Coalition for a Diverse Harvard Endorses 5 Candidates for 2024 Board of Overseers Election

The Coalition for a Diverse Harvard endorsed five candidates for this year’s Board of Overseers election, an announcement that comes three weeks before voting begins for five seats on University’s second-highest governing board.

The advocacy group, which aims to promote diversity and equity at the University, annually endorses five candidates running for the 30-member Board of Overseers, Harvard’s second-highest governing body.

Last week, the Coalition endorsed Columbia Business School professor Modupe Nyikoale Akinola ’96; Amazon Clinic General Manager Nworah Blaise Ayogu ’10; U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang ’91; Pixar Animation Studios cinematographer Danielle A. Feinberg ’96; and Trinity University Political Science professor Juan Antonio Sepúlveda Jr. ’85.

Overseer elections typically see low-voter turnout and go unnoticed by most Harvard alumni.

But the board has received greater attention over the past five months as Claudine Gay’s resignation and the subsequent leadership crisis invited intense scrutiny on the Overseers and the Harvard Corporation, the University’s highest governing body.

Voting will begin April 1 and extend to May 14. While seven candidates staged high-profile outsider campaigns to appear on the ballot, they all failed to meet the necessary signature threshold. Instead, voters will pick from eight candidates that were preselected by the Harvard Alumni Association.

New overseers will serve six-year terms that begin May 24, the day after Commencement.

Michael G. Williams ’81, a board member for the Coalition, said in an interview that the endorsement should serve as a litmus test for candidates’ commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

“We do want our endorsements to serve as an indicator that a group of alumni have reviewed the candidates in detail and have reviewed the candidates’ records and statements in detail and are willing to make decisions about who we think would best advance those particular values,” Williams said.

“The events of the last year at the University and the near future of the University shows just how important it is who are the individuals who are in those roles,” he added.

According to the Coalition, all five endorsed candidates support ethnic studies and the increased hiring and promotion of faculty members of color.

While three of the endorsed candidates — Sepúlveda, Akinola, and Feinberg — are Coalition members, Williams said membership itself was not a major factor in the endorsement process.

Feinberg said she joined the Coalition late last year amid fierce criticism of Gay’s response to the Israel-Hamas war and allegations of plagiarism in her academic work.

The endorsement, Feinberg said, is a sign she is “on the right path and helping the world with my life.”

“As a human, I am completely honored that they endorsed me because it is a sign that the things that I’ve done with my life that were all geared toward diversity — just because I think it’s important — were sort of recognized,” Feinberg said.

According to Williams, the Coalition considers each candidate’s history of advancing diversity in their careers, interviews, and their answers to a survey with six questions about diversity. All eight candidates’ answers to the survey questions are publicly available on the group’s website.

Ten alumni affinity groups and organizations including the Harvard Asian American Alumni Alliance, the Harvard Black Alumni Society, and Harvard Progressive Jewish Alumni co-signed the endorsements.

Breaking from recent tradition, the Coalition did not endorse candidates for HAA-elected directorships this year. Williams said the group wanted to “focus our energies” on electing the Overseers endorsed by the Coalition.

In the last five years, 20 out of the 28 overseers endorsed by the coalition won election to the board.

Sepúlveda, who also worked in the Obama administration, said he was naturally aligned with the Coalition’s efforts to increase campus diversity from his time as an undergraduate in the Harvard-Radcliffe RAZA, a Mexican American student affinity group.

Sepúlveda said conversations about Harvard’s diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives should focus on specific “modern” policies rather than vague ideas.

“It gets most people to say, ‘That’s not what I thought this was,’” he added.

The presidential search for Gay’s permanent successor will loom large above the Board of Overseers election. Three overseers will be tapped for the search committee along with the 12 fellows of the Corporation.

Williams said the upcoming presidential search could be “the first significant decision that the overseers will be able to play some role in.”

Williams said the Coalition will pay close attention to the search and the committee’s pick.

“We’re concerned about the message that Harvard will be sending based on the priorities of that next president,” he added.

Clarification: March 18, 2024

This article has been updated to clarify that while all five candidates endorsed by the Coalition for a Diverse Harvard support ethnic studies, not all the candidates explicity expressed support for the creation of an ethnic studies department.

—Staff writer Cam E. Kettles can be reached at cam.kettles@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @cam_kettles or on Threads @camkettles.