The Renaming of GSAS Reflects A Deep Pattern of Injustice

On April 11, nearly 5,000 students at the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences were greeted with an unwelcome surprise: Our school was renamed the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, effective immediately.

After almost a year of celebrations for our 150th anniversary, the announcement was jarring, to say the least.

Since then, much has been written about how members of our community find Kenneth C. Griffin ’89’s ideological affiliations to be in conflict with our core values. But my objective is not to belabor those points. Instead, I want to explain why the way these events transpired was deeply unjust and hurtful.

As Shakespeare said, “that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Though its name changed overnight, our school’s people and their values haven’t changed. From this perspective, our frustration might seem unwarranted.

Yet every single person I’ve spoken to at GSAS — students, alumni, and administrators — has expressed a deep sense of injustice and hurt. This is because names do more than allow us to refer to people or things: Who and what we choose to honor in a name also expresses a commitment to values and causes, which can guide future action.

Thus, if we respect existing members of the community as stakeholders, they should be included in the decision-making process for something as monumental as the entire community’s renaming.

And you don’t have to take it from me.

In a 2020 message to the FAS community regarding the Task Force on Visual Culture and Signage, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Harvard President-Elect Claudine Gay described the Harvard administration’s process of deciding who and what to memorialize, writing: “Honest and rigorous conversations about how we weave together our past, present, and future through our visual culture and symbols are necessary to build the stronger, more equitable future we envision.”

And yet, without any “rigorous conversation” with GSAS students, those same administrators changed our name — the most public “symbol” of our school.

This raises the question: How was such a blatantly unjust decision allowed to happen, and why did it happen to us?

For the past three years, I’ve worked alongside many student leaders and administrators to improve GSAS students’ lives as a GSAS Student Center Fellow, as an executive on the Graduate Residence Hall Council, and as the secretary, vice president, then president of the GSAS Student Council. I’m sad to say that no one I work with was surprised that we were abruptly renamed.

For as long as I’ve been a leader, GSAS students told me that they feel like second-class citizens at Harvard. And that’s by design: An administrator explained to a group of us recently that we can’t expect equal treatment with the College because alumni of the College donate more money.

We see this dynamic play out every day. For instance, when GSAS students were pushed out of the College House system in 2019, we lost access to intramural sports. This hurt: Athletics are an invaluable way to build community and promote mental health, something many graduate students struggle with.

Since then, we’ve consistently pushed for athletic opportunities, but made little headway. Students resort to workarounds like cross-registering at MIT just to get access to athletic facilities because Harvard Athletics won’t let our groups use theirs. And although the University committed to creating a graduate IM league by Fall 2021, the single staff position charged with leading that effort was not filled until October 2022.

Another thoroughly exhausting fight has been about renovating the GSAS Student Center at Lehman Hall, the only space GSAS students can call their own. Much needs to be done: For example, many wheelchairs can’t fit in the building’s elevator, and a lack of power outlets makes it difficult to work there.

A 2021-22 feasibility study included concrete plans for renovation. But despite our support, it has been frustratingly difficult to get any indication of when — or even if — they might be approved. Recently, we learned that the plans would be delayed by another year.

Yet, Harvard has already spent over $800 million renovating the College Houses. The amount proposed to renovate Lehman Hall is a small fraction of that.

This history makes us incredibly skeptical about how much of Griffin’s $300 million gift will go into supporting GSAS directly as opposed to FAS or the College. Yet it’s us who got renamed, reinforcing the message that we’re worth less to Harvard. We’re reminded of this message every time we see the new name.

A particularly painful downstream effect of the renaming is that our student groups and programs will likely have to be renamed accordingly. For example, Figure Skating@GSAS, a group that means a lot to me personally as a symbol of our commitment to student wellbeing outside of academics, will most likely become Figure Skating@Harvard Griffin GSAS. None of our traditions or sacred spaces will be left unscarred.

I’m not writing this with the intent to push for a particular solution. I don’t know if there’s a good one. But students at GSAS and the administration need to talk.

The GSAS community deserves to know how the decision to rename us was made, and how the gift will benefit GSAS. We need Harvard to acknowledge the hurt that has been inflicted upon us, and to commit to conversations going forward not only to address that hurt but also to prevent similar injustices in the future.

Surely, we deserve that much.

Zachary Lim is a fourth-year student at the Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the President of the GSAS Student Council.