What the Empty Basement in Canaday Says About Harvard

Last month, Harvard decided to evict the Harvard College Women’s Center from its previous home under Canaday Hall, the latest in a series of disappointing decisions in which the University decided to prioritize its image over its students.

I worked for the Women’s Center last year. I witnessed students rally around apolitical, uplifting events like tote bag painting and fireside chats with professors. You can imagine my surprise when I learned that Harvard had apparently shut down the center, not in a message from my supervisors, but when the College quietly dismantled the center’s website and removed their designated office space.

Alongside the Women’s Center, the Office for BGLTQ Student Life and foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations were similarly affected amid mounting pressure from the Trump administration. Harvard replaced them with a new “Office of Culture and Community,” whose website notably lacks mentions of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

While the move might sound like bureaucratic restructuring or a meaningless name change, it reveals an unspoken yet potent truth: Harvard couldn’t care less about its own students.

To many, DEI is a dirty word. But behind its politicization, spaces like the Women’s Center served as lifelines and essential forums for expression for many students. In my year with the Women’s Center, I attended a career development seminar with female doctors. I volunteered at a menstrual equity event that provided period products to any who stopped by. I hosted a community building event highlighting women’s history at Harvard.

The new Office of Culture and Community displays vanishingly few mentions of race, gender, or sexuality anywhere on its website. The offices that it is replacing were designed to support students in navigating a system that was never designed for them. How can an office that can’t talk about gender or sexuality support female or LGBTQ students? How can an office that can’t even say the word race support students of color?

More importantly, why would the College purge its DEI offices without engaging the students who not only benefited from these spaces, but also committed great time and energy to run them?

This disconnect isn’t new. From admissions criteria to grading policies to campus protests, administrators have long been forced to weigh their own compelling interests against those of the student body. But recently, Harvard’s administrators seem to simply disregard the latter entirely.

In just the last few months, the University ousted more than 800 workers from the Harvard Graduate Students Union and took down a “Black Lives Matter” banner hung by two professors in their office windows. And Harvard has spent the last several years cracking down on student protest following demonstrations against the war in Gaza.

These actions send a clear message: Harvard cares more about its institution’s financial priorities than intellectual discourse, and more about its reputation amongst high-power stakeholders than its own students. Students have a right to protest and a right to feel safe and represented in the Harvard community.

Not only will this restructuring harm the student body, it will only create more problems for the administration as well. By refusing to provide its students with transparent communication and open dialogue, Harvard paves the pathway to even stronger resistance. If students are not given a space to provide their own perspectives and air their grievances with the administration, they will demand it — by any means necessary.

Consider the takeover of University Hall in 1969. After months of protest against Harvard’s involvement in the Vietnam War and an unwillingness of the administration to collaborate with students, violence ensued. Protestors marched on then-University President Nathan M. Pusey’s residence, tacking a list of demands to the door. The following afternoon, demonstrators stormed University Hall, forcing out administrators and grabbing files.

In response, Harvard shut down the Yard and called the police. Officers beat and clubbed demonstrators. Students were tried and found guilty of criminal trespassing. It was only after violent protest, student arrests, and bloodshed that Harvard eventually made minor concessions to the demonstrators, demoting ROTC to extracurricular status and involving students in the appointment of Afro-American studies faculty.

History shows us that a hostile environment will not suppress student voices, it will only amplify them. What will it take — and what harm will ensue — before Harvard finally listens?

The existence of the Women’s Center was antithetical to the Trump administration. Why? Because, to Trump, with compliance comes conformity. Only ideas that align with the politics of the federal government will be tolerated.

It seems that Harvard has already adopted a similar plan of action. Disrupting unions, destroying spaces of hope and resistance, forcing suppression – all while hiding behind obscure emails, vague letters, and quiet restructurings.

As they shutter diversity offices and enact strict protest policies, the administration attempts to find the mysterious reason why students feel uncomfortable voicing their beliefs on campus.

The space left under Canaday Hall may no longer be the Women’s Center, but its emptiness should serve as a warning sign of Harvard’s dangerous trend towards quiet acquiescence and against students.

Sylvia A. Langer ’28, a Crimson Editorial editor, lives in Currier House.