Occupy Harvard was a student demonstration at Harvard University identifying itself with the global Occupy Movement. It sought to create a forum for discussing economic inequality at Harvard, in the United States, and throughout the world. It criticized Harvard's influence on global economic policy and its involvement with the American financial sector. It also supported wage campaigns by Harvard workers and a divestment demand initiated by Hotel Workers Rising.
Facing resistance from administration and police, the group established an encampment in Harvard Yard after a march on November 9, 2011. Immediately after this march, the gates to Harvard Yard were locked and only people with Harvard identity cards were allowed through. Although the encampment gained many faculty supporters, it was not popular among Harvard undergraduates. The security checkpoints were not removed until after the group packed up its tents in December 2011. Occupy Harvard continued to organize into 2012, with a focus on the university's library system.
The demonstration raised issues of privilege and economic inequality, particularly as they relate to students and administration at one of the world's wealthiest and best-known universities.Mary Carmichael and Billy Baker., "Occupy Harvard left up to students: Harvard officials decide to keep Harvard Yard locked in wake of Occupy tents", Boston Globe, November 11, 2011. Supporters described Occupy Harvard as a "fight for Harvard's soul", questioning whether the university would "continue to prioritize money above social justice". Opponents called the demonstrators over-privileged and under-informed attention seekers.
Background Harvard University is one of the most exclusive universities in the world, with an admission rate of 5.9%.Blake Ellis, "Harvard, Princeton post record low acceptance rates", CNN Money, March 30, 2012. Harvard is famous for its wealthy graduates but also for its generous financial aid programs.Timothy Noah, "Does Harvard's 'affirmative action for the affluent' screw the proles?", Slate, February 3, 2011. Its financial endowment of over $30 billion, on which it does not pay taxes, is the largest in the world.Jodi Upton and Christopher Schnaars, "Endowments fund dorms, salaries—and sometimes tuition", USA Today, September 9, 2012. It is one of the world's richest non-profits, competing only with the Catholic Church (and perhaps the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation).Maryam Monalisa Gharavi, "", LA Review of Books, November 13, 2011.
Many Harvard graduates work in the financial sector based on Wall Street; many others hold prominent positions in the world of business. Prominent faculty such as former president Larry Summers—who become director of the National Economic Council under Obama—have played major roles in shaping United States economic policy. This status has led critics to connect Harvard closely with America's domestic and international economic policies.Charles H. Ferguson, "Heist of the century: university corruption and the financial crisis", Guardian, May 21, 2012. Harvard's investments have also come under scrutiny (as they did during divestment campaigns targeting apartheid in South Africa), with particular criticism leveled at holdings in HEI Hotels & Resorts.
Harvard has been the site of workers' campaigns, notably the long-term Harvard Living Wage Campaign which peaked in 2001. This movement—which established an open 100-tent shantytown in Harvard Yard—won concessions from Harvard including the formation of a jobs committee and a moratorium on outsourcing.Amy Offner, "Winning a Sit-In ", Troublemakers' Union (accessed October 12, 2012).Andrew S. Holbrook, "Pitching Tents, Pitching In", Harvard Crimson, May 2, 2001. In general, student activism at Harvard is limited to official channels. Although many Harvard students are involved in community service or public policy, these avenues for change have been criticized (in the words of a queer student activist at Harvard) as "technocratic," and oriented towards "research solutions, policy solutions, economic solutions, bureaucratic solutions to all problems rather than any type of social movement". Another student said, "It’s uncomfortable to acknowledge one’s own privilege and position—it can feel like a personal attack."
Occupy Wall Street (itself inspired by the Arab Spring) began on September 17, 2011, sparking a wave of public encampments that came to be known as the Occupy Movement. Students at Harvard began organizing in response to that movement, and began to collaborate with the Occupy Boston encampment established on September 30, 2011.Jose A. DelReal, "Students Join 'Occupy Protests", Harvard Crimson, October 7, 2011. Harvard workers, many of them members of Local 615 (SEIU) and Local 26 (UNITE HERE!), also joined with Occupy Boston and helped to plan Occupy Harvard.Mercer R. Cook, "Harvard Union Members Join Occupy Boston Movement", Harvard Crimson, October 13, 2010. The Harvard Crimson generally opposed the Occupy actions, and defended police officers who arrested Harvard students at Occupy Boston."Brutality? Hardly: The Boston Police were not at fault in stopping illegal protests", Harvard Crimson, October 13, 2011.
Ec 10 walkout On Wednesday, November 2, 2011, about 70 students walked out of Economics 10 ("Ec 10"), Harvard's introductory economics class taught by N. Gregory Mankiw, former economic advisor to George W. Bush and then-current advisor to Mitt Romney.Jose A. DelReal, "Students Walk Out of Ec10 in Solidarity with 'Occupy'", Harvard Crimson, 2 November 2011.Chris Isidore, "O.W.S. stages walk-out of Harvard econ class", CNN Money, November 2, 2011. Demonstrators expressed support for Occupy Wall Street and published an open letter to Mankiw:Concerned students of Economics 10, "An Open Letter to Greg Mankiw ", Harvard Political Review. November 2, 2011.
The letter criticized Mankiw's class specifically for presenting a conservative perspective as absolute truth, and for excluding academic data and primary sources (relying heavily, instead on Mankiw's own textbook). Students cited, for example, Mankiw's claim that economics dictated a zero-sum relationship between economic efficiency and economic equality."Anti-Capitalism Protests Spread to US Colleges", FARS, November 21, 2011. The walkout immediately produced heated debate about Harvard and Ec 10, in particular the question of whether the class really separates "descriptive" from "normative" claims.Jeremy Patashnik, "In Defense of Ec10", Harvard Political Review, November 2, 2011.Pan Angelopoulos, "Defending the Walkout", Harvard Political Review, November 4, 2011. An Occupy organizer who supported the walkout said that the class promotes a "strongly conservative neoliberal ideology"; the secretary for the Harvard Republican Club said that "the class is about pure economic efficiency. Ideology comes into play when we determine how to balance efficiency with social equity."
Mankiw said that his course was a "relatively apolitical" introduction to economics, that he was planning to teach a lecture on inequality, a topic that might interest the protestors, and that he could "understand their desire to think about alternative ways to structure society".Michael C. George, "Group Endorses Walk Out in Economics 10", Harvard Crimson, November 2, 2011.Greg Mankiw, "Occupy Wall Street comes to Ec 10", Greg Mankiw's Blog: Random Observations for Students of Economics, November 2, 2011.
Encampment
On November 9, 2011, hundreds of demonstrators (estimates range between 300 and 500; not all of them Harvard students) met at Harvard Law School and marched toward Harvard Yard. After allowing through some students with identity cards, Harvard Police closed the gates on all of the protestors. Some reported police roughness and minor injuries.John Stephen Dwyer, "'Occupy Harvard begins on Harvard Yard", Blast magazine, November 10, 2011. Those who entered the Yard set up tents that had been stored previously in nearby dormitories, establishing a camp near the Yard's John Harvard statue.
The next morning (November 10), the group issued an official statement which included specific criticisms of Harvard management:"Harvard Joins the Occupy Movement", The Nation, November 10, 2011.
We see injustice in the 180:1 ratio between the compensation of Harvard’s highest-paid employee—the head of internal investments at Harvard Management Company—and the lowest-paid employee, an entry-level custodial worker. We see injustice in Harvard’s adoption of corporate efficiency measures such as job outsourcing. We see injustice in African land grabs that displace local farmers and devastate the environment. We see injustice in Harvard’s investment in private equity firms such as HEI Hotels and Resorts, which profits off the backbreaking labor of a non-union immigrant workforce. We see injustice in Harvard’s lack of financial transparency and its prevention of student and community voice in these investments. The group also announced that it would make policies through a regular General Assembly.
Gates of Harvard Yard
While the tents were standing, Harvard administrators kept the gates locked—during this time, no one was allowed into Harvard Yard without appropriate identification. A November 14 statement attributed this decision to "health and safety issues that have arisen elsewhere".Corinne Segal, "Harvard's gates locked due to Occupy protest ", Tufts Daily, November 20, 2011. Those who held Occupy Harvard responsible for the locked gate maintained that it was necessary to prevent the mayhem (rape, assault, drugs, and more) that occurred at other Occupy encampments.Avishai D. Don, "Holding Occupy Harvard Accountable", Harvard Crimson, November 30, 2011. With the gates closed and attendance restricted to Harvard students, the Occupy Harvard encampment may have been one of the most orderly and polite in the nation. According to reporter John Stephen Dwyer:
The shutting of Harvard’s gates has determined the character of the protest and the criticism made against it. Whereas Occupy Boston has attracted all kinds of wild characters, the atmosphere at Occupy Harvard is calm and polite. The occupiers are almost invariably well-groomed and articulate. The donation jar took in $130 one day, most of it in $20 bills, and it didn’t disappear when no one had their eye on it. It is, to use a word popular in Dewey Square, "bougy" (fancy, bourgeois). Many holders of Harvard IDs have a decent shot of joining the 1% if they weren’t already born into it. The occupiers in the Yard say this privilege – earned through hard work in many cases, inherited in others – gives them more obligation to try to fix the system rather than less.
Supporters of the demonstration criticized the gate closure, saying that the administration was reinforcing its elitist image and "shutting down" the university by preventing free flow of people and dialogue.Jose A. DelReal, "Occupy Harvard Security Measures Cause Tension", Harvard Crimson, November 14, 2011. Faculty supporters published open letters to Harvard President Drew Faust asking her to reopen the gates. One group of professors connected to Romance Language programs at Harvard wrote: