Harvard Academic Workers Union Release Report on ‘Demoralizing and Degrading’ Time Caps

More than 90 percent of 341 surveyed students, alumni, and faculty in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences called for abolishing time caps, according to a Wednesday report released by Harvard Academic Workers-United Auto Workers.

At a Wednesday press conference, HAW-UAW presented the findings from their survey, which compiled the impact of time caps on not only non-tenure-track faculty but also their students and colleagues.

Under the time-caps policy, non-tenure-track faculty — College fellows, lecturers, and preceptors — in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences are limited to a maximum of two, three, and eight year terms, depending on their position. Fighting the policy is a major priority for HAW-UAW, which is bargaining with University representatives for its first contract after unionizing in April.

The HAW-UAW report found that time-caps have “negative impacts” on departmental working conditions, education, and diversity.

Per the survey, 92 percent of time-capped faculty who responded to the survey said the policy harmed their career planning, and 89 percent reported harmful impacts to their mental health.

The ladder faculty — not bound by time caps — who responded to the survey also opposed the policy. Of those surveyed, the majority said time caps made it difficult to develop departmental communities and collaborate with time-capped workers.

Additionally, 42 percent of surveyed Harvard students and alumni reported “having lost teachers and mentors due to time caps-related policies.”

“This is not a small matter affecting a small number of people,” History professor Kirsten A. Weld said at the press conference. “This is at the heart of the pedagogy that we offer at this university.”

Roughly 20 people — mostly HAW-UAW affiliates — attended the event. Non-tenure track faculty, students, and a ladder faculty member spoke at the afternoon press conference, offering testimonials and calls to action.

“It’s a demoralizing and degrading system,” Phyllis Thompson, a lecturer in Women, Gender, and Sexuality, said. “Harvard is built explicitly around an idea of excellence. This system explicitly contravenes against any notion of excellence.”

Harvard spokesperson Jason A. Newton referred to a previous University statement.

“We appreciate the Union’s desire to suspend a policy with which it disagrees,” the statement read. “The University will not, however, waive long-standing policies as part of a stand-alone proposal before the parties have fully engaged in bargaining and considered the issue of term limits in the full context of this first contract between the parties.”

The press conference marks the latest in a series of pushes from the union to eliminate time caps. Three weeks ago, HAW-UAW organizers released a petition calling to abolish the system after University representatives refused an HAW proposal to place a moratorium on time caps during contract bargaining. According to organizers, Wednesday’s press conference was also motivated by Harvard’s rejection of the moratorium.

Jules Riegel, a lecturer in History and Literature, said they “hope it brings attention to this issue.”

“We hope it helps people understand how critical the stakes are, and that it galvanizes that process for us,” Riegel said.

According to Sara M. Feldman, a HAW-UAW Bargaining Committee member and preceptor in Yiddish, a union working group created the report to address an apparent lack of data on the time caps policy.

“All of the justifications for time caps, they’re not grounded in research,” Feldman said. “There’s no research to support them, so we tried to fill in the gaps.”

Feldman said that the union was not originally looking to go public with the report, but that plan “failed.”

“We didn’t want to have to release it,” Feldman said. “Our hope was that we could simply present the data to the administration before bargaining even took place, and that the data, which are obviously persuasive, would allow us to change this policy without any embarrassments to the institution.”

“We have given Harvard every opportunity to fix this problem quietly, and they have refused,” Feldman said.

—Staff writer Aran Sonnad-Joshi can be reached at aran.sonnad-joshi@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @asonnadjoshi.

—Staff writer Sheerea X. Yu can be reached at sheerea.yu@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @_shuhree_.