Posted on 04/25/2026 9:03:55 AM PDT by Salman
Beneath rolling storm clouds and a spattering of spring rain, about two dozen people holding blue and white signs march in front of Harvard University’s Science Center. Circling around a young woman holding a megaphone, their chants ricochet off stately brick buildings dotting the campus.
The woman in the middle shouts: “What’s outrageous?”
“Harvard’s wages!” the crowd replies.
...
The strike comes at a tenuous time for Harvard, which has endured the glare of the national spotlight as President Donald Trump assails the university with the full force of the U.S. government. Harvard has faced government lawsuits, billions of dollars in frozen federal funding, and threats to revoke its tax-exempt status. It ran a deficit last year for the first time since the pandemic, and administrators have repeatedly sought to negotiate with the Trump administration.
...
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
Trump's fault, {smirk}
As a former underpaid grad student (at a rather less prestigious state university) I have this to say:
It's not supposed to be a career position and it enabled me to make better money later.
No not as a college professor. Engineering. After having been a mechanic for a while before grad school.
Harvard students obviously have not been educated on economics yet. If they have a skill that is valued in Massachucetts, they can get a job using that skill set.
Even better: If they are so intelligent, they can be self-employed, start their own business.
Harvard is not their Mommy that they need to be tied to her apron strings.
The woman in the middle shouts: “What’s outrageous?”
“Harvard’s wages!” the crowd replies.
That doesn’t even rhyme well. So how can we take them seriously?
If you are getting a doctorate in chemistry or physics, you can probably make pretty good money.....when you graduate.
AFAIAC, let’s hope Harvard is SHUT DOWN!
1. we don’t need it as a center of “institutionalized” and “legitimized” bigotry, racism, anti-Christian and anti-Jewish bias in America.
2. the federal monies poured into Harvard each year can better be used
2a. for legitimate trade schools, and
2b. with the balance returned to the American taxpayers.
3. those students who do not need to earn a living in their future lives and who wish to study humanities, liberal arts, and other mostly-not-career-path type classes -— can get good classes at many other colleges. Harvard is superfluous.
I once was a Harvard graduate student. After many years in that position, I earned my PhD.
I NEVER would even imagine that I should be a member of a union (under the United Auto Workers, no less)! Nor would I have voted to join such a union! And as a relatively well-paid and well-honored National Science Foundation Fellow, I would have been excluded by the union anyway. I saved money and had a better life by choosing to live in a graduate dorm and to get most of my meals in Harvard cafeterias. It was a different and arguably better era.
Graduate students should get the faculty to lobby for them—NOT the UAW! Yes, Boston/Cambridge is expensive to live in. But graduate students (especially PhD candidates) do not have time to waste on strikes and union meetings. Nor should they allow themselves to be oppressed by the UAW!
The strike brouhaha continues:
Editorials
In Support of the Graduate Workers Strike (Harvard Crimson)
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/4/24/editorial-harvard-support-hgsu-strike/
I was an NSF Graduate Fellow back in the day. Currently, NSF Graduate Fellows are rightly excluded from the union.
Shameful!
“Graduate student workers” is a union-derived oxymoron!
I’m sure that the union and its undergraduate supporters want union-excluded NSF Graduate Fellows (as I once was) to join the picket line! Phooey!
https://www.thecrimson.com/thread/2026/4/21/hgsu-strike-2026/
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