The strike by Harvard graduate students that has disrupted teaching and learning on the campus is escalating as it stretches into its third week, with a second United Auto Workers union of Harvard "academic workers" poised to join the walkout.
In addition, details are emerging about the extent of radical and foreign involvement in the labor strife, which has canceled classes on the Cambridge campus and called into question an effort by Harvard administrators to place a new priority on academics rather than activism.
— A handbill distributed by the strikers, obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, includes "the right to stay" as among the grad student demands, noting that "40% of student workers are non-citizens." That highlights the extent to which the strike is a kind of foreign interference in the operation of an American university.
— The contact listed on the October 27 union press release announcing the strike, Bonnie Jin, is a former co-chair of the Boston chapter of Democratic Socialists of America. The Boston DSA website advises "We are working against the oppressive capitalist system in its many forms. We see these oppressions — economic inequality, patriarchy, white supremacy, to name a few — as interlinked, intersecting, and inseparable." The Boston DSA platform calls for imposing a boycott and sanctions on Israel but lifting sanctions against Cuba and Iran. Jin did not respond to my emails or a phone message. Another tie between the graduate student union and the Boston DSA is financial. The graduate student union strike page includes language soliciting donations to the DSA and making DSA funds available to the union members: "There is also a community hardship fund started by our allies in Boston’s DSA Labor Working Group! Your contributions would support workers experiencing any hardships as a result of striking. These could include childcare needs, groceries, healthcare challenges, snacks and water to maintain energy levels on the pickets, and more. If you’re a member looking to access these funds, see the appropriate tab under the Worker FAQ above."
— Harvard’s deputy provost, Jessica Soban, and managing director of labor and employee relations, Paul Curran, issued an update to faculty on November 6 reporting that at a November 5 bargaining session, "Members of the University bargaining team were the target of inappropriate, disrespectful remarks by the UAW representative at the table near the scheduled end of the bargaining session. These remarks and this conduct were not only inconsiderate, but unproductive."
— A separate November 6 message from Curran highlighted additional actions by the strikers he said broke Harvard rules: "On Wednesday, November 4, HGSU-UAW picketers blocked egress and ingress to University Hall, pounded on the doors, and posted flyers on the entrances to the building and the statue of John Harvard. Additionally, on the same day, 50 or more picketers blocked entrance and egress at the corner of the Areeda and Griswold buildings on the Harvard Law School campus."
— The Free Beacon also dug into the academic backgrounds of the union leaders. The president of the graduate student union is Denish Jaswal, whose CV lists her as writing a dissertation on "Emotion and Politics" in Harvard’s philosophy department. "Ph.D. in Philosophy, 2018 – 2027 (anticipated)." That nine years to a Ph.D. is a long haul. "I analyze the role of emotion in three prominent political movements: the civil rights movement, ACT-UP, and contemporary labor unions," her dissertation abstract says. ACT-UP was an AIDS activist group. The vice president is Evan Lemire, whose photo on the union website depicts him wearing a red-and-white keffiyeh. Lemire is affiliated with Harvard's FXB Center, which has been a hotbed of anti-Israel propaganda.
— The labor unrest spread to the library of Harvard Law School, where the Harvard Law Record reported that "more than 50" students staged a sit-in. Harvard President Alan Garber has gently attempted to keep libraries sacrosanct from protest activity but has faced pushback from some faculty members in the past against even the most mild actions to enforce rules banning disruptive protests from academic spaces. The associate dean for communications and public affairs in the 16-person Harvard Law School communications office did not reply to my email asking if the protesters would be disciplined.
— The Paul & Karen Levy Fellow in Campus Freedom at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, Steve McGuire, noted that Harvard is still paying the graduate students even though they are on strike from teaching sections or grading papers. A Harvard spokesman didn’t respond to my query about whether the students are still being paid. Halting pay would require faculty members to report on whether their graduate students are working or striking, a step that some faculty might be averse to taking.
Barring surprise progress in a November 9 bargaining session, a second UAW affiliate, the Harvard Academic Workers, which represents non-tenure-track academic and staff workers performing research and teaching at the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard Divinity School, and Harvard Medical School, is scheduled to strike November 10. The two UAW affiliates say that will bring the total number of striking workers to 6,500.
The Harvard graduate student union voted in December 2023, by 402 to 210, to approve a resolution denouncing what it called "the murderous Israeli regime" and the "ongoing genocide of the Palestinians." The resolution said, "workers in the U.S. are struggling against many of the same capitalist forces that maintain and bolster the Israeli occupation of Palestine."
Many Harvard alumni, professors, lawyers, and administrators have been outspoken in denouncing the Trump administration for what the Harvard people call a pretextual attack on Harvard’s academic freedom. The strike has achieved what the Trump crackdown on Harvard has not yet—canceling Harvard classes. Where are the "academic freedom" types now that the unions are interfering with the college students’ freedom to learn?
