When MIT removed Walter Lewin’s physics lectures from OpenCourseWare and edX last month, it was seeking to prevent future sexual harassment, MIT officials said in an interview on Monday.

MIT is cutting ties with retired professor Walter Lewin after determining that the physicist, whose lectures had made him a beloved teacher and minor Internet star, had sexually harassed at least one student online.

Some graduate student leaders say they are optimistic about big plans to revamp east campus now that MIT has signalled that it will make up for the beds that will be lost in Kendall Square after the Eastgate graduate family housing building is demolished.

MIT’s primary investment pool generated a return of 19.2 percent in the 2014 fiscal year, during which the Institute’s endowment rose to $12.4 billion, the MIT Investment Management Company announced last Friday.

Islamic State militants told the family of journalist James Foley, whom the group beheaded last week, that they had previously offered to return captured Americans in exchange for the release of Aafia Siddiqui ’95, an MIT alumna and alleged al-Qaida operative.

Tired of losing students to schools like Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale, this year MIT tweaked its financial aid formula to sweeten the deal for undergraduates from families making $100,000 to $150,000.

The MIT Corporation named its next chairman, Robert B. Millard ’73, at last Friday’s elections. He will assume his new role as the head of MIT’s board of trustees in October.

The fourth-year architecture student had traveled to India to participate in an energy workshop and install solar panels at a Buddhist monastery.

Confusion over how votes should be counted has left a Graduate Student Council resolution, which urges MIT to divest its endowment from big fossil fuel companies, in limbo.

MIT announced the death of Eliana F. Hechter, a first-year medical student at Harvard and MIT’s joint Health Sciences and Technology program, last Friday.