“If the message [that collaboration was not allowed] was so clearly expressed, why did some of the teaching fellows go over the exam in open session, a per se violation of the professor’s seeming intent?” Stemberg wrote. “If they did not get the message, could one expect the students to understand it?”

Stemberg also wrote that his dissatisfaction with the way the scandal was handled was informed by discussion with two former Deans of the College.

Harry R. Lewis ’68, dean of the College from 1995 to 2003, has criticized the College’s handling of the investigation in several articles and blog posts. In an interview with The Crimson, Lewis said that he and Stemberg commiserated about the scandal when passing each other at their courtside seats at Harvard basketball games this season.

“He read my Huffington Post piece,” Lewis said. “The first time he walked past me, he kind of threw up his hands.”

Lewis said he is disappointed that the scandal has not resulted in a University-wide conversation about the policies and culture surrounding undergraduate teaching at Harvard.

“I continue to be principally troubled that we’re not having, haven’t had yet, and there’s no indication that we’re going to have, a faculty conversation about how faculty conduct their courses,” he said.

Lewis echoed Stemberg’s complaint that the organization of the course, seen by many students as an easy ‘A’, fostered confusion about the limits of appropriate collaboration.

“How is it that hundreds of students knew the way this course was run, and nobody in the Government department knew or if they did know why didn’t anybody stop it from happening?” Lewis said. “When the course is sufficiently lax about its own standards, in 125 alleged cases of overlapping language, it’s very hard to figure out what everybody’s good faith expectations were about they were supposed to do.”

For his part, Stemberg saw little evidence of “good faith” on the side of Harvard administrators.

He sounded a note of dismay in the closing line of his letter: “As an alumnus, how can one come to any conclusion other than the University has a bloated bureaucracy so intent on being politically correct, that its students and its mission are forgotten?”

—Staff writer Elizabeth S. Auritt can be reached at eauritt@college.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Jared T. Lucky can be reached at lucky@college.harvard.edu.