Democratizing Harvard

The Progressive Student Labor Movement (PSLM) “has never just been about achieving a living wage,” as member Daniel DiMaggio ’04 wrote in a recent opinion piece. But the issue of higher wages for Harvard’s workers has also been the overwhelming focus of the group’s efforts for the past 18 months. What will take its place?

In part, PSLM is a victim of its own success; soon almost all Harvard workers will be making well above the sit-in standard of $10.25 an hour, even accounting for inflation. Yet the group can’t simply declare victory. Throughout its campaign, the group steadily avoided any clear explanation of which wages are just and which are “disgusting”—and the point has been forced, now that wages are high enough for some workers to accept them. Debates over $11 versus $14 don’t lend themselves to protest signs, and the rhetorical muddle has cost the campaign a great deal of political momentum, even as its central goal—an annually adjusted wage floor—remains unfulfilled.

Unfortunately, PSLM seems determined not to learn from its mistakes. The focus of DiMaggio’s op-ed was not higher wages, but the struggle for a “more just and democratic University and society,” in which students and workers would have far more influence. But at the moment, it’s entirely unclear how much democratization PSLM wants, or how much it would settle for. The call for student representatives on the Harvard Corporation, the University’s highest governing body, will encounter far more official opposition than the living wage ever did. More importantly, the effort to “democratize Harvard” will require the kind of focused examination and ideological coherence that was sorely lacking in the living wage debates. On this issue, confusion spells disaster.

Today, Harvard’s governance is conservative in the extreme. The Harvard Corporation chooses its own members subject to the approval of the Board of Overseers, which in turn is chosen by the alumni. And there are certainly many issues facing the University on which a formal consultative role for students, if not full participation, would tend to produce better decisions. Curricular structures, discipline policies, the allocation of space, the social environment of the College—students clearly have an interest in these matters, as well as first-hand experience that would contribute to Harvard’s deliberations. Current students are far more likely than Faculty subcommittees to tell the emperor that he has no clothes. Even in the tenure process and in the selection of high University officials, including student representatives would help ensure that good teaching and attention to the undergraduate experience remain at the top of the Harvard’s priorities.

But most of these issues are addressed by the College and the Faculty, not the Corporation. The debates in which PSLM is interested go beyond these considerations of how best to achieve the University’s mission. They involve to a second set of issues—namely, how to define what Harvard’s mission is. Decisions on whether the University should have raised its wages, bought property in Allston or divested from South African investments are only tangentially related to the “student interest,” narrowly understood; instead, they represent issues on which everyone might have an opinion they wish to see enforced. What are Harvard’s institutional values, and who should participate in declaring them?

Invoking “democracy” won’t fully answer this question. Citizens should have a voice in their government’s decisions, but Harvard isn’t the government. It’s a private institution, and a thriving civil society requires that private institutions be allowed to choose their own ends. One member of the living wage campaign has suggested that Harvard employees should participate in shaping its mission, in part because they are profoundly affected by the University’s decisions; but citizens of Cambridge and Boston are also affected by Harvard’s actions, as are other universities nationwide. Representation is an either-or question, but being affected is a matter of degree. Where should we draw the line? Students and faculty could be significantly impacted by a campus union’s decision to strike, but no one has yet called for “democratizing” them.

Invoking “community” won’t solve the problem either. There is a fundamental asymmetry in the design of a university, in that students arrive expecting that the faculty will know what to teach. No matter what one thinks of ethnic studies, such curricular decisions don’t seem susceptible to the principle of “one man, one vote.” Where do the borders of this community lie, and how much influence does each community member deserve? Are undergraduates part owners in the University, or its short-term customers? How should we weigh the desires of the alumni, who have been shaped by the institution but who have also left it behind?

These are not rhetorical questions; on the contrary, much of Harvard’s job is to prepare students to answer them. Yet even if Harvard’s governance could use a rethinking, the rethinking must take place on the same scale as the original design. It’s not enough to point to current political debates; today’s students support a living wage, and today’s Corporation does not. What matters is whether over the long run—the 300-year-long run—the new structures will better represent the interests of the University than the old. As former Dean of the Faculty Henry A. Rosovsky reportedly told students in 1979, “You are here for four years, I am here for life, and the institution is here forever.”

Answering these questions will require sustained investigation, even before PSLM undertakes an unprecedented political effort. Only immense student pressure could convince the Corporation and Overseers to dilute the power of the alumni, or could bring about the kind of constitutional convention that would be needed to iron out the details of representation. And students certainly aren’t of one mind on the issue—DiMaggio calls for an “enormous education campaign” to “convince” students that they are unhappy with the current system of governance.

PSLM can’t approach “democratizing” Harvard with the same open-ended demands that it placed on Harvard’s wages. Without a clear, systematic program for the University, students will remain unconvinced.

Stephen E. Sachs ’02 is a history concentrator in Quincy House. His column appears on alternate Tuesdays.