The following letter was sent from the five unions representing the majority of Harvard workers to the president, provost, and the senior fellow of the Harvard corporation on Monday, July 14, 2025.
Dear President Garber, Provost Manning, and Senior Fellow Pritzker,
Over the last few months, the federal government has launched authoritarian attacks on Harvard and on higher education through massive funding cuts and grant withdrawals, stop-work orders on vital research, attempted visa cancellations and denials, and other looming threats. No one in the greater academic community is safe. Without intervention, we face the collapse of the scientific and academic enterprise, one of the United States’ most successful contributions to the global community. The consequences will be felt through the loss of thousands of university jobs across the country, the erosion of students’ access to education, the silencing of academic voices, and the derailment of life-saving research and innovation.
These unprecedented attacks on higher education call for an unprecedented response, including an unprecedented commitment of resources. We, the workers of Harvard University, applaud Harvard’s public stand and its commitment of $250 million to sustain life-saving research. However, Harvard’s essential missions depend entirely on its people. Harvard has publicly committed to supporting research and education, but still has not committed to supporting the workers who perform and facilitate that research, educate our students, and keep the University running. We are at immediate risk of being unable to publish the results of years of painstaking scientific research, and already, many of us can no longer teach courses in our fields of expertise without fear of governmental retaliation. Under this administration, we are losing our jobs, our careers, our visas, and even our freedoms. Our University cannot resist government attacks without fully supporting the students, teachers, researchers, lab workers, administrative staff, postdoctoral fellows, custodians, security guards, dining hall workers, and many others that make up Harvard’s community.
We, the undersigned, call on our University to meet this moment by explicitly committing to use Harvard’s resources, including its ample reserves and non-allocated endowment funds, to protect our research and education missions by protecting the livelihoods of the people who embody those missions.
Our labor unions are fighting back against the federal government’s attacks alongside the University. Whether on the streets of Boston or in federal court, we’re standing up for our members every day. We know that our University is strong because its people are strong, and we won’t back down. We urge Harvard to stand with us by committing to the following:
- Use Harvard’s substantial reserves and non-allocated endowment funds to protect all Harvard workers from layoffs, non-reappointments, furloughs, overwork, and forced early graduation until the legal case regarding Harvard’s funding is resolved.
- Promote equity via transparent application of funds across divisions and departments.
- Refuse to cut educational programs in response to authoritarian intimidation.
- Protect non-citizen members of our community by providing legal resources, social support, and additional job and degree protections.
- Engage stakeholders, including tenure- and non-tenure-track faculty, staff, postdoctoral fellows, and students on policy changes regarding funding and jobs.
- To this end, we call on Harvard President Alan M. Garber, Provost John F. Manning, and members of the Harvard Corporation to meet with representatives of our organizations to discuss these pledges before July 25.
Harvard’s reserves and endowment—the largest university endowment in the world—affords Harvard a unique position of privilege: we can refuse to be complicit with government overreach. Harvard reported in their FY24 Financial Report over $6 billion in reserves and over $9 billion in non-allocated endowment funds. While use of these funds is not a permanent solution to this government-manufactured crisis, they afford Harvard the resources to resist these attacks on education and research by supporting the people who carry out and facilitate this work until Harvard’s lawsuit over funding cuts is resolved. By explicitly committing to protecting its mission by protecting the Harvard community, the University can make a clear statement: We stand for truth. We stand for knowledge. We stand for understanding. And most importantly: We stand together.
Signed by:
- Harvard Academic Workers Organizing Committee
- Harvard Graduate Student Union
- Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers
- SEIU 32BJ
- UNITE HERE Local 26