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Harvard has warned alumni interviewers not to include any information about an applicant’s race, ethnicity, or national origin in their written evaluations this admissions cycle — or risk seeing their evaluations thrown out.

The changes have been shared with alumni interviewers in a series of training sessions conducted this fall. They are also cemented in a new line in the alumni interviewer handbook: “Since race, ethnicity, and national origin may not be considered, interviewers should not reference them in the interview report.”

In a recording of one training session for interviewers obtained by The Crimson, interviewers were instructed by admissions office administrators not to report the languages applicants say they speak. They were told not to mention the religions applicants say they practice, the racial or ethnic organizations they are part of, or the countries their families come from.

Interviewers should instead use vague language, referring to “affinity groups” and “faith events,” to describe applicants’ backgrounds, beliefs, and activities. Otherwise, their interview reports will be discarded, they were told.

The change comes two years after the Supreme Court ruled against Harvard’s use of race-conscious admissions — and as the Trump administration attempts to classify a broad range of practices as racial discrimination.

But, though the interview guideline is new, one of the administrators leading the training session — associate director of admissions Maeve U. Hoffstot ’17 — clarified that “it’s no change in our compliance with the law as it has existed since 2023 in the Supreme Court’s decision.”

The change “will help us continue to prove time and time again, as we are being asked to do these days, that we are absolutely complying by this law and really not considering race, ethnicity, or national origin” in admissions,” Hoffstot said.

A Harvard spokesperson declined to comment on the change.

In the information session, Annie Medina, an assistant director of admissions, cautioned attendees to not share the change publicly.

“We don’t want students to be debriefed on this kind of update and your limitations in writing the report,” Medina said.

The latest changes go much further than previous amendments to Harvard’s alumni interview policy. After the Supreme Court ruled against the University in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, Harvard told alumni interviewers to not consider an interviewee’s race, ethnicity, or country of origin in evaluating applicants. However, interviewers were still permitted to write about those facts in their written reports.

Now, interviewers will not even have that option.

In the training session, Hoffstot provided examples of information that interviewers may and may not share under the new guidelines.

Interviewers may write that a student speaks a second language at home, but not specify which language it is. If a student is an immigrant, they may write that the student immigrated from a different country — but not what country of origin they are from.

When it comes to extracurriculars, interviewers cannot mention the specific name of an affinity group. Under the new policy, if an applicant founded their school’s Black Student Union, their interviewer would write that the student leads an affinity, community, or cultural group — without specifying anything about race or ethnicity.

Interviewers were also instructed not to name students’ religions. Though only Jewish, Muslim, and Sikh students are protected from religious discrimination based on Title VI’s ban on “shared ancestry” discrimination at federally funded institutions, Harvard has opted to discourage interviewers from discussing specific religions at all.

Other words alumni were told to not include in their evaluations are “underrepresented,” “minority,” and “person of color.”

Hoffstot said that those words are “context-dependent” and added that for the admissions committee, “it would be more helpful to not have that information — to not have ‘person of color,’ to not have ‘minority,’ to not have ‘underrepresented’ — as descriptors.”

Should an interviewer mention these things, even inadvertently, the admissions committee will not consider their report, according to the training session.

“We’re going to have to remove that from the applicant’s file and get a second interview for a student if they have race, ethnicity and national origin information factored into their overall recommendation, or any part of that interview report,” Hoffstot said.

Alumni interviews begin in September for recruited athletes, October for early action applicants, and January for regular decision applicants. The early action application deadline is Nov. 1.

The Supreme Court’s 2023 opinion was narrowly tailored to prohibit the consideration of race as a boost or a drawback for candidates in the admissions process, but it allowed colleges to consider how applicants say race affected their life — as a result of “discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.”

Since the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions prohibiting the consideration of race in college admissions, Harvard has been in the limelight for the application of race or ethnicity even in contexts that do not relate to admissions.

Since President Donald Trump took office again in January, his administration has tried to apply the SFFA ruling to a much broader class of policies. A memo issued by the Education Department in February warned that the government would take action against universities that use information in other parts of students’ applications, like extracurricular participation or personal essays, as proxies for race.

Harvard has been hedging its bets. The College scrapped its Undergraduate Minority Recruitment Program earlier this year, folding all recruiting efforts under a new umbrella program. Months later, the Justice Department released a letter arguing that “recruitment strategies targeting specific geographic areas, institutions, or organizations chosen primarily because of their racial or ethnic composition” could be illegal.

David B. Oppenheimer, a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, said that the change to alumni interviews appears to far exceed anything required by the SFFA decision.

“There is no case that holds that a university may not be aware of a student’s race or ethnicity if the student’s race or ethnicity is in some way connected with the students accomplishments or barriers they face and overcome, or other life experiences — nothing,” he said. “It’s possible that the Trump administration thinks or claims that’s the law, but it’s not.”

Oppenheimer said the change would make it harder for minority applicants to share information about the experiences and beliefs behind their application.

“To put minority applicants at a disadvantage by not allowing alumni interviewers to put into context the volunteer work that students do, the extracurricular work that applicants do, the barriers that applicants may have overcome, the context in which the applicants have developed their viewpoints,” he said, “is to seriously disadvantage students who are not white and male.”

Alumni interviewer Michael G. Sacerdote ’02 said he didn’t think the change would affect how he conducts his interviews.

“In my years of interviewing, of course, certain affinity groups have come up. People have mentioned that they’re in this affinity group or that affinity group,” he said. “But aside from explicitly naming them, I can’t imagine that this is really going to change how I approach the interviews.

“I’ve always looked for people who are academically very accomplished, who have gone beyond just passing their tests, who have shown energy and creativity and leadership, and nothing has changed on that front,” he says.

In the two years since the SFFA decision, Black enrollment at Harvard College has fallen by more than 6 percentage points, and Hispanic enrollment by 5 percentage points. The Trump administration has suggested Harvard is out of compliance with the ruling and demanded more information on the school’s admissions process.

The administration is also asking for access to universities’ data on applicants' races, grades, and test scores.

—Staff writer Cassidy M. Cheng can be reached at cassidy.cheng@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @cassidy_cheng28.

—Staff writer Elias M. Valencia can be reached at elias.valencia@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @eliasmvalencia.