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Harvard Business School won’t say what happened to its $25 million Racial Equity Action Plan after the plan was apparently shuttered as Harvard backs away from the language of race and diversity.

The plan was established in 2020 following years of complaints about a lack of diversity at the Business School, where Black students were underrepresented in classrooms and featured in only 5 percent of the case studies used in HBS classes.

But five years later, as the Trump administration targets diversity programming and Harvard removes mentions of race from its offices and public materials, HBS has indicated that the Racial Equity Action Plan was discontinued and taken down the plan’s website.

In an interview published in August by the Business School’s press office, HBS Chief Community and Culture Officer Terrill L. Drake gave few specifics when asked about the plan’s future.

“We will continue to incorporate the intention behind the plan in our efforts. But our aspiration has always been bigger,” Drake said.

“Any initiative that’s designed only for one group inevitably leads others to ask about how the School can recognize and support them,” he added. “We want to maintain the true spirit of the Racial Equity Action Plan, but also broaden it so that everyone across the community sees how the OCC supports who they are and what they bring to the School.”

The action plan’s website now redirects to the homepage of the Office of Community and Culture, which itself was renamed from the Office of Diversity Equity and Inclusion in August.

Harvard Business School spokesperson Mark Cautela declined to comment on a detailed list of questions from The Crimson, including whether HBS would continue to pursue the commitments made under the Racial Equity Action Plan, how funding previously dedicated to the plan would be used, the name and goals of the broader initiative mentioned by Drake, and who would lead the initiative.

When the Racial Equity Action Plan was launched in September 2020, the Business School touted it as a point of pride and a necessary reckoning. Its dean at the time, Nitin Nohria, said in a press release that it “reflects our highest aspirations for the School and the role it can play in business and society.”

The plan began with a commitment from Nohria to spend $25 million in HBS money over 10 years and “seek additional support from donors to sustain the plan over time,” according to the press release.

Cautela declined to comment on how much of the $25 million had been spent before the plan’s apparent closure and where any remaining funds would be allocated. He also declined to answer questions on whether the plan had received donor funding and where unspent contributions would now be directed.

Under the plan, HBS committed to an ambitious series of goals — including recruiting Black and other underrepresented minority faculty, diversifying the characters in its curriculum, and better informing its students on how to promote racial equity both on campus and in the business world at large.

Between 2020 and 2025, the percentage of Black faculty at HBS hovered between three and five percent, according to an archived page on the Racial Equity Action Plan website. The percentage of Black staff has hovered between four and five percent between that same period of time.

It is not clear whether HBS increased its hiring of minority faculty in the years since the plan was adopted. The percentage of new reported Black and Asian hires did not systematically increase, and the number of total hires fluctuated year-to-year, with the race of some hires reported as “unknown.”

Under the plan, HBS also created and funded visiting faculty positions for scholars who study race, diversity, inequality, and climate change, hosting 13 scholars over the course of three years through their BiGS Fellowship. The school also established a fellowship program called RISE that gave two-year, $20,000 grants to admitted students for their service to “marginalized communities of color.”

Cautela, the HBS spokesperson, did not comment on whether the two programs would continue. Both the BiGS and RISE websites are still active, though RISE is now targeted toward students based on their service to “under-resourced communities.”

The plan also committed HBS to “supporting the development and dissemination of research and course material that advances racial equity in business.” In the school’s catalogue of case studies, the percent of Black protagonists increased from 5 to 8 percent between 2020 and 2023, but dropped to 2 percent in 2024.

HBS also committed to collaborations with several third-party organizations as part of the action plan. In 2021, the school announced a partnership with the OneTen Initiative, which was founded by a coalition of companies that planned to collectively hire or promote one million Black workers over the course of 10 years. The initiative has changed its mission as DEI fell into disfavor and now describes itself as a “coalition of 60+ companies creating economic mobility for skilled talent without four-year degrees.”

The HBS and OneTen collaboration was intended to aid the Business School in its research, bolster its publicly available educational tools such as HBS Online and Harvard Business Publishing, and create case studies to use in the school’s curriculum, according to an HBS press release from 2021. Cautela declined to comment on whether the collaboration was ongoing, and a spokesperson from OneTen did not respond to comment.

HBS also announced in 2020 it would step up support for and faculty engagement with The PhD Project, a nonprofit that tried to develop pipelines for minority students into business school. Several universities cut ties with the group this spring after it became a focal point in Republicans’ anti-DEI campaign. Cautela declined to comment on the status of the collaboration, and representatives of the PhD Project did not respond to requests for comment.

Over the plan’s lifespan, it accumulated a 25-member task force and 44 additional members. Of the members who could be reached for comment, all declined to comment or did not respond to The Crimson’s inquiries.

Under the plan, HBS promised to take steps to ensure “meaningful, measurable progress” toward its goals, outlining plans for an internal dashboard as well as establishing a Board of Advisors to track the school’s progress towards racial equity.

The advisory board included two members of the University’s highest governing board, the Harvard Corporation: Kenneth I. Chenault, a former chair and CEO of American Express, and former Merck CEO Kenneth C. Frazier. Four of the six members of the board, including both Chenault and Frazier, sit on the OneTen board of directors, and Chenault and Frazier sit on its executive committee.

Chenault, Frazier, and board member Lisa Skeete Tatum did not respond to requests for comment. The rest of the board could not be reached for comment.

—Staff writer Evan H.C. Epstein can be reached at evan.epstein@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X at @Evan_HC_Epstein.

—Staff writer Graham W. Lee can be reached at graham.lee@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @grahamwonlee.