Baala Shakya, Photography Editor

Belonging at Yale — a five-year initiative aimed to increase diversity, bolster a sense of inclusion and ensure equity throughout the University — has concluded, administrators announced Thursday. 

A University-wide email sent from President Maurie McInnis, Vice Provost for Faculty Development Gary Désir and Secretary Kimberly Goff-Crews indicated that the initiative was always planned to end this year. Public access to the initiative’s once-expansive website is now steeply limited. The site, which the News accessed on Thursday through web archives, previously included pages of compiled resources on diversity, equity and inclusion; antiracism; Yale’s historic connection to slavery; prospective school-wide actions to increase diversity and a contact form soliciting ideas.

The updated website now consists of one central homepage displaying three annual reports on the Belonging at Yale initiative, issued in 2022, 2023 and 2024. Multiple links included in those reports are now inaccessible. The reports appear to be restricted to users who can log in through Yale’s central authentication service.

The other pages that were previously accessible on the site are no longer visible on the homepage and are inaccessible through direct links. 

University spokesperson Karen Peart, on behalf of Goff-Crews, Désir and other administrators, did not provide a reason for the significant changes to the website’s accessibility.

“The Belonging at Yale website included links to resources and information from many parts of campus.  The Belonging site was retired at the conclusion of the initiative,” Peart wrote in a Thursday email to the News. She added that different units of the initiative “will continue to use their websites to post information about resources they provide.”

The Belonging at Yale initiative was established in 2020 under former University President Peter Salovey’s tenure with a five-year time frame. 

The wiping of the initiative’s website’s content comes after a February “Dear Colleague” letter released by the Department of Education threatened to pull federal funding from universities over race-conscious practices. 

At Yale, department leaders were instructed to report all diversity, equity and inclusion related initiatives in March via a confidential survey, which aimed to “evaluate the impact of recent executive orders and other federal directives” on diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives at the University. The questions focused on topics including DEI hiring practices, student programs and affinity groups. 

Some of Yale’s peer institutions, including the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard, revised online content and recently renamed organizations related to DEI. 

Peart told the News that the decision to retire the Belonging at Yale website was not influenced by the “Dear Colleague” letter pertaining to DEI initiatives. She referred instead to the five-year timeline for the initiative.

A page providing information on grant opportunities for DEI-related initiatives appears to have also been removed from the Office of the Secretary and Vice President for University Life’s website. The Poorvu Center’s website remains active.

The Poorvu Center celebrated its 10-year anniversary this past year.

Correction, June 27: On Thursday, the Poorvu Center updated its website, which temporarily resulted in an invalid link for the center’s page on grant opportunities for DEI-related initiatives. A previous version of this article stated that the Poorvu Center’s page on this subject was removed.