Universities Weblog

The panel spent 90 minutes in public conversation at a crowded Loeb Drama Center on Brattle Street. Rare in any theater setting, the standing ovation came first, before a word was said. A largely female audience greeted the five groundbreaking women with hoots and cheers and prolonged applause.

Judith Rodin, the first woman named president of an Ivy, was on the panel, which was billed as a Voices of Public Intellectuals Lecture. Rodin, a research psychologist, broke a centuries-old barrier in 1994 when she stepped into office at the University of Pennsylvania. Under her tenure, Penn doubled its research budget and tripled the size of its endowment. She is now president of the Rockefeller Foundation.

"Of course, it's been a glorious surprise," said Rodin, a former provost of Yale University. "These things are never planned."

The meeting itself was planned two years ago, "in circumstances quite different" from today, said moderator Drew G. Faust, who was named president of Harvard just over two months ago. She is currently Lincoln Professor of History and dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, which sponsors the lecture series.

Joked Faust, "I arranged a tutorial for myself."

After finding consistencies in exam answers, "the professor said, 'Let me take a look at other stuff that's been handed in,' " said Mike Hemmerich, an associate dean at the business school. A judicial board later investigated the final exam and other assignments, resulting in the punishment of 34 graduate students.

Nine students face expulsion from the competitive two-year program, which will cost first-year students in 2007 almost $50,000 for tuition, books, and a laptop computer. An additional 15 students could be suspended for one year and receive a failing grade in the course.

Nine others are set to get a failing grade, and one student could receive a failing grade on an assignment separate from the exam. Four others were found not guilty, Hemmerich said.

"Typically, students do file an appeal on an honor-code violation," Hemmerich said.

The students have until May 17 to appeal. They were allowed to finish classes last week and are taking final exams.

Duke has not identified the professor who gave the exam, and Hemmerich said federal privacy laws prevented the school from identifying students. The average age of students in the first-year class is 29, and more than 1,140 people applied for only 411 available spots in the program.