arlington.

Universities that are not Harvard conduct much deeper surveillance on students who take their online and blended courses. Some institutions track how frequently individual students participate in class and how long they spend on readings and on homework problems, along with other metrics that far exceed the capabilities of a camera taking still pictures in a lecture hall. Even traditional universities collect and analyze lots of data on students, including when and where they log into campus networks or enter campus buildings.

ADVERTISEMENT

In light of how much data universities already collect on students without obtaining their specific consent, the Harvard controversy strikes Mr. Siemens as much ado about nothing. The backlash probably has more to do with “faculty ownership of space,” he said.

Charles R. Severance, a clinical associate professor at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor’s School of Information, agreed that the outrage at Harvard had less to do with the privacy of students than with the autonomy of professors—specifically, professors who are not accustomed to anything happening in their classrooms without their say-so.

Installing a camera to track attendance is intrusive, said Mr. Severance, because it violates a “reasonable expectation” of when a professor is under surveillance.

“At a university that has a heavy online presence, students know when they’re clicking that they’re being monitored,” he said. But professors at Michigan or Harvard have been taught to reasonably expect the opposite.

ADVERTISEMENT

“We have deans, and we have department chairs, but once we’re in the classroom, we are generally empowered to own the classroom experience,” said Mr. Severance.

In Mr. Burgard’s view, however, informing professors while keeping students in the dark would not have improved the situation. In fact, he said, it would have been an even more significant breach of trust.

“It’s bad enough if administrators are spying on us, and to me at least somehow as shocking as it is, as astonishing, it’s not as appalling as the notion of a professor spying on his or her own students,” he said. “I would hope any professor, if approached ahead of time, would say, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’”

According to Michael Patrick Rutter, a spokesman for Harvard, steps are being taken to inform professors and students affected by the study.

ADVERTISEMENT

“Professor Bol has reached out to every faculty member involved and has already spoken in person to all but two,” Mr. Rutter said by email. “He will continue that effort to ensure that the faculty have full details. In addition, he has committed to informing every student—using enrollment data—whose image may have been captured anonymously and subsequently destroyed as part of the research.”

Mr. Burgard didn’t find that assertion reassuring. He said was displeased that “nothing in [Mr. Bol’s] response acknowledged there was a transgression.”

But the professor who brought the issue into the open this week, Mr. Lewis, welcomed the vice provost’s response, and said he had spoken up at the faculty meeting to ensure that affected students would be informed.

“I’m glad that the matter has been satisfactorily resolved,” he said. “No real injury was done to anyone except a feeling that something slightly creepy happened.”

ADVERTISEMENT

With the ethical questions raised by the study, Mr. Burgard and Mr. Lewis wondered why a high-tech solution was deemed necessary to collect the data.

“You could just ask professors to take attendance,” Mr. Burgard said. “Just ask us! It’s astonishing to me that they didn’t try.”

Correction (11/6/2014, 1:15 p.m.): Michael Patrick Rutter was quoted in his capacity as a spokesman for Harvard University rather than as director of communications for HarvardX, a university program to pursue innovation in teaching. The article has been updated to reflect the change.

We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.
Tags
Technology Online Learning
Share
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Email
About the Author
Steve Kolowich
Steve Kolowich was a senior reporter for The Chronicle of Higher Education. He wrote about extraordinary people in ordinary times, and ordinary people in extraordinary times.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

More News

WASHINGTON, DISTICT OF COLUMBIA, UNITED STATES - 2025/04/14: A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator holding a sign with Release Mahmud Khalil written on it, stands in front of the ICE building while joining in a protest. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators rally in front of the ICE building, demanding freedom for Mahmoud Khalil and all those targeted for speaking out against genocide in Palestine. Protesters demand an end to U.S. complicity and solidarity with the resistance in Gaza. (Photo by Probal Rashid/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Campus Activism
An Anonymous Group’s List of Purported Critics of Israel Helped Steer a U.S. Crackdown on Student Activists
ManganGMU-0708 B.jpg
Leadership
The Trump Administration Appears to Have Another College President in Its Crosshairs
Joan Wong for The Chronicle
Productivity Measures
A 4/4 Teaching Load Becomes Law at Most of Wisconsin’s Public Universities
Illustration showing a letter from the South Carolina Secretary of State over a photo of the Bob Jones University campus.
Missing Files
Apparent Paperwork Error Threatened Bob Jones U.'s Legal Standing in South Carolina

From The Review

John T. Scopes as he stood before the judges stand and was sentenced, July 2025.
The Review | Essay
100 Years Ago, the Scopes Monkey Trial Discovered Academic Freedom
By John K. Wilson
Vector illustration of a suited man with a pair of scissors for a tie and an American flag button on his lapel.
The Review | Opinion
A Damaging Endowment Tax Crosses the Finish Line
By Phillip Levine
University of Virginia President Jim Ryan keeps his emotions in check during a news conference, Monday, Nov. 14, 2022 in Charlottesville. Va. Authorities say three people have been killed and two others were wounded in a shooting at the University of Virginia and a student is in custody. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
The Review | Opinion
Jim Ryan’s Resignation Is a Warning
By Robert Zaretsky

Upcoming Events

07-31-Turbulent-Workday_assets v2_Plain.png
Keeping Your Institution Moving Forward in Turbulent Times
Ascendium_Housing_Plain.png
What It Really Takes to Serve Students’ Basic Needs: Housing
Lead With Insight
  • Explore Content
    • Latest News
    • Newsletters
    • Letters
    • Free Reports and Guides
    • Professional Development
    • Events
    • Chronicle Store
    • Chronicle Intelligence
    • Jobs in Higher Education
    • Post a Job
  • Know The Chronicle
    • About Us
    • Vision, Mission, Values
    • DEI at The Chronicle
    • Write for Us
    • Work at The Chronicle
    • Our Reporting Process
    • Advertise With Us
    • Brand Studio
    • Accessibility Statement
  • Account and Access
    • Manage Your Account
    • Manage Newsletters
    • Individual Subscriptions
    • Group and Institutional Access
    • Subscription & Account FAQ
  • Get Support
    • Contact Us
    • Reprints & Permissions
    • User Agreement
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • California Privacy Policy
    • Do Not Sell My Personal Information
1255 23rd Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037
© 2025 The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education is academe’s most trusted resource for independent journalism, career development, and forward-looking intelligence. Our readers lead, teach, learn, and innovate with insights from The Chronicle.
Follow Us
  • twitter
  • instagram
  • youtube
  • facebook
  • linkedin