Harvard Merges Gender Equity and Community Conduct Offices

Updated August 4, 2025, at 11:06 a.m.

Harvard announced Monday that it will combine its gender equity and nondiscrimination efforts under a new Office for Community Support, Non-Discrimination, Rights, and Responsibilities in order to unify the University’s Title IX and Title VI compliance efforts.

In a message sent to Harvard affiliates Monday morning, Nicole M. Merhill — the University’s Title IX coordinator and former director of the Office for Gender Equity — wrote that the CSDNR would merge the OGE and Office for Community Conduct to streamline reporting and investigation procedures.

The announcement represents a major reorganization of Harvard’s linchpin antidiscrimination departments. It follows a semester of intense scrutiny from the Trump administration over Harvard’s handling of civil rights violations, particularly under Title VI, a section of the 1964 Civil Rights Act which prohibits discrimination based on race, national origin, or shared ancestry in federally funded programs. The Trump administration has repeatedly accused Harvard of slowwalking its response to antisemitism — a charge they formalized in June.

Merhill, who served for 15 years in the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, will lead Harvard’s new office.

According to her Monday email, CSNDR will be structured around three specialized teams: the confidential SHARE team offering survivor-centered support, the Prevention Team focusing on education and harm reduction, and the Non-Discrimination and Anti-Bullying and Title IX Compliance Team, which manages policy enforcement related to sexual misconduct, bullying, and discrimination.

Before the reorganization, the OGE oversaw Title IX compliance and addressed reports of sexual harassment and other sexual misconduct, while the OCC managed complaints of discrimination, — including race- and religion based bias — and implemented Harvard’s anti-bullying policies.

In the Monday message, Merhill wrote that the CSNDR would aim to make support more accessible and integrated and eliminate confusion caused by previously separated offices handling overlapping concerns.

“We recognized that our community was confused by different offices handling concerns that touched on issues of discrimination,” Merhill said in an interview with the Harvard Gazette, a University-run publication.

The consolidation of the offices, Merrill wrote, does not change any existing University policies or eliminate resources, but instead reorganizes them and expands them under a single administrative unit.

Harvard will also beef up its staff for responding to Title VI complaints. Merhill announced on Monday that Harvard recently hired a Title VI coordinator to oversee issues of discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin — including antisemitism and Islamophobia — and is recruiting two additional deputies to assist with informal resolutions.

Even as the Trump administration has deemphasized efforts to combat racism, it has frequently wielded Title VI as a legal weapon to justify slashing federal funding and conducting federal investigations into universities. The Department of Education initiated an investigation into 60 colleges and universities for their compliance with Title VI in March, and the Department of Health and Human Services initiated its Title VI investigation into Harvard in February.

The scope of that investigation expanded in April and eventually resulted in the finding that Harvard tolerated campus antisemitism. The HHS referred the investigation to the Department of Justice last week after it alleged that Harvard refused to voluntarily comply with requested changes.

During her time at the Education Department, Merhill was responsible for leading the same kinds of Title VI and Title IX investigations that the White House has now launched against Harvard and its peers.

As part of CSNDR’s launch, Harvard also introduced a mandatory e-learning module for all students, faculty, staff, and postdoctoral fellows. The training covers how to access Title VI and Title IX resources and what Harvard’s responsibilities are in addressing concerns related to discrimination or sexual misconduct.

The module will also explicitly address antisemitism and Islamophobia, reiterating that Harvard applies the widely used but controversial definition of antisemitism endorsed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. According to the Monday message, Harvard considers the IHRA’s accompanying examples of antisemitism “to the extent they are useful” in determining discriminatory intent.

Harvard first adopted the IHRA’s definition as part of a settlement agreement in January resolving two Title VI lawsuits focused on campus antisemitism. The definition has drawn criticism from civil liberties groups who argue that some of its accompanying examples — such as describing Israel as a “racist endeavor” — risk conflating political speech with discrimination.

The Trump administration has also dramatically reversed Biden-era interpretations of Title IX, a civil rights law enacted under the Education Amendments of 1972, and used its readings of the law to target colleges for granting transgender students access to facilities and athletic competitions.

After Donald Trump signed an executive order eliminating the recognition of gender identity just hours after his inauguration, Harvard changed its Interim Title IX Sexual Harassment Policy to exclude to exclude the line “harassment based on sexual orientation and/or gender identity.”

It also removed its Transgender Inclusion Policy for student-athletes, likely in response to another executive order banning transgender women from women’s sports at K-12 schools and at colleges.

But Harvard has made relatively limited changes to Title IX policies in comparison to Brown University and the University of Pennsylvania, which adopted the Trump administration’s definition of “male” and “female” in their respective settlements with the federal government.

And the University committed in February to maintaining its internal protections against sexual harassment based on gender identity, even though doing so was no longer federally mandated. It is not clear whether new rollbacks of protections for transgender students are on the table as Harvard continues its negotiations with the Trump administration.

Harvard’s increased investment in Title IX and Title VI compliance staff and resources is reflective of other terms universities have agreed to in their settlements with the White House, which restored frozen federal funding.

Columbia University agreed last month to appoint dedicated coordinators to handle antisemitism complaints and intensify school-wide training on discrimination in order to win back federal dollars.

No deal has been struck yet at Harvard, and University President Alan M. Garber ’76 has privately said that a settlement with the Trump administration is not imminent — though he has not ruled out the possibility that Harvard will agree to a deal.

—Staff writer Dhruv T. Patel can be reached at dhruv.patel@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @dhruvtkpatel.

—Staff writer Grace E. Yoon can be reached at grace.yoon@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @graceunkyoon.