Harvard’s Heroic Laborers

I have been teaching “Ancient Greek Hero” at Harvard for almost 60 years. I have taught generations of students about the meaning of “labor,” which in my field of Classics can refer both to the ordeals of heroes in, say, the Homeric “Iliad” and to the efforts of post-heroic athletes who re-enact them.

In our modern age, though, some labor is irreplaceable. My course, hundreds of students large, is (normally) managed by me and a stellar teaching team — this year there have been 11 teaching fellows and assistants. I value their labor passionately. In fact, I cannot fully operate my course without it. It is because their labor is so valuable that I refuse to try to replace it.

There are several indispensable functions my TAs and TFs had played before the strike. It is not feasible for me to do the work of our striking colleagues in grading assignments or leading sections on a week-to-week basis. It is also not possible for me to track attendance for hundreds of students. But the most important thing is this: As only one person, I cannot span the breadth of the wisdom and guidance that an intergenerational teaching team offers.

But even if I could replace all of their labor, I do not want to impede the efforts of those of my colleagues who chose to strike, just as I would never want to impede their efforts as my valued colleagues in the teaching of our course.

The word “colleague” is personally all-important to me in this context, since its etymology shows that this word is derived from the Latin word “collega,” referring to a member of a “collegium.” A collegium, as some Latin speakers understood it, is a community of equals.

Even with my seniority, I view my teaching team as full colleagues. I think of all of us twelve teachers as a unified teaching community, and, together with our students, we are all a unified learning community.

It seems that the President and Fellows of Harvard College could dig deeper into the meaning of their title. To be the stewards of a college is to guide a community of “collegae” (or, as they might understand it, colleagues). However, also in the upper ranks of Harvard, there is another operative term, “the Harvard Corporation,” which may imply a business model rather than an academic model. Regrettably, this interpretation comes to the fore in light of Harvard leadership’s dealings with their “collegae.”

All of this said, I am still entrusted both by Harvard College and by my students to be their professor. And, as a professor faced with shortcomings in student education, I find it even more challenging, during the strike, to think of remedies.

Evaluation is a necessary part of the learning experience. And, now, so long as the strike continues, I must come up with drastic remedies as the professor in charge. If worse comes to worst — that is, if the strike extends all the way to the end of the course — I could still assign final grades, but my evaluations would be impoverished given the amount of time and attention that meaningful grading requires.

Even if I am able to assign a letter or a number grade after everything has been handed in, it is evident that the value of such a “grade” would hardly be comparable to the granularity and focus present in the evaluations given by 12 collaborating teachers instead of a soloist.

Still, in my role as professor, I will try to compensate for the treasured labor of my younger colleagues, without in any way being able to substitute. Above all, in all aspects of education, I have and will continue to expect conscientiousness, or action taken in good conscience.

On this theme, I am making myself conscientiously available for communication with my students. But, likewise, I expect conscientious engagement from my students in continuing their coursework, even with newfound difficulties. For example, I expect students to attend “lecture” (though I do detest that word), and to inform me of any absences.

Most importantly, I expect students to continue engaging conscientiously with the enduring and powerful themes of the content of the course. Towards the end of each semester of “Ancient Greek Hero,” we read Plato’s “Apology,” in which Socrates defends himself at the hour of his being condemned to death. As says Plato’s Socrates, “ho dè anexétastos bíos ou biōtòs anthrṓpōi.” For my readers: “the kind of life that is unexamined is not a life that is livable for a human.”

Even if grading is limited, students should not wait for their work to be examined before examining themselves through these remarkable texts. This is why we gather as a collegium, and this is a part of the Harvard education that must never expire under any circumstances.

In any case, at this moment, my most urgent call for conscientiousness is for the Harvard administration to show its hoped-for recognition of our post-heroic-age laborers.

Gregory Nagy is the Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature.