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As the dust settled on Tuesday’s election results, Harvard Dean of Students Thomas Dunne said his office will offer support to students devastated by Donald Trump’s win, but stressed that the College will remain nonpartisan and inclusive of conservative students.
“There is, and should be, a diverse range of experiences and opinions,” Dunne said in a Thursday interview. “That’s what a university is all about.”
Dunne’s remarks come as the College prepares to walk a fine line through the aftermath of the election, aiming to be responsive to liberal students fearful of a second Trump administration while maintaining Harvard’s new policy of not commenting on controversial political issues. In his interview, Dunne emphasized that the DSO would serve students of all political stripes.
“What can be sometimes hard for people to realize is there is support and care for students broadly, in the same way that people reach out to students if they are from a particular region of the world that has a natural disaster,” Dunne said. “People have a sense that, ‘Oh, this is because they’re upset that Trump won an election’ — and it’s actually more nuanced than that.”
“We respond to students who have needs. Those needs could be, ‘I need support,’ or it could be, ‘I need help planning a celebration,’” he added. “Both things could happen in one afternoon in my job.”
Despite Crimson surveys showing that Harvard faculty and students are overwhelmingly liberal, Dunne objected to “distorted” characterizations of the University as a hub of political orthodoxy in certain mainstream outlets, including the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal.
He specifically rejected the notion “that everyone here, every student, has the same political views and ideology — which we know is not the case — or reacts in the same way, or is navigating the same concerns about what this election means for themselves, their families.”
Dunne added that the intellectual vitality initiative — a College-wide push to improve campus discourse — could help students concerned that the outcome could lead to increased campus divisions and racist or misogynistic rhetoric.
“One of the things that’s been a thread with intellectual vitality work has been assuming good intentions, asking clarifying questions, and at the very least initially give someone the benefit of the doubt,” he said.
“Irrespective of how the election played out at that level, we have work to do here of fostering a campus environment that is inclusive and respectful and community oriented,” he said.
On election night, the DSO co-organized two watch parties — one with the Institute of Politics in Sanders Theatre and another with the Harvard Republican Club in the Cambridge Queen’s Head venue directly below Sanders. Dunne emphasized that the DSO wanted to oblige the HRC’s request to have a watch party featuring a feed from Fox News, rather than CNN.
“It was really important to us to make sure that conservative student groups and the College Republicans were part of the event,” Dunne said.
“There’s a very comfortable stereotype of, ‘An office would support one group or care about one group of students and not the others,’” he added. “And that’s not the case.”
During the interview, Dunne also acknowledged that Trump’s reelection killed some liberal students’ dreams of working in a Democratic White House once they graduate, but said he would encourage them to get involved with local politics.
“If your dream of working in politics is working at the White House, okay, that’s a little bit challenging for the left-leaning progressive student,” he said. “If you want to work in politics in elected office and make a difference, Cambridge City Hall is like — we could walk there.”
“There’s all these other opportunities where we can do stuff and use the benefit of a Harvard education to make our home community better, which would be a great service to the nation,” Dunne added.
—Staff writer Madeleine A. Hung can be reached at madeleine.hung@thecrimson.com.
—Staff writer Azusa M. Lippit can be reached at azusa.lippit@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @azusalippit or on Threads @azusalippit.
