“In 1988, against all odds and the great resources of the nation’s wealthiest university, the union won a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election after two previous defeats. In an earlier incarnation as labor law professor, Harvard’s then president, Derek Bok, had championed the right of workers to have unions. But on his own campus, Bok continued a legal fight against HUCTW for months before the NLRB turned down his appeal. Bok then recognized HUCTW, ending a 15-year battle for the hearts of workers historically titled “university servants” who really wanted to be loyal to both union and university–and subject to no master…

In the early 1970s, a women’s rebellion began in the Harvard “medical area.” Located in Boston’s Mission Hill section, several miles from the main campus in Cambridge, the medical area consists of the Schools of Medicine, Dentistry, and Public Health. Most clerical and technical positions were filled by women, many of whom wanted only part-time or short-term jobs while studying for graduate degrees and starting families. Harvard exploited this phenomenon in order to obtain a high-quality work force on the cheap. Leslie Sullivan, who was hired as a research assistant in the School of Public Health in 1971, recalls the implicit pitch: “Come work at Harvard. Meet a medical student. Get married!”  These “female jobs” commanded low salaries and little status, regardless of skill required. Women who chose to continue working seldom rose above low-level supervisory positions…”