FEATURED
It’s not clear if the dean’s posts were the reason; Harvard won’t ‘comment on personnel matters‘
A Harvard University residence hall dean who compared President Donald Trump to Hitler and called police racist was removed from his role Monday, according to an email obtained by The College Fix.
Gregory Davis, the former resident dean of Dunster House, “is no longer serving” in the role, the email to its residents stated.
“We are writing to confirm that Gregory Davis is no longer serving as the Allston Burr Resident Dean of Dunster House, effective today,” Faculty Deans Shirley and Taeku Lee wrote Monday. “We thank Gregory for serving in this role and wish him and his family the best in their future endeavors.”
Davis’s profile on Harvard’s website also appears to have been removed recently, according to internet archives reviewed by The Fix.
When contacted for comment, Harvard’s media relations office told The Fix it “cannot comment on personnel matters.” The Fix asked if Davis’s recently exposed comments online had anything to do with his departure.
Davis did not respond to two requests for comment this week through his Harvard email account, asking about the circumstances of his departure.
According to the Harvard Crimson, which first reported on the matter, the news initially came from an email Monday by Davis himself:
In the message — which was relayed to the Dunster community by a resident tutor — Davis wrote that he has been removed from the role and that, to his knowledge, no interim resident had been appointed.
“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as the Resident Dean for Dunster,” Davis wrote. “I will miss my work with students and staff immensely.”
In a separate email about two hours later to House affiliates, Dunster Faculty Dean Taeku Lee announced that Emilie Raymer — who served as interim dean this fall when Davis was on parental leave — would continue in the role.
But Lee did not address the circumstances around Davis’ removal or specify how long Raymer would remain in the role of interim dean.
In October, Davis faced calls for his termination after Yard Report, a relatively new right-leaning blog about Harvard, exposed a series of social media posts where he bashed President Donald Trump, mocked Rush Limbaugh’s death, called for hating the police, and denounced “whiteness,” The Fix reported at the time.
In one post from 2020, Davis wrote that he doesn’t blame people for wishing ill on Trump, and coupled it with a famous meme from the movie “Rocky IV” that stated, “If he dies, he dies.”
In another post in 2019, he wrote: “Whiteness is a self-destructive ideology that annihilates everyone around it.” In 2020, he defended looting and rioting as a part of democracy akin to “voting and marching.” He also posted that cops are “racist and evil,” according to screenshots from the Yard Report.
Davis suggested Trump was the “worst of Nixon and Hitler” in a 2016 post. In 2021, Davis posted: “Rush Limbaugh is dead. Just as important: the Smucker’s Natural was on sale at the Safeway,” according to the screenshots.
“These comments, and many others, made by Davis disqualify him from serving in his role at Harvard,” the non-bylined post on the Yard Report argued. “They reveal an ideology unbefitting of American society, let alone its most elite institution of higher education. The university must fire him immediately.”
In response to the article, Davis sent a message to Dunster House about the posts: “These posts do not reflect my current thinking or beliefs. I regret if my statements have any negative impact on the Dunster community,” the Washington Free Beacon reported at the time.
Davis appears to have deleted his social media accounts on Instagram and X.
As a resident hall dean, Davis was tasked with helping students with “their academic and wellness goals,” according to his university bio.
Dunster is one of the 12 undergraduate residence halls at Harvard, and it houses about 475 students and 25 staff, according to the university website.
Davis’s bio, which no longer appears on Harvard’s website, stated that he also represented “Dunster students to the College Ad Board as well as those who need help filing petitions and other requests with the College.”
“Students across the College should reach out to me if they are Black or otherwise of color, queer, neurodivergent (ADHD), first-generation, a public high school graduate, from a low-income background, or from urban areas like my hometown of Detroit, MI,” Davis’s bio stated. “As well, please reach out to me if you have aspirations in social psychology or law.”
In 2018, Davis debated scholar Heather Mac Donald on affirmative action, defending it as a necessity to battle systemic racism and bias.
MORE: Controversy hits Harvard dean who bashed Trump, Rush Limbaugh, the police, and whiteness
