Opulence and Ignorance: The Harvard Veritas
Recent reports indicate that Harvard’s endowment has already suffered a 22% decline, with an additional 8% projected decrease by the end of this fiscal year. In response to the economic crisis’ toll on Harvard’s funding, the university has instituted a slowdown of its construction projects in Allston, a hiring freeze, and a reduction in the size of its staff. The recent cost cuts are quickly revealing a problematic prioritization of certain parts of the Harvard community over others; in particular, we find issue with the recent layoffs, which speak to a flawed understanding of Harvard’s objectives and responsibilities as an institution. As it makes decisions about budget cuts in the next few months, Harvard must take seriously its role in lives of its low-wage workers and rethink how to best educate students in this changed economic climate.
With the onset of the economic crisis, Harvard has justified layoffs by describing its commitment to its employees as a secondary responsibility. Last week, as he addressed faculty, staff and student leaders in Sanders Theater, FAS Dean Michael D. Smith suggested that some FAS jobs may no longer be “necessary” in light of Harvard’s growing need to cut its budget. The understanding that some Harvard workers are unnecessary to our community is echoed by recent Harvard Crimson editorials, one of which stated, “Harvard is under no obligation to keep employees it does not need”. Both the official justification of the layoffs and the stance offered by the Harvard Crimson suggests that Harvard’s commitment to its workers is contingent on the favorableness of the economic climate.
This view is flawed in its failure to recognize Harvard’s influential role in the lives of thousands of workers and their families. By virtue of the sheer size of its staff, Harvard offers itself not only as a major source of income but also as a community to thousands of low-wage employees. Dismissing the lowest paid workers deprives many families of their only source of income and health insurance. Indeed, in a recent video aired by SLAM on YouTube, Bedardo Sola, a current worker at Harvard, said that losing his job could even have endangered the life of his daughter, whose healthcare costs depended on his salary from Harvard. Now reinstated in his former position as a result of SLAM’s advocacy, Sola need not fear for his family’s wellbeing; this, however, is not likely the case for the 30-40% of contracted workers who were recently cut from Harvard’s payroll.
Layoffs disrupt and may even ruin the lives of Harvard workers. Of course, sacrifices are inevitable in this economic climate, but through its recent budgetary decisions, Harvard has failed to give appropriate weight to the burden it is placing on its workers, many of whom need their jobs to sustain an livable conditions for their families. Yardfest, ice cream socials, extravagant faculty dinners at Annenberg, the thousands of pens and fliers from Advising Fortnight have all, among other extravagances, been prioritized over the livelihood of our staff. Moreover, as of yet, Harvard has not complied with the Cambridge City Council’s request that Harvard make cuts in the wages of high-paid academic staff and professors instead of laying off lower-wage workers, even though paying faculty at Stanford University’s rates rather than Harvard’s would save roughly $4.5 million. Though recent cuts in house budgets bode well for more equality in Harvard’s fiscal scheme, remaining extravagant practices send a clear message that in an unfavorable economic climate, low-wage workers are the first part of our community to go—even before the truly unnecessary luxuries we continue to enjoy.
To justify this backward fiscal scheme, defenders of Harvard’s budget cuts argue that the university’s primary goal is education, not job generation. We respond that in laying off workers while continuing to finance Yardfest and other indulgences, Harvard is acting irresponsibly not only as an employer, but also as an educational institution. As one Harvard Crimson editorialist observes, “our natural reaction is likely to include telling the administration to preserve undergraduate life at all costs” – but, as the Crimson writer asserts, Harvard administrators and students must resist this mentality. An undergraduate experience that is protected from the economic crisis at the expense of low-wage workers’ livelihood is not a quality educational experience, but a potentially disastrous illusion. With Harvard’s current fiscal scheme, many students are exposed to the recession only theoretically in economics classes or by reading the newspapers. By “preserving undergraduate life,” Harvard is shielding its students from an enormous global issue and in doing so is producing a class of policymakers, economists, and academics who are out of touch with one of the most important realities of our time.
To sum up, Harvard should more fairly distribute the necessary cuts to our budget in order to appropriately prioritize our staff as important members of our community and to enhance our educational experience. As it stands now, Harvard’s fiscal scheme is an embarrassment to all members of our community; one cannot help but blush at the recent report that the Cambridge City Council is trying to “shame Harvard into realizing how unnecessary and immoral low-wage worker cuts are in light of [the university’s] overall fiscal scheme” by giving Harvard a mini stimulus package. We should be concerned that the university sees our low-wage workers as “unnecessary” parts of our community in light of the continued financing of superfluous expenses such as Yardfest and the unchanged salaries of higher paid Harvard employees. Furthermore, we cannot accept the argument that these layoffs are necessary in order to maintain Harvard quality as an educational institution, for shielding students from the realities of a global issue can in no light be perceived as education. We call on Harvard to prioritize “Staff, Not Stuff,” as the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW) has advocated, and to make cuts more evenly across the Harvard community. In doing so, Harvard will show adequate respect to its workers and will offer a more effective education to the policymakers, economists, and academics who will be addressing this crisis and others in the future.