Such examples, officials say, will be rare.

"The general feelings of the deans is that it should be only when there's a specific, compelling reason to do," says Wald.

Rudenstine says members of the community who wish to attach the Harvard name to a specific project of body of work will be held to high standards before receiving authorization. Otherwise, the University runs the risk of incomplete coverage.

"If anyone can, as it were, use without thinking the Harvard name and shield, it may seem that the University may make a statement about something where there are tremendously many different statements,' he says.

In all other situations, the University will require that professor, students or staff change the name of their planned projects to clarify its precise relationship to the University--often by simply calling a project the Project on X at Harvard University.'

"The whole idea is to avoid the implication of endorsement by the University," Wald says.

Digital Precedents

One student, says Fineberg, even approached the administration regarding his Internet home page. The student, who was unnamed, wanted to know if he could continue to display the Harvard shield on his personal home page on the Harvard web server.

Taken in its most extreme interpretation, the new policy would prohibit student use of Harvard's insignias on web pages, since such use might imply a University endorsement of a student's online content.

In this situation, the University has taken a position and set a precedent--the insignia graphics can stay, but only as long as the web page resides on the Harvard server.

"There a kind of de minimus assumption behind this," Thompson says. "We wish people would follow the policy to the letter, but we're not going to look at every small violation of it."

However, if student were to use the Harvard insignia on a personal web page in conjunction with selling a product, advocating a political cause or soliciting support for charity, Harvard's stance would markedly harden.

"I'm afraid we would have to come down on that," Thompson says.

The Faculty of Arts of Sciences currently prohibits commercial use of the Harvard networks, regardless of whether the Harvard shield is used, but its policies are less clear as to using individual web space for political or charitable causes.

In the five weeks since the policy was enacted, there have have been some requests to use Harvard's name that have been turned down, but often these situations were resolved by asking the applicants to clarify the titles of their projects.