Non-Tenure Track Faculty Deliver Petition on Time Caps to Harvard President Garber

Non-tenure-track faculty delivered a petition with almost 1,400 signatures calling for an end to time caps to top Harvard officials on Thursday as the group’s new union bargains for its first contract with the University.

The petition, signed by over 350 tenure- and non-tenure-track faculty, alleged Harvard’s time-cap policy — which limits the time that lecturers and preceptors can be employed at Harvard to two, three, or eight years — is “out of step with peer institutions” and hurts the University’s educational offerings.

Members of the campaign, organized by Harvard Academic Workers-United Auto Workers, delivered the petition at Massachusetts Hall to Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 and Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra on Thursday. They have asked for a response by March 3, delivered directly or via the University’s bargaining representatives.

A University spokesperson declined to comment on the petition’s demands.

Ending time caps has long been a key goal for HAW-UAW, which has been bargaining with the University since September and represents roughly 3,600 non-tenure-track faculty and postdoctoral researchers.

While Harvard offered to end time caps for preceptors at a Feb. 6 bargaining session, workers are hoping for the limits to be abolished completely.

The University has also repeatedly declined to consider a moratorium on time cap-based terminations while contract negotiations are underway. After the proposal was first rejected in October, the union began circulating the petition against time caps, later releasing a report that found the policy harmed workers’ mental health and career planning.

In a statement to the HAW-UAW bargaining committee rejecting the initial proposed moratorium in October, University representatives wrote that the policy could be considered “in the full context” of the first contract.

“We appreciate the Union’s desire to suspend a policy with which it disagrees,” they wrote. “The University will not, however, waive long-standing policies as part of a stand-alone proposal before the parties have fully engaged in bargaining.”

HAW-UAW members also delivered copies of the moratorium proposal — presented again at a Feb. 6 bargaining session — to Garber and Hoekstra on Thursday.

According to HAW-UAW bargaining committee member Thomas A. Dichter ’08, the union was on a “time crunch” to deliver the petition for members whose contracts expire at the end of the year.

“Departments that are expecting people to time out under this policy at the end of the semester are already well in the process of trying to find replacements,” he said. “We want to minimize the risk of people in our unit being let go and being replaced in March and April as new faculty members are hired to replace them for the coming year.”

The final petition includes signatures from 291 non-tenure-track faculty and 64 tenure-track faculty from over a dozen departments, 92 researchers, 69 staff members, 140 alumni, 123 community supporters; and nearly 600 undergraduate and graduate students.

According to bargaining committee member J. Gregory Given, Harvard did not respond to the petition at a Monday afternoon bargaining session.

—Staff writer Hugo C. Chiasson can be reached at hugo.chiasson@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @HugoChiassonn.

—Staff writer Amann S. Mahajan can be reached at amann.mahajan@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @amannmahajan.