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Harvard has outsourced diversity to the thesaurus.

This summer, Harvard College swapped the language of diversity, equity, and inclusion for the language of “culture and community,” closing the Harvard College Women’s Center and BGLTQ spaces, only vaguely promising to keep services unchanged. DEI might have failed at Harvard, but without increased transparency, the cautiously-worded rebrand will suffer a similar fate.

We understand the old project of diversity — DEI as practiced here — to have often been performative and corporate. Like a suspiciously pluralistic brochure, it sometimes capitalized on the identities of Harvard affiliates, making diversity something to display rather than embody.

Nonetheless, Harvard’s former DEI offices offered real resources. The Office for BGLTQ Student Life previously provided information for relevant students regarding how to operate Harvard’s housing system or receive certain forms of healthcare. The First-Year Retreat and Experience seeks to provide stable footing for first-generation and low-income students.

Harvard’s previous DEI network was probably imperfect. But it was clear that resources were manifold and accessible, and they were likely a boon to underrepresented students from those backgrounds.

Now, the rage at the College is “viewpoint diversity,” exemplified in its Intellectual Vitality initiative and DEI rebrand. We agree with the premise: the academic mission requires engaging with diverse perspectives. But as Harvard’s institutional emphasis on diversity shifts to the intellectual, students from backgrounds affected by the DEI purge may find themselves unsupported.

On these terms, the new project is failing. The Harvard Foundation, the new destination for many previous DEI office staffers, describes its programming in the language of viewpoint diversity rather than identity, hoping to “encourage dialogue across difference” and “facilitate peer-to-peer learning.” Such language suggests a function distinct from previous DEI offices.

Without further clarity on function or an explanation of how former services would be affected the Foundation’s supposed beneficiaries — may rightly wonder: What will the Foundation actually do?

By collapsing identity-specific offices into an opaque umbrella organization and shuttering dedicated spaces, the University has traded targeted capacity for vague promise. As students contend with the new system, they may face delays, a lack of resources, and dead URLs. Students who have specific needs once had equally specific staffed offices and designated proctors. No longer.

The harm is not evenly distributed. For some first-generation and low-income students, LGBTQ students, women, and students of color, identity support is a precondition for the fullest campus experience.

The University might argue that resources still exist — somewhere, lost amidst the alphabet soup. That misses the point. Access requires legibility: names, rooms, pages, and people that students can actually find.

Worse, the new “diversity” picks winners. Veterans and FGLI students remain clearly centered with visible structures and staff — support we applaud — while race, gender, and sexuality barely appear on the Office of Culture and Community’s website. Some groups get to keep their institutional scaffolding — so long as it’s politically expedient.

The timing, tone, and rollout of the DEI shift all feel less like conviction to “intellectual diversity” than compliance with a belligerent Washington. For months, federal pressure made “ending DEI” a condition for normalcy, a context Deming seemed to acknowledge in a recent presentation to Peer Advising Fellows. If the College truly believed this shift advanced its mission, it would say so plainly and show, in detail, what remains and how to access it. Instead, the messaging has been evasive. During the same presentation, Deming said he assumed attendees would understand the need to change certain DEI programming.

Swapping signage and sanding down language resolves neither politics nor the needs of students. The University’s word salad rollout and silent closures read like an effort to bury both the lede and the ledger at once. Transparency is a prerequisite for accountability, and Harvard has chosen neither.

Harvard cannot cave to Washington and keep students whole by wordsmithing and selective silence. If the College insists on “culture and community,” it must pair the rhetoric with clear public services, staffed and resourced.

Absent that, the OCC will merely inherit the worst of DEI’s reputation: symbolism without substance. DEI as Harvard practiced it fell short, but giving it a hasty, ill-explained paint job isn’t sensible reform.

Without explanation or restoration, intellectual diversity efforts at Harvard will both fail its namesake mission while leaving students in need confused. If resources are missing, explain why. If resources are present, guide students to them. Build the conditions where a true diversity — of viewpoints built on backgrounds — can thrive.

Otherwise, the new era will continue to look like what it is: old politics, new paint.

This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.

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