Barg-Testimonial Archives - Harvard Academic Workers

Testimony from JC, and outgoing Preceptor in East Asian Languages and Civilizations

harvardacademicadmin — Fri, 15 May 2026 16:43:11 +0000

My name is JC, and I’m a Preceptor in Chinese in the department of east Asian languages and civilizations. The motivation for me to get involved in this union 5 years ago was simple: to have a more stable job, as we all deserve, and to live a fuller, more dignified life. By “dignified” I mean, not having to feel we are less because our employer treats us as disposable, dignified in the sense that none of our teaching assistants colleagues will have to tell their inflamed teeth to “hush” because they don’t have dental insurance, dignified in the sense that when we reach retirement age, we don’t need to worry that we have nothing to fall back on because not all of us have retirement benefits, dignified in the sense that international workers do not need to silently suffer from exploitation, blackmailing, or even workplace grooming, simply because we are on a visa and can be taken advantage of without the protection of a contract. The list can go on. We have had to fight our hardest because our university has shown zero interest in providing stability nor dignity to non-tenure-track teachers like us. Each year, international teachers who time out have to self-deport, like my colleagues and I will have to do in 7 weeks. Scholars who have devoted their whole lives in academic pursuits will have to leave academia for good. It is life-changing for all of us. Many of our colleagues who timed out in past years are still unemployed, or have left academia permanently.

I believe that people in this room today— my colleagues who stand here beside me and our colleagues at the other end of the bargaining table—are aware of the damage to education done by the austerity measures that Harvard is choosing to employ, even though its endowment and donations are both record high. On top of the time-caps policy and hiring freeze, we are also going to see a 25% budget cut in the coming semester for non-tenure-track teachers. Many programs will be devastated. My own Chinese program will lose 5 specialized courses. Students who aspire to become China experts to help make the world a more peaceful place will simply have very few advanced classes to take. I also heard that Persian will not have a full-time preceptor next semester, with the war going on. I am deeply baffled by what role Harvard wants to play in this already very dangerous world. Harvard boasts of nurturing experts in every field who work for the common good—but are we really doing that? As a world-leading institution, are we in fact contributing to greater stability in the world and make it a better place?

I am aware that none of us in this room right now has the power to make a final call on significant decisions, and you MAY think that what you are helping to make a reality for some teachers here is nothing serious. But nothing is insignificant. All peer institutions, including universities and schools across the world, have always been watching what Harvard offers to education and how things are done here. All the measures taken here are going to have ripple effects in the world. One more day that we stay complicit in allowing this university to fire its experienced teachers and replace them with chatbots, the stronger the dangerous signal we are sending beyond the walls of Harvard yard. One more day we are de-prioritizing education, the stronger we are sending the message to the world: even the most prestigious university does not care about education—so what will the rest of the world become? I invite all of us here to think what kind of world we want to live in ourselves, as well as for our kids and even grandkids. What kind of impact do we want to make? And finally, which side are we on?

And lastly, my dear fellow colleagues, I want to say to you, life is not worth living if we let ourselves succumb to fear. I hereby urge all of you to carry on the fight. Thank you.

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Testimonial from outgoing Science Preceptor in FAS:

harvardacademicadmin — Fri, 15 May 2026 16:42:35 +0000

I have the same concerns as Jules and can contribute some perspective on the experience of STEM students. I teach as a lecturer in Physical Sciences 12A, in 15 series physics labs. As a result, I work with a broad segment of the STEM student population including physics concentrators, engineers, chemists, and pre-med students. In the last year their experience has been seriously impacted by layoffs, time-caps/disposability culture, and attempts to replace human advising with AI tools. When I first got here I was struck by all the resources available to students. There are amazing safeguards in place to make sure every student has access to high-quality advising, mental health support, and academic support. The corp chose to take a lot of that away this year, particularly with the layoff of ADUS and defunding of student groups or spaces in SEAS. Many of my students were personally affected and were emotionally distressed by these changes, to the point where it affected their performance in class. They had very little notice of the layoffs of their advisors, and received an email that their replacement resource was a poorly tested AI chatbot. I am a preconcentration advisor and I recently learned that the preconcentration advising program is ending, and being replaced with centralized resources including chatbots. There is an enormous need for STEM advising here at Harvard. I have a lot to contribute as a person who has navigated a science education and a research career, which centralized resources and AI cannot replace. We cannot set up our students for success without these critical advising resources that have always been an integral part of a Harvard education.

The problem ultimately comes back to the culture of disposability for teaching faculty at Harvard. The majority of preconcentration advisors are NTT. Without us, the advising network doesn’t hold up.

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Testimony from J.R., outgoing Lecturer in FAS:

harvardacademicadmin — Fri, 15 May 2026 16:41:53 +0000

Last week, in the basement of the Barker Center, a group of students gathered to mourn the death of a program that Sara Feldman built, that I have helped to build, and that those same students have helped to build. Every single one of them spoke movingly about the impact that NTTF have made on them, impact often far out of proportion with our role here, out of proportion with our impermanence and our compensation. Some of them wept.

The students in that basement gave us far more recognition of the situation we’re in than I’ve received at this table or from my supervisors.

The Corporation’s counters on the issue of time caps have again and again betrayed a belief that we as teachers are replaceable. It doesn’t matter if someone times out. You’ll always find a replacement.

I won’t argue that you’ll find someone to take the job. People are desperate. I don’t need to tell you about the state of the academic job market.

There have also been clear signals that you mean to replace us with AI wherever possible. We see this in the replacement of SEAS advisors last fall, and especially in the recent announcement that first-year (pre-concentration) advising would be replaced with a chatbot.

But teaching is not reducible to a number, an algorithmic output, a line on a budget. It relies on relationships and on trust. And both of those require time to build.

To take just one example: we’ve heard so much in the past few years about the need to foster classroom discussion on difficult and controversial topics, to make space for disagreement. Well, last week, the students in my course on the history of the Holocaust discussed the politicization of Holocaust memory in debates surrounding the war in Gaza. It’s hard to imagine a more difficult, charged, controversial topic. But because I’ve worked to build those relationships of trust, students were able to disagree with one another respectfully. We all learned from one another in that discussion.

I could also talk about the scholarship I won’t be able to produce if I can’t find another academic job because the Corporation won’t even provide library access to workers who are timing out. I have multiple projects in the works, including a book manuscript, a chapter in an edited volume, and a journal article, all with deadlines in the next seven months. Positions like mine are allegedly supposed to be “teaching postdocs” that provide experience and serve as bridges to tenure-track jobs elsewhere. But the bridges are gone. The landscape has changed. The Corporation has done nothing to reckon with that reality.

You have always had the power to do the right thing. You have chosen not to do it. I want you to reckon with the human consequences of that choice.

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