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Updated July 23, 2025, at 8:12 p.m.
Harvard College will close its offices for minority students, LGBTQ students, and women and fold their staff and programs into a new center within the Office of Culture and Community, according to a Wednesday message from College Dean David J. Deming.
In place of the three centers, the College will establish the “Harvard Foundation” within the recently-formed OCC, under the College’s Dean of Students Office. Current staff from the Harvard College Women’s Center, Office for BGLTQ Student Life, and Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations will be reassigned to the Foundation.
Roughly 50 employees worked at the three offices, including more than 15 student interns, according to archived versions of their websites.
“All College services remain available to every student,” Deming wrote in the email, which was sent to College staff. “ With this new structure, we embody our commitment to supporting our entire student body.”
The College quietly removed the websites for the three centers two weeks ago, replacing them with a work-in-progress page containing information about the OCC.
Alta Mauro, who previously served as an associate dean for inclusion and belonging, will lead the OCC at the College’s Dean of Students Office, assuming the title “Associate Dean of Students for Culture and Community.”
The Trump administration has repeatedly called on Harvard to end all diversity, equity, and inclusion programming as a condition for gaining back the billions in dollars of federal research funding the administration froze in April. A confidential memo sent to Harvard on April 3 by Trump administration lawyers — which laid out potential demands on the University — singled out the Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations for “elimination.”
The University renamed its central Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging in late April. Since then, Harvard’s schools have worked to strip all references to DEI — as well as any programming linked to race and gender — from their websites and official titles.
The new Harvard Foundation will also include the College’s programs for veterans and members of the military; “religion, ethics, and spirituality work”; and low-income and first-generation students.
The three centers, located in the basements of freshman dorms, currently provide services to students including identity-based counseling and educational workshops.
The Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations, the oldest of the three, was founded in 1981 and long known as the “Harvard Foundation.” It hosts programs including the annual Cultural Rhythms Show, which highlights performances of students from different cultural backgrounds, and the First Year Retreat and Experience, a freshman pre-orientation program for first-generation and low-income students.
The Women’s Center, founded in 2006 to promote gender equity, has focused its programming on advocating for women’s rights at the college, including through hosting panels with advocates and discussions on empowerment.
The Office of BGLTQ Student Life, known among students as the “QuOffice,” opened in 2012 after students protested for a more visible LGBTQ-specific space and a working group recommended its formation. It was founded to serve as a welcoming space for LGTBQ undergraduates and regularly hosted programming around sexual orientation and gender identity.
The OCC webpage — where links to the Women’s Center, Office for BGLTQ Student Life, and Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations now redirect — was updated Wednesday, hours before the announcement, to include details about the new Harvard Foundation and its commitment that “each student is treated with equal dignity and respect.”
The site no longer makes specific references to women, LGBTQ, or minority students. It does feature webpages on the College’s support for veterans, first-generation and low-income students, and religious students.
—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.
