Dear President Bacow, Dean Gay and Dean Dench,

Following a $300 million donation from Citadel CEO Kenneth Griffin in April, Harvard abruptly renamed the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in his honor, without any consultation with workers or students at the school. Harvard argues that growing the endowment through donations such as Griffin’s is necessary to keep the university’s resources “within reach for talented individuals regardless of their circumstances” (Bacow, Harvard Financial Report, 2022). And yet, those same talented individuals are kept in the dark about decisions to sell off parts of our university, and given no voice in how this money might be used. Meanwhile, Harvard is leveraging its company-town structure to raise rents for student housing [1] by up to 6% and in the same breath instructing its underpaid graduate students to apply for food stamps, all while workers have suffered under the highest inflation in over 40 years.

As graduate and undergraduate student teachers and researchers at this school, we want to see Harvard put its money where its mouth is. We urge that, effective July 1 2023, Harvard bring all student research and teaching salaries up to the living wage for Middlesex County, of $48,779 per year for salaried employees and $23.45 per hour for hourly employees.

Harvard’s acceptance of Griffin’s donation reinforces a long history of association with the billionaire class and pernicious anti-labor figures. Griffin, who spent over $100 million on the 2022 midterms, has said that the ultra-wealthy have insufficient influence on the political process [2]. He has claimed that one of the biggest problems facing this country is that teachers unions are too powerful, and he has been a vocal advocate for restricting collective bargaining rights [3]. Griffin is also a staunch political ally of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, to whom he has given more than $5 million in campaign contributions since 2021. DeSantis has built his national political profile off of ruthless attacks on queer and trans people, a six week abortion ban, and—perhaps especially concerning to an institution of higher education—widespread book bans in schools and a crackdown on teaching the history of race relations in America.

Since ratification of the most recent collective bargaining agreement between Harvard and the Harvard Graduate Students Union (HGSU-UAW Local 5118), inflation has continuously outpaced the raises negotiated in that contract, and numerous peer institutions have provided significant raises to student workers in this time [4]. Harvard knows its wages are no longer competitive, and so has been providing piecemeal raises above the minimum to workers in some departments in the form of one-off stipends and top-ups. Yet these only serve to reduce salary transparency and deepen inequities between workers. International students, whose visas bar them from working more than part time or for non-Harvard entities, are particularly hard-pressed by rising costs. Every salary and pay rate in the collective bargaining agreement between Harvard and HGSU is clearly specified as a minimum, providing the university discretion to increase above these levels when unexpected events, such as large donations or extreme inflation, make such a decision possible. Harvard must raise the minimum salaries for student workers equitably, across the board, to pay every worker a living wage.

It is not just student workers who are suffering a cost of living crisis. While the university gets richer, members of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers have been bargaining for over a year for fair wage increases. We call on the University to immediately meet HUCTW’s demands and we stand in solidarity with all other workers on campus, from custodians (SEIU 32BJ) to non-academic undergraduate employees (HUWU) to postdocs and contingent faculty (HAW) to dining hall workers (UNITE HERE Local 26), in their continued fights for living wages.

It will take all of us to win pay parity, just like it will take all of us to win a workplace free of harassment, discrimination, and intimidation. We, the undersigned, join together to call for Harvard to provide a living wage, and commit to fight for this demand until it is achieved.

- - -

[1] news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/01/harvard-university-housing-establishes-new-rents-for-2023-2024/
[2] www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-xpm-2012-03-11-ct-biz-0311-confidential-griffin-web-version-20120311-story.html ; www.cnbc.com/2022/10/07/citadels-ceo-ken-griffin-becomes-gop-100-million-midterm-megadonor.html
[3] www.huffpost.com/entry/chicago-teachers-stand-for-children_n_1885421
[4] www.princeton.edu/news/2022/01/25/princeton-will-significantly-increase-stipends-support-graduate-students ; mitgsu.org/updates/graduate-students-form-union-mit-offers-unprecedented-mid-year-raise