Harvard accepted a $300 million donation from billionaire hedge fund manager and GOP mega donor Ken Griffin and renamed the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences after him in exchange. Meanwhile, Harvard is leveraging its company-town business model to raise rents in student housing by 6% and instructing its underpaid graduate students to apply for food stamps, all while workers have suffered under the highest inflation rates in over 40 years.

As graduate and undergraduate student teachers and researchers we urge that, effective July 1 2023, Harvard bring all student research and teaching salaries up to the living wage for Middlesex County, of $48,779 per year for salaried employees and $23.45 per hour for hourly employees.

Meanwhile, Harvard is also refusing to recognize research from Human Evolutionary Biology (HEB) students as labor - they argue that their stipends are "financial aid" rather than compensation (unlike all other student workers). Thus, HEB students have been denied fair wages, contract-provided benefits and workplace protections.

But we know that Harvard won’t just do what we ask out of the goodness of their hearts; we have to fight for a living wage and union protections! Start here by coming to our living wage rally on May 10th at 12 p.m. in Harvard Yard.