Harvard to ban members of single-gender clubs from leadership roles

campusreform.org

Harvard University will now ban members of any single-gender social clubs from holding leadership positions at the school and applying for some of its top scholarships, The Harvard Crimson reports.

President Drew Faust, who has been flirting with the idea for months, officially announced Friday that she will accept Dean Rakesh Khurana’s recommendation to implement the ban.

“Although the fraternities, sororities, and final clubs are not formally recognized by the College, they play an unmistakable and growing role in student life, in many cases enacting forms of privilege and exclusion at odds with our deepest values,” Faust wrote. “The College cannot ignore these organizations if it is to advance our shared commitment to broadening opportunity and making Harvard a campus for all of its students.”

The decision comes in response to the recommendations of a university-wide report led by Khurana, who called the single-gender clubs “preserves of men” that promote “exclusionary values.”

“[T]he discriminatory membership policies of these organizations have led to the perpetuation of spaces that are rife with power imbalances,” Khurana wrote in a separate letter to students Friday.