Harvard Professors Demand Stronger Administrative Response Amid Graduate Student Strike

Professors voiced frustration about Harvard administrators’ response to the ongoing graduate student strike and its effects on faculty and students at a Tuesday faculty meeting.

Members of Harvard’s graduate student union have been on strike since Oct. 27, leaving professors scrambling to cover sections and manage classes behind picket lines.

At Tuesday’s meeting, History of Science professor David S. Jones ’93 — whose midterm exam in GenEd 1116: “Biomedical Ethics and History” was disrupted by megaphone chants and air horn blasts from striking workers — asked how the College would “help faculty and students who remain committed to undergraduate education.”

“This was not the usual picket. This was a sonic assault,” he said at the meeting, playing two audio clips of the disruptions during the Oct. 29 exam.

On the day of the exam, Harvard College Dean David J. Deming and Dean of Undergraduate Education Amanda Claybaugh issued a statement to The Crimson affirming students’ “right to take their exams without disruption.”

Jones demanded more at Tuesday’s meeting.

“I ask now for a stronger response. Surely there is a line between free speech, harassment, or something worse,” he said.

In response, FAS Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra pointed to “the tension that we feel between the rights of our students to take an exam uninterrupted and on the other side is really the rights of our graduate students in the union.”

Deming made a similar assessment, but issued a more forceful plea to the union.

“Please leave students alone and let them continue their studies,” he said.

Anthropology professor Rowan K. Flad, who took the floor after Jones, argued that there had been “insufficient urgency” from Harvard’s administration to reach a resolution with the union. The two parties have been at the bargaining table since early 2025, and graduate students previously staged a 40-day walkout in the spring as negotiations stalled.

Flad also referenced a Nov. 2 email from the union to faculty claiming that there were no faculty on the University’s bargaining team and that no new bargaining sessions had been scheduled since the strike began. The union currently has bargaining sessions with the University scheduled for Nov. 20, Dec. 3, and Dec. 17.

“Is the University actually committed to good-faith negotiations at the bargaining table?” Flad asked.

“Does the faculty have any say whatsoever in how the University approaches the strike?” he added. “We the faculty, and the undergraduates we teach, are those who bear the brunt of the consequences.”

University spokesperson Jason A. Newton declined to comment on whether faculty members serve on the University’s bargaining team.

In response, Hoekstra directed Flad to the website for the provost’s office for additional information on bargaining. She also pointed to an email from the Office of Faculty Affairs providing guidance on how to contact student workers during the strike — an email sent in response to requests from department chairs, she said.

“I will continue to relay this urgency moving forward,” she said.

—Staff writer Abigail S. Gerstein can be reached at [email protected] and on Signal at abbysg.97. Follow her on X @abbysgerstein.

—Staff writer Amann S. Mahajan can be reached at [email protected] and on Signal at amannsm.38. Follow her on X @amannmahajan.