Harvard, under Trump govt pressure, revamps DEI office

Harvard University is revamping its diversity, equity and inclusion office in a move that seemed to accede to the Trump administration, even as the university has sued the administration and accused it of unlawfully interfering in the university’s affairs.

An email to the Harvard community Monday announced that the office had been renamed the Office of Community and Campus Life.

The decision follows similar reorganisations across the country by universities, which appeared to be aimed at placating conservative critics who have attacked diversity offices as left-wing indoctrination factories.

Harvard’s announcement stood out, though, because it came just hours after lawyers for the university and the Trump administration held their first conference in a lawsuit in which Harvard accuses the administration of invading freedoms long recognised by the Supreme Court.

The Trump administration also opened another front in its fight with the university Monday, accusing the Harvard Law Review, an independent student-run journal, of racial discrimination in journal membership and article selection.

In a news release announcing that the law review was under investigation, Craig Trainor, the Department of Education’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said the journal “appears to pick winners and losers on the basis of race, employing a spoils system in which the race of the legal scholar is as, if not more, important than the merit of the submission.”

Responding to the announcement, Harvard Law School emphasised its commitment to ensuring that programs it oversees comply with the law, but pointed out that the journal is legally independent. A similar claim against the Harvard Law Review was dismissed in federal court in 2019.

In announcing that Harvard's diversity office was being revamped, Sherri Ann Charleston, formerly the chief diversity officer, said the university should bring people together based on their backgrounds and perspectives and “not the broad demographic groups to which they belong.”

Charleston’s title has been changed to chief community and campus life officer.

The Trump administration included abolishing DEI efforts in a long list of demands it sent to Harvard two weeks ago, which the university would have to meet to continue receiving federal funding. Among other requirements, the administration ordered Harvard to appoint an external overseer to monitor students, faculty and staff for “viewpoint diversity,” to ban international students hostile to “American values,” and to eliminate activist faculty.

The list of demands was sent by mistake, according to two people familiar with the matter, but the White House has continued to stand by the requirements.

Harvard responded to the demands by filing the lawsuit in federal court.

“No government, regardless of which party, should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” Harvard President Alan M. Garber wrote in a statement to the university.

In retaliation, the administration has frozen more than $2.2 billion in university grants and contracts.