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The dismantling of Harvard’s diversity offices arrived at Harvard College on Wednesday as websites for centers serving minority students, LGBTQ students, and women disappeared suddenly and without fanfare.
The quiet removals came as the Faculty of Arts and Sciences — which houses the College, Harvard’s undergraduate school — announced internally on Wednesday afternoon that it would shutter its diversity office and replace it with an Office for Academic Culture and Community.
The same afternoon, web pages belonging to the Harvard College Women’s Center, Office for BGLTQ Student Life, and Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations were taken down. Links to the centers’ sites now redirect to a nearly empty web page for an Office of Culture and Community within the College’s Dean of Students Office.
College spokesperson Jonathan Palumbo declined to say whether the centers would continue their operations and whether their staff would remain at Harvard, but referred Crimson reporters to a statement on the new page saying that the College anticipates “broadening this mission-critical work with renewed energy.”
The rollout this week comes more than two months after Harvard renamed its central diversity office — and represents the most far-reaching effort yet to scour references to diversity, equity, and inclusion from the University’s official materials as the Trump administration demands their elimination.
And the changes also arrive as the White House has boasted publicly — and Harvard’s leaders have spoken privately — of reopened negotiations between the two parties. In recent days, dynamics seem to have soured once again, with the Trump administration serving the University a subpoena and threatening its accreditation Wednesday morning.
But the University’s moves that same day represent a major concession to a linchpin of the same demands that its leaders have denounced, in the media and in court, as unconstitutional. The Trump administration has repeatedly and explicitly included an end to DEI at Harvard among its conditions for restoring federal research funding.
The changes within the FAS and the College continue Harvard’s adoption of a new administrative vocabulary: one that eschews mentions of race, gender, or equity while emphasizing words like “community,” “diverse viewpoints,” and “growth.”
The College’s new Office of Culture and Community page features a “University Commitment Statement” — not previously published on any Harvard website — that emphasizes integrity, respect, and the pursuit of excellence. The statement encourages students to “cultivate bonds and bridges” and learn from peers with different backgrounds, but it does not include the word “diversity” or any reference to protected categories.
The office also states at the top of the page that “Harvard College remains committed to cultivating a community where all of its members can thrive” and ensuring that students feel welcome.
Several announcements previously posted on the College’s website — including a message from former College Dean Rakesh Khurana entitled “The Importance of Diverse Learning Communities” also disappeared. The link now redirects to an “Access Denied” page. David J. Deming, who assumed the College deanship on July 1, has not made any public statements about the change.
Asked whether Wednesday’s removals were related to reopened talks with the Trump administration, Palumbo wrote in an email that they were a “continuation” of the work that began in April.
On Wednesday, when FAS Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra announced the formation of the faculty’s new office — dubbed the Office for Academic Culture and Community — she gave few details on why it was created and what tasks it would carry out. But she wrote in an email to the FAS that its founding was “part of the FAS’s ongoing effort to break down silos, ensuring all members of our community are connected, supported, and empowered to contribute to a thriving intellectual environment.”
More information, Hoekstra wrote, will come in the fall.
The FAS’s new office will be led by Brenda D. Tindal, who already holds positions in the FAS as chief campus curator and senior adviser on academic community engagement. Tindal previously served on the FAS civil discourse working group and was co-chair of the Harvard and Legacy of Slavery Memorial Committee.
Palumbo did not immediately say who would lead the Office of Culture and Community at the College level.
As of Wednesday night, the leaders of the Women’s Center, Office for BGLTQ Student Life, and Harvard Foundation were still listed in the University’s internal directories, though the public Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion staff directory on the Dean of Students website had been removed.
At first, Harvard seemed like a holdout against the Trump administration’s crusade against DEI, with its leaders affirming the value of diversity even as several peer universities shuttered their DEI offices and laid off staff.
But pressure mounted over time, and the University now seems to have joined its peers in the backlash against DEI.
The first shift — Harvard’s April decision to replace its Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging with a Campus and Community Life office — did not immediately trickle down to the University’s individual, relatively decentralized schools.
Since then, Harvard has undertaken a slower effort to thoroughly scrub the language of diversity from its websites — and possibly to restructure or end related programs, though University officials have been tight-lipped about concrete changes.
Though diversity office websites still exist at many graduate schools, Harvard Medical School’s office was restructured and renamed last month, and key staff at other schools are leaving Harvard or being moved to other offices.
Harvard also stripped data on faculty demographics from its website last semester and renamed the Office of Faculty Development and Diversity to the Office of the Senior Vice Provost for Faculty.
—Staff writer Samuel A. Church can be reached at samuel.church@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @samuelachurch.
—Staff writer Cam N. Srivastava can be reached at cam.srivastava@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @camsrivastava.
