HGSE Dean Nonie Lesaux Defends Diversity Efforts Amid Federal Pressure on Harvard

Harvard Graduate School of Education Dean Nonie K. Lesaux defended the school’s commitment to diversity in a Thursday interview as Harvard continues to face mounting pressure from the Trump administration and its allies to scale back diversity initiatives.

“I think that we have thus far done a very good job protecting the wonderful diversity that is Harvard,” Lesaux said. “It is international, it is multilingual, it is multicultural, it is multiracial and ethnic.”

Her remarks come amid a now nearly yearlong standoff between Harvard and the White House, which last year froze more than $2.7 billion in federal grants after Harvard rejected demands to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and overhaul governance and hiring.

The Trump administration also proposed limiting international student enrollment and increasing federal scrutiny of diversity programs.

Asked whether Harvard should accept federal funding conditions that could limit diversity efforts or international enrollment, Lesaux did not directly answer but said Harvard’s diversity was fundamental to its identity.

“I think that we will continue to celebrate that diversity,” she said. “It is what makes Harvard Harvard.”

The interview marked Lesaux’s first since becoming dean. She was appointed interim dean of the Graduate School of Education in July 2024 and named to the role permanently in March 2025.

Lesaux’s comments come after internal changes to diversity leadership at the Graduate School of Education last year. In July, the school shut down its diversity, equity, and inclusion office and reassigned staff who had reported to former chief diversity officer Jared Chin.

Lesaux said the decision was not driven by the broader political backlash against DEI initiatives, though it occurred during a moment of intense national debate over diversity programs.

“This is not the first instantiation of a model that is distributed and integrated,” she said, describing the move as a result of several years of internal review.

School leaders examined data from students, staff, and faculty before deciding diversity work would be stronger if integrated across multiple units rather than housed in a single office, she said.

The move, she added, just “happened to coincide with a very charged time around this topic, but didn’t internally reflect any of that.”

Unlike several other Harvard schools that have rebranded diversity initiatives or removed explicit reference to DEI from public webpages, HGSE has continued to reference the framework online as of Thursday night.

Lesaux said the work “was ongoing” because “those principles are central to any educational enterprise.”

After the interview, however, HGSE spokesperson Paul Belsito said the website would soon be updated. In a follow-up email, Belsito wrote that a “planned sprint of website updates will go live next week,” including a refreshed page reflecting the school’s diversity work.

Lesaux also addressed recent campus debates over free speech. Last year, the school faced backlash after the Harvard Education Review, an academic journal affiliated with HGSE, canceled a planned special issue on Palestine and education.

Lesaux pushed back firmly against criticism of the decision, saying it stemmed from disagreements over the readiness of the scholarship for publication rather than the topic itself.

“The cancellation was the result of a series of issues whereby the publisher and the editorial board had not reached sufficient consensus on the quality of the scholarship and whether it was ready for publication, the topic aside,” she said.

At the same time, Lesaux emphasized that universities should encourage open and rigorous debate.

“What we really need are campus environments and classrooms and cocurricular experiences that don’t shy away from controversy, that are both rigorous and respectful,” she said. “Where we don’t devalue, but we can disagree.”

Lesaux said HGSE was not spared from the Trump administration’s funding cuts, which hit Harvard’s Longwood campus particularly hard.

The school saw grants from agencies such as the National Institutes of Health and the Institute of Education Sciences canceled, she said, pushing HGSE to seek additional funding sources.

“We are working hard on our relationships with philanthropy, with private foundations that are very concerned with educational improvement, and we are also working with industry in various ways to think about different approaches to funding research,” she said.

—Staff writer Mahpara Faatin can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X @mahparafaatin.