A Few Thoughts on SLAM from a Liberal Committed to Social Justice

The following is a response to the Student Labor Action Movement and all the rallying we've recently seen (here, here). As far as I'm aware, the Crimson won't run my response. I don't know why, exactly -- either scheduling issues (?) or substantive ones -- but I am publishing it here.

If you're reading this and are interested, I'd love to discuss this issue further: mnovends@fas.harvard.edu.

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A Few Thoughts on SLAM from a Liberal Committed to Social Justice

“We come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.”
- Barack Obama, Inaugural Address

Let’s assume that you are a liberal (I am) whose support for the American working class is deep – what are you to make of the Student Labor Action Movement?

The group, known by its onomatopoetic acronym SLAM, helped to organize Thursday’s labor rally, in which hundreds of students, workers and union representatives chanted outside of the Holyoke Center, and then marched to President Drew Faust’s office in the yard.

Picket line protesting of this sort is part of an important progressive tradition in America. It is based on a explicit, essential premise: the normal avenues of reform are too clogged or too bigoted for my lone voice to be heard. I must take to the streets.

To this effect, the Crimson quoted one of the leaders of the rally (to be fair, not directly affiliated with SLAM) as saying: “We are fighting for justice. We are making history. We can only rise together."

Protests demand enemies; yet, I am left to wonder, Whom, exactly, is SLAM fighting? The information is sketchy here. Is SLAM really suggesting that President Drew Faust is acting in bad faith or insidious intent to undermine Harvard’s most vulnerable?

If this is their point – insulting as it is to President Faust’s long career of service to the public good – then SLAM ought to say it outright. And then they need to give evidence.

Second, What exactly is SLAM fighting about? In a Crimson editorial, SLAM member Alyssa Aguilera says that there is “nothing responsible about the richest university in the world conducting massive layoffs that will only add to the already hurting economy.” But she only points to Harvard’s announcement to scale back an outsourcing contract to the effect of terminating “13 of 27 jobs contracted through American Cleaning Company at Harvard Medical School.”

The fact is: zero workers directly employed by Harvard have been laid off. And there is no evidence that they will be. President Drew Faust did indeed write that she would be “taking a hard look at hiring, staffing levels and compensation,” but the result seems to already have come to pass: a freeze on wages for most faculty and staff, and a voluntary early retirement option for 1600 workers.


I question the way SLAM has framed the debate – and I do so with all due respect for the organization and the principles that it is pursuing that SLAM has denied Drew Faust and Harvard University. Rhetoric like “massive layoffs” (not to mention the epithets and sloganeering) is more than just misleading – it is openly mendacious. SLAM, like any movement, ought to be wielding truth, not suppressing it. And to the extent that they need to fabricate enemies and conjure up phantoms, I cannot support their work.


I humbly suggest, instead, that SLAM is not a protest group, but a lobbyist. Their case, at its best, is one of costs against benefits: in this time of economic hailstorm – one that threatens hard decisions about practically every aspect of the University, from research to admissions to expansion – workers should be protected as primary.

They might be right. (In fact, I hope they are). But they should not pretend that it's an easy case to make, or that it’s morally unambiguous. Compensation accounts for fifty percent of University expenses, and with limited and drastically reduced resources there are a number of programs liberals might prioritize: What about the University’s mission to research for the public good? What about financial aid, so that no one is discriminated against because of economic standing?

Reasonable people – reasonable liberals – can disagree. And reasonable debate, I posit, should be conducted as such. They ought to get off the street and start typing briefs.


The tactics of SLAM, in the end, seem suited for a place and a time very much different from our own. While my peers are reenacting the civil strife of an older generation, the Obama Administration (a product in many ways of Harvard’s better sensibilities) is proceeding from pragmatism and consensus to win real victories for American liberalism.

Pragmatism. Consensus. Real victories. Such, I believe, are the demands of our age – and ones that we Harvard liberals are uniquely equipped to seize upon.

Protest, a tool of voice, is often wielded by those who do not have one. It seems as if the passionate students in SLAM, a group that exists at the very center of societal influence, want to wish their own considerable talents and access away. Apparently, they would prefer to leave the halls of power – where rational discussion can lead to rational solutions – so that they might bang loudly at their doors.