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Dunster House resident dean Gregory K. Davis reaffirmed his commitment to maintaining a welcoming space for all students in an email sent to House affiliates on Wednesday after years-old comments he made on social media resurfaced, sparking calls for his resignation.
Yardreport, a right-wing aggregator that has posted about Harvard events since September, published screenshots two weeks ago of seven posts Davis made on Facebook and X between 2016 and 2021. Among them were two posts from 2020, at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, in which Davis called police officers “racist and evil” and wrote that “rioting and looting are parts of democracy just like voting and marching.”
Yardreport also included a 2020 thread from X where Davis wrote that he did not blame people who wished ill on President Donald Trump and attached a meme that read “If he dies, he dies.” In the same thread, Davis, who is Black, wrote that he does not blame “(Black) people who steadfastly don’t wish death on anyone” and found himself in a “liminal space” between the views.
Davis’s X profile — along with his tweets, which were made while he was a Harvard tutor but before he was appointed resident dean in 2024 — have since been deleted.
Yardreport accompanied the screenshots with text accusing Davis of being hostile “toward White people, police, Republicans, and President Trump.”
“These comments, and many others, made by Davis disqualify him from serving in his role at Harvard,” the text read. “They reveal an ideology unbefitting of American society, let alone its most elite institution of higher education. The university must fire him immediately.”
The Yardreport post also included screenshots where Davis referred to whiteness as a “self-destructive ideology,” criticized Trump’s 2016 nomination as representing “the worst of Nixon and Hitler,” and suggested indifference to the death of conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh.
Davis’s resident dean role involves acting as an academic adviser and supporting student well-being in Dunster. He wrote in the Wednesday email that the posts “do not reflect my current thinking or beliefs.”
“I deeply appreciate the responsibility inherent in the Resident Dean role and I value the trust that individuals have placed in me,” he wrote. “I regret if my statements have any negative impact on the Dunster community.”
In an apparent nod to his previous comments regarding police officers, Davis added that he has “enjoyed the opportunity to work collaboratively with members of HUPD and other colleagues across campus.”
“I respect the work they do to support our community,” he wrote.
Yardreport’s authors have remained anonymous since the site made its first post on Sept. 29. Most of the posts link to articles in other publications or pages on Harvard’s website, and only the post on Davis, described as an “EXCLUSIVE,” included original text.
Posts on Yardreport have frequently targeted individuals at Harvard — including a Pakistani transgender rights activist who spoke at a conference, a Harvard Kennedy School student government diversity officer, and a visiting professor from Tufts University who performs as a drag queen.
The Yardreport post on the Tufts professor swiftly went viral, drawing articles in the New York Post and Fox News, as well as an X post from Elon Musk that mocked the professor using vulgar and misogynistic terms.
Because Davis is currently on parental leave, the Wednesday email including his note was sent to affiliates by Dunster House Faculty Deans Taeku and Shirley Lee.
“We are writing to share a letter with you from our Resident Dean Gregory Davis about some recent reporting from campus media,” they wrote. “We also wish to reaffirm that Dunster House is a community that welcomes all members. That continues to be our commitment to our students.”
The online fury over Davis’s posts comes at a moment when commentators, especially on the right, have been quick to call for punishment of speech they see as veering into advocacy of political violence. In the wake of the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk this September, more than 100 people were fired for comments criticizing Kirk or making light of his death.
Davis did not respond to a request for comment. College spokesperson Jonathan Palumbo declined to comment, and Harvard has not publicly addressed the matter since Yardreport first posted the screenshots.
Harvard adopted a policy in May 2024 against commenting on controversial topics unless they directly affect its “core function,” following concerns that official stances by Harvard’s leaders could discourage open discussion.
The bounds of the policy, however, have remained porous. University President Alan M. Garber ’76, criticizing protesters who chanted anti-Zionist slogans outside Harvard Hillel, said Harvard should condemn hateful speech, and the University criticized the views of an honoree who supports an academic boycott of Israel. But Harvard College’s dean declined to address an article in a conservative student publication this fall that echoed a 1939 speech by Adolf Hitler.
—Staff writer Samuel A. Church can be reached at samuel.church@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @samuelachurch.
