After a public back-and-forth battle with President Donald Trump over anti-DEI pressure, Harvard University announced it will be renaming its Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging to “Community and Campus Life,” the Harvard Crimson reported.
In an email from Harvard’s chief diversity officer, now Chief Community and Campus Life Officer, Sherri A. Charleston, the school outlined plans to make the changes concrete. “In the weeks and months ahead, we will take steps to make this change concrete and to work with all of Harvard’s schools and units to implement these vital objectives, including shared efforts to reexamine and reshape the missions and programs of offices across the university,” she wrote.
While the email failed to specify what the changes would entail, Charleston did express a shift, as evidenced by data from the 2024 campus-wide Pulse Survey. Students, faculty, and staff felt a strong sense of belonging; however, fewer felt comfortable expressing their viewpoints or connecting across different ideologies. The data led to the change, prompting an urgency to reimagining how Harvard fosters community, with a focus on supporting free expression.
The Ivy League institution was one of the very few universities without plans to bow down to Trump’s demands to eliminate DEI programs, ensure “viewpoint diversity” in its hiring process, and screen international students who are “supportive of terrorism or anti-Semitism.” In a letter to the Trump administration, President Alan Garber said, “No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”
Even fans of Trump, such as media personality Candace Owens, were cheering Harvard on for its boldness, but the new Office of Community and Student Life will have new goals. The office will focus on expanding cross-cultural engagement programs, supporting first-generation and low-income students, and increasing opportunities for dialogue about differences.
The timing of the name change is questionable, as, according to The New York Times, the Trump administration accused the Harvard Law Review of racial discrimination in journal membership and article selection, during a conference that included Harvard lawyers and the White House administration.
The Department of Education’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, Craig Trainor, claimed the independent student-run journal “appears to pick winners and losers based on race, employing a spoils system in which the race of the legal scholar is as, if not more, important than the merit of the submission.”
Harvard Law Review received a similar accusation in 2019, which was later dismissed. The leading law school responded to the accusation, emphasizing its commitment to guaranteeing that its programs comply with the law, but highlighted the journal’s legal independence.
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