Hentzel emphasized that NAQT officials believe Watkins acted alone.

“There is no evidence to suggest that any of his teammates knew anything about this,” he said. NAQT has not leveled any sanctions or penalties on Harvard’s team, and no other Harvard players have been reprimanded.

Liu said that at the time, teammates noted that Watkins, a chemistry concentrator who specialized in science questions, performed unusually well in history and literature topics at national tournaments. After correctly answering a question on the history of Thailand in the 2011 national championship round against the University of Minnesota, Watkins told The Crimson that history was generally not his strong suit.

“It was not in a category that I’m comfortable with or generally speaking, good at,” Watkins said at the time. “But with only a few seconds [to react], you can’t really induce your teammates to answer the question.”

Liu said he thinks that NQAT’s decision to strip Harvard of its championships was fair.

“Those other teams definitely deserve those victories,” he said. “It’s really unfortunate that they didn’t get to spend that year between 2011 and 2012 championships celebrating that victory.”

—Staff writer Jared T. Lucky can be reached at lucky@college.harvard.edu. Follow him on Twitter @jared_lucky.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

CORRECTION: March 30, 2013

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Stephen Liu ’14 is the president of the Harvard Quiz Bowl team. In fact, he is the club's vice president.