Harvard sits on $68 billion. Sixty-eight. Their investments made 27% last year. And they’re in a standoff with 4,000 grad students over a 3% raise.
These are the people who actually teach the classes and grade the papers. They want protections for noncitizen workers and an independent process for harassment complaints. Harvard’s counter-offer: no, and by the way, we don’t think your strike is legal. Eighty-eight percent of the union voted to walk out Monday. The endowment report dropped October 15 showing an $11 billion gain in a single year. The strike deadline is October 27. Harvard spent the days in between arguing it can’t afford to pay the people who run the place.
You can sit on the biggest endowment in the history of higher education and still refuse to share it with the workers. That’s not a budget problem. That’s a landlord problem.