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.

Primal Scream

Domna: You, you run yesterday. I saw you that you run yesterday.

Boy: *Smile, nod*

Domna: Yes, yes you run, you run.

Max: Wait, Domna's seen your penis?

Boy: *Silence*

Happy New Year after A Year of Travel

2008 was a year of traveling. The images that are salient to me are of mountains, and of sitting on buses with my cheek against a window; I see myself third-person, looking at the dusty yellow road outside; I think of going home every day, walking up Giraldez in the dark, hearing dogs bark, a few internet cafes and yellow ice cream vats on the street; I think about all the nights I sat with Nilda, that beautiful girl who seemed very sad, just the two of us at the table, sipping soup; I think about waking up at dawn.

For me, thinking about 2008 is a lot like thinking about traveling. It is only a coincidence that this was also a year of travel for America. An odd coincidence: I've heard some people say that their lives are products of artistic design – I don’t think that is true. But is odd, as a point about narrative arc of some sort, that the two, my traveling and our country’s, come together that way – it is odd that I leave America at exactly the moment when so many people are rediscovering its meaning.

The history of our country is punctuated by moments when we have chosen to be better, to create a more perfect union, and it is my conviction that we are passing through one of those moments right now. And 2008, a year for me that has featured a long march in Peru and then the inundation of Harvard, a year of abyss in all the best ways, also constitutes a personal moment when I choose to be better than I have been.

Travel, though, only means something so long you stop. Why travel? I used to say: to understand your home. Well, we’ve traveled an awful lot. Let’s get to work.

Here’s to 2009. I think it’s going to be a good one.

Freshman Year Writing, Part 1

Here are two essays that I've written. In the first, about a Emerson, I argue that the doctrine of "self-reliance" is a doctrine of obedience, rather than freedom. In the second essay, I look at the different ways that black protest writers used religion before and after Emancipation.

Obedience and Destiny in Emerson's Self-Reliance:

Emerson is calling for a total merger of a man with his Self, and thus a proximate a merger of man with God. All told, Emerson’s supposed doctrine of “defiance” quickly reveals itself to become a doctrine of obedience. Self-reliance might as well be God-reliance.

The Uses of Religion in Du Bois and Douglass:

To conclude: Du Bois, in his discussion of sorrow songs in the final essay and his juxtaposing of them with European hymns throughout, suggests an answer: integration through the self-assertion. He wants both Black and White elements of society to be at once productive and self-containing, to interact as “co-worker in the kingdom of culture” (Du Bois 5). These Sorrow Songs represent all that is important to Du Bois’ conception of religion; in them, there are all the gifts that Blacks brought to America, “the soft, stirring melody,” the “gift of sweat” and the “gift of Spirit” (Du Bois 214). Thus, religion encapsulates the divisions that not only threaten to paralyze blacks, but also the very divisions that make their identity so important. He asks: “Would America have been America without her Negro people?” (Du Bois 215).

Bad Conversation Starters for Freshman Orientation Week

#1 “Wow, the food really sucks here. It reminds me of that time I murdered a child.”

#2 “Hey, a lot of people say I look like John Harvard.”

#3 “Aw, the math placement exam was terrible. I thought they said to use a #2 Dildo. Boy was I wrong.”

#4 “Yeah, it’s fucking ridiculous. They have me living with like one roommate. Once he played music softly from his computer and then I told him that it was difficult for me to study while music is playing. Then he stopped. He insists on using a blue backpack. What a douche bag.”

#5 “Hey I’m Zach. I could not properly identify circles until I was eleven years old.”

#6 “Wow, you’re from Thayer Hall? I’m a homosexual too.”

#7 “Same. I thought the Lamont Library Open House provided a great deal of pertinent information too.”

#8 “You’re from Maryland? Wow. Absolutely fascinating.”

#9 “Truth be told, I have no respect for the janitorial staff. They are mostly uneducated.”

#10 “Hi, I’m Drew Faust.”

#11 “Once I held a young child’s mouth closed to keep him from making noise. After a while he suffocated to death. Hey, I’m from Canaday too!”

#12 “Cool. Same here. I was thinking of concentrating in either Premed or Expos.”

#13 “What’s interesting to me is that this conversation is compounding most of my racial prejudices.”

#14 “Do you happen to have directions to Anneberg?”

#15 “In retrospect, Community Conversations probably would have been more fun than masturbating alone in my dorm room.”

#16 “Hi, I’m Michael Sandal.”

#17 “Did you happen to notice that a large number of kids are using cellphones and other electronic devices to contact their friends and family?”

#18 “Jeeze, this blueberry pie tastes like human blood.”

#19 “Hey I’m Max. I think abortion is murder. What’s your name?”