Harvard University, under pressure from Trump administration, renames its DEI office ...Middle East

Harvard University is renaming its diversity, equity and inclusion office in a move that appears to bend to the Trump administration’s demands to abolish DEI programs across the country and comes as the university faces off against the White House over political ideology in American higher education.

The office has been renamed Community and Campus Life, an internal email to the Harvard community says.

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The email does not detail what further changes would be made as a result of the renaming but states the change “requires us to find new ways to bring people of different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives together as one community, focusing on the unique experiences and contributions of the individual and not the broad demographic groups to which they belong.”

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Its release came the same day lawyers for Harvard and the Trump administration met for the first time in a lawsuit Harvard filed over the $2.2 billion freeze in its federal research funding. The Trump administration on Monday also announced it was launching investigations into the university and the Harvard Law Review, saying authorities have gotten complaints about race-based discrimination.

Harvard sued after the Trump administration announced it was putting a hold on billions of dollars in grants and contracts following what the White House said was a breakdown in discussions over combating antisemitism on campus. The White House also has cited discrimination probes in slashing funding for other universities – including Cornell and Northwestern – and sent letters to 60 institutions of higher learning, warning them of potential punishment if they fail “to protect Jewish students.”

Monday’s letter to the Harvard community was from Sherri Ann Charleston, who signed off as the Chief Community and Campus Life Officer; since 2020, she had served as the Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer.

“It seemed like the right time to adjust my title to better reflect what the offices under my direction do for our campus community,” Charleston wrote Monday in the message released with a internal survey conducted in 2019 and last fall that seeks to gauge the climate around inclusion and belonging of the campus community.

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Her letter also cited reference, from Harvard’s president’s April 14 open letter, to the need to be in compliance with the Supreme Court’s landmark 2023 decision ending affirmative action in American colleges. A case at the heart of that ruling involved Harvard.

“(W)e must continue ‘to work together to find ways, consistent with law, to foster and support a vibrant community that exemplifies, respects, and embraces difference’ and, in doing so, ‘also continue to comply with Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which ruled that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act makes it unlawful for universities to make decisions “on the basis of race,”’” Charleston wrote.

Harvard also announced Monday it would no longer host or fund affinity group celebrations during commencement, according to the school’s student-led newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, citing an email sent to affinity groups Monday. The decision was made after the Department of Education threatened funding cuts if Harvard did not cancel graduation celebrations that could separate students based on race, it reported.

Harvard’s president this month said the school would not make key policy changes the White House demanded of colleges across the country, including eliminating its diversity, equity and inclusion program. “The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” Harvard President Alan M. Garber wrote at the time.

CNN has reached out to Harvard for comment.

Harvard’s decision to rebrand its DEI office follows similar reorganizations at government agencies, schools and companies across the country amid President Donald Trump’s crackdown on such programs. The White House has decried DEI practices – designed to advance racial, gender, class and other representation in public spaces – as “illegal and immoral discrimination.”

In addition to freezing federal funding to Harvard, the White House has threatened to rescind Harvard’s tax-exempt status and its eligibility to host foreign students.

Harvard, one of the oldest and wealthiest universities in the country, argues in its lawsuit the funding freeze measure is not only the Trump administration’s “attempt to coerce and control Harvard” while disregarding “fundamental First Amendment principles,” and also that Washington violated an arcane 1946 law governing administrative policies.

In particular, the Administrative Procedure Act “requires this Court to hold unlawful and set aside any final agency action that is ‘arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law,’” the Harvard lawsuit says.

Trump administration attorneys have not responded to the allegations in the lawsuit, but White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said April 22: “The president has made it quite clear that it’s Harvard who has put themselves in the position to lose their own funding by not obeying federal law, and we expect all colleges and universities who are receiving taxpayer funds to abide by federal law.”

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