Harvard University is taking public criticism from faculty and students for photographing about 2,000 undergraduates in lecture halls last spring without permission as part of a study. The experiment was focused on classroom attendance and recorded in 10 lecture halls.

The study was first disclosed at a faculty meeting Tuesday and then printed in a report in the student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson.

"You should do studies only with the consent of the people being studied," Harry Lewis, a computer science professor at the Ivy League institution, told the Boston Globe.

Lewis asked administrators about the study after he learned about it from two other colleagues.

A current junior in student government, Brett Biebelberg, said the secret study was "strikingly hypocritical," since the university just recently adopted an honor code for the first time in school history.

Harvard administrators said teachers and students were not told because researchers were concerned about the potential bias that might be introduced. Cameras took pictures each minute, and a computer program recognized how many seats were empty or occupied.

The experiment was overseen by Vice Provost Peter Bol and the Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching. He said the school's Institutional Review Board approved the study, along with professors whose lectures were to be monitored. Teachers were told in August, and all gave permission to collect images as data for the study, which were destroyed after analysis.

In March 2013, Harvard was also criticized for searching university email accounts of 16 deans secretly to determine who had leaked information to the media about a cheating scandal. New privacy policies on electronic communication were created after the incident and put in place this spring.

President Drew Faust said she will have a panel review the latest case and any potential privacy concerns it violates.

"I indeed do take very seriously the important questions that this incident raises," she told The Crimson.

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