“[It should be] a culture of honor,” Bates said, defining such a culture as “[placing] integrity above fear or above anxiety about getting into med school or law school, or about all those other things that lead people to make choices that lack integrity.”

Students have cautioned that the success of an honor code at Harvard would require a shift in campus culture regarding academic integrity, a sentiment Bates echoed.

Bates noted that though the initial drafting was a step in the right direction, there would need to be a shift in students’ attitudes for the honor code to succeed.

“There’s the next step, which is getting a lot of very dynamic and ambitious people with very high expectations for themselves, where grades mean so much about their future and where academics is something that doesn’t really lie at the core, I think, of undergraduate life...all that has to be reshaped,” Bates said.

—Staff writer Madeline R. Conway can be reached at mconway@college.harvard.edu. Follow her on Twitter @MadelineRConway.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

CORRECTION: April 12, 2013

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Robert H. Bates is a professor of African American Studies. In fact, he is a professor of African and African American Studies.