Harvard University has named a leading advocate for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) practices to a top role with significant influence in choosing the university’s next president.
On Monday, Vivian Hunt, who graduated from Harvard in 1989, was tapped to serve as the next president of the university’s Board of Overseers, according to the Harvard Crimson. Hunt has sat on the board since 2019. Traditionally, the university’s presidential search committees are composed of the 12 members of the Harvard Corporation and the president of the Board of Overseers. The board can veto any committee pick with a majority vote.
“Tyler Jacks and I hope to work closely with Interim President Garber and all of our stakeholders to support excellence, inclusion, and world-class leadership in all that we do,” Hunt said in a statement, referencing the board’s vice chair, Tyler Jacks, who served on the presidential search committee that appointed its former president, Claudine Gay.
Gay resigned as president of the university in January after her prior academic work was found tainted with plagiarism. Gay said that the public ire that contributed to her downfall was fueled by “racial animus.”
Hunt is a leading DEI advocate and critic of “meritocracy.” In 2015 while working at the consulting giant McKinsey, Hunt co-authored a paper titled “Why diversity matters,” which argued that companies with more diverse leadership were more likely to perform better, according to The Washington Free Beacon.
The paper’s findings have been challenged. A study published in Econ Journal Watch in March took issue with Hunt’s central findings and said that the 2015 paper was impossible to replicate, a serious problem for any academic study.
Hunt has argued in favor of DEI in other settings. In a 2020 interview, Hunt said that “treating people evenly” only perpetuates racism and bias “in our systems.”
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“A neutral position that is meritocratic, that is good at treating people evenly, isn’t good enough. It allows the bias that is in our systems … it allows it to perpetuate,” Hunt said. “You have to proactively stand for an antiracism environment.”
Meritocracy "isn't good enough."
"You have to proactively stand for an antiracism environment."
2020 interview of Dame Vivian Hunt who co-authored several influential pro-DEI studies for top consulting firm McKinsey & Company. Econ Journal Watch recently debunked the studies. pic.twitter.com/Gjewf572Nv
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) April 3, 2024
After Gay’s downfall at Harvard, a surge in anti-DEI sentiment among some of the university’s influential alumni led to seven outsider campaigns for spots on the university’s Board of Overseers. None of the campaigns were successful, even that of former Facebook executive Sam Lessin, who secured the most nominations for any write-in campaign in Harvard history, 2,901. Each candidate needed to collect 3,238 to be eligible for the ballot.
The failure of the write-in campaigns has bred some skepticism over the election process to the Board of Overseers.