At the Crossroads

The sudden drop in Harvard’s endowment has brought our community to a crossroads. For many years, top administrators at Harvard have encouraged—or acquiesced to—policies that give greater weight to the bottom line than to the university’s historic mission, deferring to hired money managers rather than to its own experienced community. The endowment’s $8 billion loss is a stark warning of the peril that Harvard faces as it speeds down the corporate highway.

It is time to reassess where we are going.

While it is appropriate for Harvard to hire portfolio experts to manage its funds, it is not appropriate for them to gamble with the educational mission and future of Harvard. Over the past decade, these experts have climbed out of the back seat and begun to steer Harvard’s economic course.

Shallow corporatist principles—devoid of any purpose except accumulation at all costs—have guided Harvard’s investments and continue to direct its handling of the endowment meltdown. Critical economic decisions are made under a shroud of secrecy; high administrators give vague answers to urgent educational questions; powerless directors are told to freeze hiring and salaries; hard-working, lower-wage staff who make Harvard function are laid off in the worst recession in 40 years by an institution that proudly touts its courses in ethics, religion, and morality.

Yet this is only the beginning. At many schools, double-digit budget cuts are now being rolled out—but more are yet to come. Top administrators show little inclination to reverse course, or even to entertain questions as to how we got here.

Continuing down this road will be a calamity for Harvard for several reasons.

First, while it’s true that high-risk investments have increased the endowment exponentially, the story doesn’t end there. Many people strongly urge slow, low risk growth for educational institutions. Careful growth discourages $35 million salaries for investment-portfolio jockeys, helps restore balance between the liberal arts and the sciences, and minimizes steep budget fluctuations (leading to better departmental planning and reducing cuts). Most importantly, it controls the viral hunger for ever-larger returns on capital—a hunger that subverts the university’s critical search for a “veritas” that cannot be found in the marketplace.

Second, any manager knows that large budget cuts make it more difficult for a department to operate more “efficiently.” Cuts may “only” mean fewer support staff and janitors today, but they will definitely mean fewer faculty, courses, programs, and facilities tomorrow. It must be asked how this will affect our success as an educational institution. (Is this really the best we can do? Some of the greatest minds are assembled under one roof here, yet such measures as reducing shuttle bus runs, ending hot breakfasts, shutting down random elevators, cleaning less often, and laying off staff are still somehow considered innovative.)

Third, assuming that the past will be prologue, these cuts won’t be applied equally. This raises the question of who will have the loudest voice in advising top administration officials on where to slash. If our recent history is a guide, ex–Wall Street cowboys will have the ear of top administrators, while Harvard’s many stakeholders—the students, faculty, and other staff—will pay the price.

Local 615 believes the educational mission, as embodied by trustees, deans, faculty, students, staff, and alumni—not by the Harvard Management Corporation—should drive educational and economic policies at Harvard. In our view, Harvard needs to engage in genuine innovation and a sober reappraisal of its educational, investment, and budget policies. This can only happen when Harvard takes into account the ideas and needs of the broad community of stakeholders who care about—and who have an interest in—the future of this university.

Our union—comprised of a thousand custodial and security personnel across campus—has begun a listening tour with professors, secretaries, managers, deans, janitors, students, alumni, security guards, researchers, donors, and representatives from the Cambridge community. Engaging in broad-based, frank discussions of where our university is headed means embarking on an unfamiliar, uphill road for each of us, one that demands trust, overcoming old divisions and stereotypes, and realizing that, as partners, we can alter Harvard’s course. This, then, is the crossroads at which Harvard finds itself.

We can continue where we’re headed or change direction. Only open debate and inclusiveness leads away from the business-determined road we’re on and toward the university whose highest goals are to educate its students and nourish its community.

We must not allow it to be the road not taken.

Wayne M. Langley is the director of the higher education division of the Service Employees International Union, Local 615.