Letter to the Editor: Do Not Ask Exempt Employees to Work in Dining Halls

To the Editor:

We read with dismay in The Crimson that university officials have been asking for volunteers from the ranks of exempt Harvard employees (employees not paid hourly and ineligible for overtime pay) to staff the dining halls during the strike.

There is room for disagreement on the issues between the administration and the union, but this tactic for defeating the strike is beyond the pale. It should stop.

The potential for coercion seems obvious. Coercion can be subtle, especially for staff workers who are concerned about their own job security or promotion and therefore want to please their bosses. Even apart from the issue of coercion, bringing in volunteers from across the university is very different from having dining-hall managers get their hands dirty (so to speak—we hope not in fact). Asking people to come in from other parts of the university is an escalation comparable to a situation in which the union might intimidate people in the process of their crossing picket lines. Neither amounts to acceptable behavior.

Theodore Bestor, Director of the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies and Resichauer Professor of Social Anthropology

Suzanne Preston Blier, Allen Whitehill Clowes Professor of Fine Arts and of African and African American Studies

Glenda R. Carpio, Professor of English and African and African American Studies

David Carrasco, Neil L. Rudenstine Professor of the Study of Latin America, Harvard Divinity School

Steven Caton, Khalid Bin Abdullah Bin Abdulrahman Al Saud Professor of Contemporary Arab Studies

Sidney Chalhoub, Professor of History and of African and African American Studies

Joyce Chaplin, James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History

Thomas Cummins, Dumbarton Oaks Professor of Pre-Columbian and Colonial Art

David Elmer, Professor of the Classics

James Engell, Gurney Professor of English and Professor of Comparative Literature

Bruce Hay, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

Michael Herzfeld, Ernest E. Monrad Professor of the Social Sciences and Director, Thai Studies Program, Asia Center

Alice Jardine, Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality

Duncan Kennedy, Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence, Emeritus, Harvard Law School

Nancy Krieger, Professor of Social Epidemiology, T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Walter Johnson, Winthrop Professor of History and Professor of African and African American Studies

Gabriela Soto Laviega, Professor of the History of Science

Mary Lewis, Robert Walton Goelet Professor of French History

Jane Mansbridge, Charles F. Adams Professor of Political Leadership and Democratic Values, Harvard Kennedy School

Stephen Marglin, Walter S. Barker Professor of Economics

Derek Miller, Assistant Professor of English

Afsaneh Najmabadi, Francis Lee Higginson Professor of History and of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality

Ken Nakayama, Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology

Nancy Rosenblum, Senator Joseph Clark Professor of Ethics in Politics and Government

Adrian Stähli, Professor of Classical Archaeology

Mary Steedly, Professor of Anthropology

Ajantha Subramanian, Professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies

Richard Thomas, George Martin Lane Professor of the Classics

Mary Waters, M.E. Zukerman Professor of Sociology

Nicholas Watson, Henry B. and Anne M. Cabot Professor of English Literature

Kirsten Weld, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences

Christopher Winship, Diker-Tishman Professor of Sociology