Harvard Needs To Make Up Its Mind on DEI

For a brief moment, it looked like Harvard would hold true to its values.

Over the last several weeks — to the relief of many onlookers— Harvard announced that it would defy Trump’s restrictive demands, and then sued his administration over its retaliatory pause on billions in federal funding.

But on Monday, the University renamed its Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging to one of “Community and Campus Life,” effective immediately. So much for defiance.

This move is an apparent attempt to ditch a program caught in the crossfire of the culture wars. But if the University believes in the principles of diversity and belonging, as it purports to do, it ought to put its cards on the table and be honest about the value of DEI programs — and its efforts to improve them.

Some argue that even if Trump’s critiques of Harvard are levied in bad faith, they hold a kernel of truth worth addressing. Indeed, the University itself has framed OEDIB’s name change as part of its efforts to “reimagine our work in ways that meet our current needs and goals.” This might be all well and good, but it begs the question: what concerns are we addressing?

Critiques of DEI tend to fall into one of two categories: that it’s anti-meritocratic or that it’s ineffective.

Regarding meritocracy, the primary concern raised is that race and other identity-conscious practices in areas like admissions and hiring amount to a sort of “reverse discrimination.” Setting aside the fact that identity-conscious policies are a reasonable means of rectifying past and current discrimination, this critique requires that such practices are utilized in the first place.

But at Harvard, they simply aren’t. The University complied when the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action, and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences stopped requiring diversity statements in hiring last summer.

Regarding efficacy, I’ll be the first to admit that this concern is legitimate. Though I can’t speak to the details of OEDIB’s operations, it’s not out of the question that the office could meet its aims more effectively. But the same could be said of any other office at Harvard, or any endeavor for that matter.

Granted, OEDIB’s mission of “inclusive excellence” isn’t very easily quantifiable. Still, there are many metrics that we can and do use, like the number of recorded bias incidents, or reported rates of student belonging.

If we hope to assess efficacy, we must start by asking if we’ve set appropriate goals, used appropriate methods to achieve them, and measured progress with the appropriate metrics. If OEDIB’s name change was motivated by this kind of inquiry, the University should just come out and tell us clearly. Instead, it announced the change suddenly — seemingly with no input from students or other stakeholders — citing only a few narrow data points and gesturing vaguely in the direction the office hopes to move in.

In her email to affiliates, Chief “Community and Campus Life Officer” Sherri A. Charleston maintained the University’s commitment to diversity and belonging, but also emphasized the need to create dialogue and connection across “diverse viewpoints.” She offered no clear insight into why her office is currently unequipped to achieve these goals, what they will do to change that, or why a name change is a necessary step.

The subtext seems clear: The University believes that an office focused on DEI cannot also be devoted to viewpoint diversity.

But this binary is false. Inclusion and belonging aren’t zero-sum. Diversity of identity and diversity of viewpoints aren’t mutually exclusive. Indeed, in 2020 OEDIB piloted a series geared towards promoting civil discourse, well before “intellectual vitality” became a buzzword at the College.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe deeply in the importance of free speech and a healthy campus speech climate — I’ve written at length about it. But intellectual vitality isn’t a substitute for diversity efforts. Nor should it have to be.

In an ideal world, DEI represents the promise of taking a look at the barriers that prevent any members of our community from participating to the fullest degree, and working to combat them on an institutional level — not to the detriment of anyone else, but to the benefit of all.

Here’s a practical example: As a trans student, I encounter more difficulty than many of my peers accessing healthcare and housing. It doesn’t matter how comfortable I feel expressing my opinions — if I can’t access the material resources that fulfill my basic needs, my intellectual and social experience at Harvard will be significantly limited. Offices like OEDIB play a key role in supporting and advocating for these needs.

I won’t claim that DEI programs always accomplish their goals. It’s perfectly possible many could require substantial changes or restructuring in order to do so. But that doesn’t mean that the goals themselves are worth abandoning.

The University keeps insisting on its staunch belief that lowercase diversity, equity, and inclusion are all worthwhile pursuits. Yet when confronted with largely misinformed and overblown concerns about how this translates to capital DEI, it fails to levy any sort of defense.

It seems to me that the problem is not that fundamental flaw renders DEI a lost cause, but that we’re not willing to invest in making it work.

We either believe DEI is important or we don't — it’s time for Harvard to pick a side.

E. Matteo Diaz ’27, an Associate Editorial editor and Crimson Diversity and Inclusivity Chair, is a double concentrator in Social Studies and Applied Mathematics in Leverett House.