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Guest Essay

By Alex Bronzini-Vender

Mr. Bronzini-Vender is a sophomore at Harvard University.

This past spring, under intense pressure from the Trump administration, Harvard University pulled the plug on diversity, equity and inclusion. The administrator who had overseen D.E.I. operations announced that the university was now focused instead on helping students more freely express their views. The Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging would henceforth be the Office of Community and Campus Life, dedicated to “fostering connections across difference” and “creating spaces for dialogue.”

It was the realization of a longtime conservative dream. The right had seethed about the sensitivity trainings, safe spaces, speech policing and inclusion statements of the D.E.I. industry, and nowhere more so than at elite academic institutions. Getting Harvard to concede was a huge victory. Conservatives could at last usher in a golden age of academic freedom.

That’s not how it’s playing out. Under federal pressure, Harvard and other universities around the country now police academic inquiry according to murkier standards of fairness. The goal, it seems, is to avoid offending anyone, anywhere, across an ever-expanding matrix........

© The New York Times