Timothy McCarthy, a lecturer and program director at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, posted about the e-mail search on Facebook. “This is disgraceful,” he said, “even more so than the original cheating scandal, because it involves adults who should know better — really smart, powerful adults, with complete job security.”

Harvard’s spokesmen declined to comment on Sunday about the criticism. On Saturday, the university would not confirm or deny that the e-mail searches had taken place. It was unclear whether the issue would blow over or if it might escalate into a major confrontation between the faculty and the administration.

A resident dean generally has two Harvard e-mail accounts, a general one and one specifically for the post of resident dean. A Harvard official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a matter the university considers confidential, said the searches had been limited to the resident dean accounts and limited to message headers indicating whether the leaked e-mail had been forwarded to anyone; the official said no one had looked at the content of any e-mails.

The resident deans are employees who live in Harvard’s residential houses, alongside undergraduates, and counsel them on a range of matters. They also have appointments as lecturers — people who teach classes but are not on the tenure track for professors — and serve on various faculty bodies.

Several Harvard faculty members speculated that the administration had felt free to search the e-mail accounts because it regarded the resident deans as regular employees, not faculty members; Harvard’s policies on electronic privacy give more protection to faculty members. The prevailing view from professors seemed to be that the resident deans are faculty members.

“If their role as administrative deans means that they can be treated like staff,” Dr. Waters said, “then I do think that the e-mails of the president, provost and dean of the faculty should be turned over to the Faculty Council to investigate who ordered this witch hunt. “If the resident deans don’t have protection as faculty, neither should any other faculty serving in an administrative capacity.”

The faculty policy states that while the administration can search a Harvard faculty e-mail account as part of an internal investigation, it must notify the faculty member beforehand or soon after. In this case, the notification followed after about six months.