I agree that giving take home exams might not be the best idea, but I place 100% of the blame on the students for this. It is completely reasonable to give academic honesty instructions to students and request that they be followed. Maybe it's not realistic to expect that the instructions will be followed, but it is certainly reasonable to punish the students for violations of academic honesty. Honestly, I think Harvard would be well within their rights to expel any student who blatantly plagiarized an exam, take-home or not.

It's a little scary (maybe not surprising) that 2% of Harvard undergrads were involved in this scandal. This incident, combined with the Stuyvesant scandal makes me lose so much faith in the national student body. I wonder what the solution to this apparently endemic problem is. Maybe the best idea is to accept that students are going to copy and collaborate, and give each student personalized assignments.