When Harvard’s administrators tell Professor West that they cannot bring him up for tenure because it’s “too risky” and he’s “too controversial,” they completely undermine the point of tenure: to protect his freedom to speak truth to power.
As part of America’s reckoning with its oppressive past, the nation now faces the question not just of what statues and other images should be taken down, but what else – if anything – should be put up in their place.
Over months of contract bargaining, Harvard reached common ground with the union on some issues. But over the course of a recent strike, the university began to lash out in punitive and ominous ways.
Mr. Elmendorf told Ms. Manning, who was sentenced to 35 years in prison for providing classified information to WikiLeaks, that she was still invited to speak at Harvard. But he said that the school could no longer give her the title of visiting fellow.
The settlement may well resonate beyond the gates of Harvard Yard. It marks the fourth time in recent months that a union has bucked a long and steady decline in the clout of organized labor groups. The show of strength for organized labor comes at a time when just 11.1 percent of the US workforce is unionized. Some labor specialists say changing economic conditions are giving unions newfound leverage, despite their relatively modest ranks.
Food service workers at Harvard are members of UNITE-HERE Local 26. After two years, they earn $21.73 per hour on average, while for many years the DoubleTree hotel in Cambridge owned by the university non-union housekeepers earned only about $15 an hour. Last year, housekeepers at the hotel mounted a push to join Local 26 as well. Hilton, which owns the DoubleTree chain bumped salaries to $18 an hour— but has so far managed to avoid a unionized workforce.
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