First, the cheating: The Crimson reports that Harvard officials will soon issue the university’s report on the massive cheating scandal that has raised questions about the impact of big-time athletics on the university’s academic standards.

The completion of the investigation marks a turning point for the scandal that Dean of Undergraduate Education Jay M. Harris called “unprecedented in anyone’s living memory” when it was first announced at the end of August. Over the past semester, the Ad Board investigated approximately half of the undergraduates enrolled in last spring’s offering of Government 1310: “Introduction to Congress” for plagiarism and inappropriate collaboration on a take-home final exam. Administrators said that each case would be resolved on an individual basis.

Unprecedented in anyone’s living memory, yes. But what about their dead memory?

(Oh, Dean Harris, “unprecedented” would have worked just fine.)

Meanwhile, Fox News (yup, Fox News) reports that the Harvard Theological Review has delayed the publication of an article about Karen King’s controversial discovery of a document she interprets as suggesting that Jesus was married. The delay, according to Fox, casts doubt on the veracity of the papyrus fragment in question.

Kathryn Dodgson, director of communications for Harvard Divinity School, confirmed to FoxNews.com that testing and analysis of the fragment, including examination by independent laboratories with the resources and expertise necessary to produce reliable results, is still under way.

“Publication of Prof. King’s paper has been delayed, so that the results of the testing may be incorporated,” Dodgson wrote FoxNews.com in an email.

I so wanted that story to be true, but the consensus seems to be that Professor King has been the victim of a con. Or else she’s right…and she’s becoming the victim of an anti-truth conspiracy!

My prediction: As Harvard pushes further into the world of online education, cheating is going to become a much more common and pervasive issue for the university….but that is really the subject for another post.