Black student enrollment at Harvard has decreased significantly, according to a new Harvard report.

The Harvard Kennedy School has experienced a dramatic decline in enrollment of Black students in the 2023 academic year in comparison to the 2021 one. On Nov. 14, the school released its annual diversity report to “understand demographic diversity at the Kennedy School and see where we need to improve,” according to Dean Douglas W. Elmendorf. It was then that he pledged to create a diversity task force of faculty, staff, and students to increase the demographic diversity of the student body.

The report revealed that the number of Black students at the school dropped from 68 in 2021 to 31 this year. Since affirmative action has been eliminated from college admissions, the school has also observed a decrease in the percentage of enrolled African-American students.

To support its students, the Kennedy School is taking steps to address their concerns about the lack of need-based application fee waivers and emergency financial aid. Currently, the school is the only Harvard school besides the extension school that does not provide need-based application fee waivers. This issue was brought to Dean Elmendorf's attention in February, when students from the First-Generation and Low-Income Caucus wrote a letter expressing that many people “probably did not apply” because of the costly $100 fee.

The Kennedy School is also making efforts to mandate “implicit bias training for degree program admissions.” Harvard has been investigated for its imperfect admissions processes in the past, such as in 2019, when a judge recommended that “Harvard provide admissions officers with implicit bias training, keep clear guidelines on the consideration of race in the admissions process, and monitor statistics for potential racial disparities.”

Recently, the United States Department of Education opened a civil rights investigation into legacy admissions at Harvard University. This has sparked a debate on the long-standing practice, and Harvard has responded by taking critical measures to its admissions policies. University President Claudine Gay has expressed that the call to end the use of legacy and donor preference is on the table. Ivan Espinoza-Madrigal, executive director of Lawyers for Civil Rights, has said that “there’s no birthright to Harvard” and that “there should be no way to identify who your parents are in the college application process” in order to eliminate racial discrimination.

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