Harvard Athletics Removes Protections for Transgender Students From Handbook

Harvard Athletics removed policies protecting transgender athletes from this year’s Student Athlete Handbook following a series of orders by the Trump administration and the University’s own scouring of public messaging on race and gender.

The handbook, released at the beginning of every school year, enumerates regulations and resources for athletes across the College’s 42 teams. The changes in this year’s edition are the most significant in the five years that Harvard Athletics has been led by director Erin McDermott.

Previous editions of Harvard’s handbook spelled out protections allowing transgender students to access facilities, such as restrooms or locker rooms, aligned with their gender identity. The old handbook stated that protections were maintained in accordance with University policy as well as Cambridge, Boston, and Massachusetts law.

Neither the University’s non-discrimination policy nor the local and state laws have changed. But those protections no longer exist in the handbook.

Additional protections — including a commitment to locating private facilities at away games, an expectation that coaches and staff make a “reasonable effort to honor a student’s name and gender pronouns,” and gender-inclusive uniform policies — were also removed from the handbook.

A Harvard Athletics spokesperson did not respond to a Wednesday evening request for comment on the reasons for the amendments.

The removals come on top of changes made by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which governs most of Harvard’s varsity sports, earlier this year in response to President Donald Trump’s executive order banning transgender women from competing in women’s college sports.

The new NCAA policy blocks any athletes assigned male at birth from competing on women’s sports teams, though it allows all athletes who identify as male to compete on men’s teams. Previous policies had specific regulations in each sport for transgender female athletes to compete on women’s teams, including on the basis of their hormone levels.

In response to the NCAA policy update, Harvard Athletics removed its Transgender Inclusion Policy from its website in February, replacing it with a link to the new National Collegiate Athletic Association policy that adhered to the executive order.

The new handbook now links directly to the NCAA website for more information.

No current Harvard varsity athletes have publicly identified as transgender.

Access to facilities has been a flashpoint in the battle over transgender women’s participation in college sports. Trump’s executive order promised that federal agencies would “take all appropriate action to affirmatively protect all-female athletic opportunities and all-female locker rooms.”

A lawsuit attempting to penalize Harvard for allowing a transgender woman from using women’s locker rooms during a championship swim meet was dismissed in July.

The new handbook also omitted Harvard Athletics’ Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging Statement, which previously described the principles as “integral to the Harvard Athletics experience.”

Now the updated document includes a statement on “Community and Team Culture,” saying that the department “seeks to create a space that is welcoming and inclusive to all identities.”

The language change lines up with a University-wide purge of mentions of diversity, equity, and inclusion. In April, Harvard renamed its central diversity office to the “Office for Campus and Community Life,” before closing school-level offices and shuttering three centers for women, LGBTQ, and minority undergraduates.

But the new Harvard handbook expanded its list of protected identities from last year’s version, now making explicit mention of gender expression, genetic information, and caste as protected categories.

Harvard has explicitly encouraged athletes to speak to the press in previous handbooks, noting that doing so “can generate positive coverage for the athletic program and our school.” This year, Harvard Athletics omitted that language from its media policies — in line with efforts the athletics department has made over the past year to caution students against speaking to the press.

Athletics communications staff circulated a message to a number of teams last spring discouraging athletes from speaking with The Crimson without contacting the athletics department first.

The handbook also took a harder stance on student attendance policies, including an additional reminder that “course instructors are not expected or required to excuse absences for interviews and extracurricular activities, including athletics,” and that an athlete’s absence does not relieve them from their work responsibilities.

The language is consistent with an amendment to the Harvard College student handbook passed by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences last December — part of a campaign to strengthen attendance requirements, which could pose a challenge for athletes who are frequently expected to travel for competitions.

The Harvard Athletics handbook instructs athletes who need to miss class for competition to ask professors’ permission and bring any issues to coaches and sport supervisors to determine a best course of action. Identical instructions were included in last year’s handbook.

—Staff writer Elyse C. Goncalves can be reached at elyse.goncalves@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @e1ysegoncalves.

—Staff writer Akshaya Ravi can be reached at akshaya.ravi@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @akshayaravi22.