By Sandra Y.L. Korn

Two weeks ago, Harvard University Library administrators held a town hall meeting to announce major, imminent changes to the structure of the Harvard University Library. Helen Shenton, executive director of the Library, announced to a bewildered and shocked audience of library employees that the restructuring would involve “voluntary and involuntary layoffs,” and that the workforce “would be smaller.”

In the next week, both Harvard University President Drew Faust and University Provost Alan Garber sent out emails to the entire Harvard student body explaining the planned changes to the library system. Faust described the importance of making “strategic decisions about the digital future” and reforming the libraries to move into the technological age. Garber discussed the ways in which the restructuring would allow innovations to benefit library users.

Shenton’s presentation, these two emails, and the University’s portrayal of this restructuring are laden with discourse about efficiency and profit.  Faust discussed “overhead costs,” “economies of scale,” and the importance of “using our resources to maximum advantage.” Garber talked about “leverage[ing] Harvard’s buying power” by unifying libraries for maximum negotiating positions. Ignoring the fact that Harvard has the largest academic library system in North America, Garber complained, “Harvard spends on average more than twice as much as its peer universities on its libraries.” All three administrators have used the language of corporate management and competition in their discussions of Harvard’s libraries.

Indeed, as Harvard junior Melissa Barber made clear in the Crimson, Harvard’s administration has envisioned the Harvard University Library system as a profit-generating, rather than community-enhancing, institution. In her op-ed “Fat Cats of Widener Library,” Barber satirically notes that “the Harvard Corporation should continue to retract funding from its unprofitable knowledge capital and reinvest in more profitable sectors, like Gatsbyian birthday parties with gourmet cakes the size of the Woodberry Poetry Room.” Unfortunately, this seems to be exactly what the Harvard administration wants to do.

Library workers report that representatives from consulting firm Deloitte have been examining the structure of Harvard’s library workforce in order to assist with restructuring. Deloitte, whose website refers to workers as “human capital,” works primarily with for-profit corporations. A management mentality that views workers this way and treats them as commodities instead of as people is antithetical to a respectful workplace.  Jeffrey Booth, a library assistant at HCL Technical Services and member of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers, notes that this mentality has already affected Harvard’s library staff. He says, “anybody that’s working here, whether they’re someone that never questions management or whether they’re someone who rejects the whole setup, are together on one thing. We are not being treated with respect. We are being abused, by having to reapply for jobs, by the lack of transparency, by the lack of open communication.”

Interestingly, the currently planned layoffs are not financially necessary. Indeed, Harvard has already cut library costs: while its collections continue to grow, money spent on staff decreased around $10 million between 2009 and 2010. Booth notes that if Harvard is concerned with maintaining the quality of its world-famous collections, it cannot simply invest in technology: “there are physical collections. Unless you want to burn all the books, you need to circulate the collections, maintain the collections, update the collections, and work on databases used to access the collections.” By choosing to lay people off instead of hiring workers back to already-understaffed libraries, Harvard has prioritized financial gain over quality.

Harvard’s mentality toward library layoffs reflects a broader trend: our administrators act like executives of a competitive corporation. Yet Harvard is not a for-profit company. It does not have shareholders who demand high return on their investment. Instead, it is a nonprofit, which means that it receives tax benefits with the expectation that it will serve the public good. Sadly, the Harvard administration’s approach to and discourse about the library restructuring reflects a more systematic trend that moves institutions of higher education, like Harvard, under a corporate government model. Layoffs to improve “efficiency” are only a symptom of a larger disease: the corporatization of higher education.

Wayne Langley, director of Higher Education organizing for the Service Employees International Union Local 615, notes that this trend has fundamentally altered the way in which universities function. He asserts, “There’s just something fundamentally wrong [when]  taxpayer supported schools care first about profits, second about research, and in a distant third, teaching and education. There needs to be a reordering of priorities.”

Recently, Harvard has changed the way it envisions itself as an employer, as an investor, and as an academic institution. In recent years, Harvard has moved more and more of its workforce to “term” work—where workers are guaranteed only one year of employment—and “temp” work—where workers are often hired through an outside agency and receive few benefits—when it should be hiring full-time and long-term staff.

On the other hand, Harvard Management Company (HMC) pays its top employees millions of dollars per year to manage the hedge funds and direct investments that make up Harvard’s $32 billion endowment. When asked to justify these exorbitantly high salaries, University administrators cite private competition, arguing that they need to compete with Wall Street firms for the “best” fund managers. As a result, HMC’s CEO, Jane Mendillo, is the highest-paid nonprofit CEO in the country. Is Harvard compensating her as a nonprofit CEO, or compensating her as though she were a Wall Street fund manager?

Harvard’s corporate mentality manifests itself in other ways. For example, HMC refuses to deliberately invest any of its money in socially responsible funds, citing the need for maximum returns. It capitalizes on its ability to avoid paying taxes to rent out large sections of Cambridge and Allston. It even owns a profitable hotel by the Charles River, for which it pays no taxes. And, most alarmingly, it has decided to sacrifice its own experienced library workforce for the sake of corporate efficiency.

Langley notes, “People have said that today’s higher education institutions are just hedge funds with libraries. At least in the case of Harvard, they’re dispensing with the library part.” This corporate mentality devalues academic libraries and the academic community. By viewing Harvard as a competitive actor in global markets, the administration is sacrificing exactly what makes a university great: its ability to serve as a space for collaboration between staff, students, and faculty to conduct research and exchange knowledge. However, Harvard as a university is not entirely lost – there are still workers, students, and faculty who care about maintaining a valuable academic community.

So, when workers and students demand “no layoffs at Harvard libraries,” we are of course concerned about the livelihoods of library workers. We are worried about maintaining the strength of the clerical workers’ union, so that the University cannot bypass contractual procedures in deciding when to lay off employees. We are concerned about the quality of services that students and faculty will receive when they use Harvard’s libraries. But most of all, we are worried about Harvard’s vision for itself as an academic institution. If Harvard lays off hundreds of workers for the sake of “efficiency” and “leverage,” then our university will have taken one more giant step along the road to becoming a corporation.

By Hannah Phillips

”Don’t get pregnant in America,” advised one of my friends from home early last semester. I was not planning on making pregnancy part of my Harvard experience, but what my well-meaning friend was pointing out was that if I, or any women in America, wanted a ‘termination,’ we would face a series of challenges. In addition to financial burdens, women seeking abortion in the United States are criticized and viewed as stupid for not taking precautions (even though no method of birth control is 100% effective); villified as immoral; and threatened that though maybe not today, abortion could one day become be illegal.

Last month, the Komen Foundation announced that it would cut funding to Planned Parenthood because it performs abortions. While Komen has since withdrawn this decision and apologized for the poor handling of the publicity, this incident highlights the ever-present threat to abortion in America. In Oklahoma this threat is even more frighteningly real. Earlier this month, the state Senate passed a bill that, if passed through the House, would make abortion illegal throughout the state.

I never used to say or even think I that had strong views on abortion because I never believed that I had to. In my country, the United Kingdom, abortion is legal. Period. While some people believe that it is morally wrong, their views do not affect national politics or legislation. Abortion is not featured in party platforms; it’s not debated in Parliament. If I got pregnant in the United Kingdom, I could get an abortion for free from the National Health Service—the name of the UK’s publicly funded healthcare systems. No questions asked.

Only when I started learning about American politics did I realize that I had strong views on abortion. ”If one Supreme Court Judge chose anti-abortion,” my secondary school Modern Studies Teacher said, ”then, effectively, abortion could become illegal in America”. I was shocked. Illegal abortion was something I had never considered before, especially in the most influential and powerful country in the world. When I came to America I realized that my teacher hadn’t been exaggerating. Suddenly, I realized that I did have views; ‘pro-choice’ ones. I was on one side of a very contested debate. A debate that I still feel should be irrelevant.

I understand that some people believe life starts at conception and that one human being does not have the right to take a way another’s life. But, other people believe that life starts when there is a heartbeat, or else at birth. Legalized abortion accommodates all of these views, for it allows women with unwanted pregnancies to make their own choices.  When I talk about abortion, people sometimes ask me, “What would you do if you became pregnant?” I say that I don’t know what I would do. It’s not something I really consider when thinking about abortion laws because it doesn’t matter what I think or what I would do personally. It matters that all Americans should have a choice. To those who wish to outlaw abortion, I say: if you do not believe in abortion, don’t have one. Don’t impose your personal moral views on others. I think that’s what Americans call freedom.

Last week, I spoke to a British friend who recently had an abortion in the UK. Her experience was a positive one. She was 22, had only been with her boyfriend a short while, and had little financial support. She wanted to focus her 20s on building a successful career, not parenting. But, again, it doesn’t matter what her story was. What mattered was that she could choose its ending.

Even from a pro-life perspective, aggression towards women’ health groups such as Planned Parenthood is unfair, for these organizations do much to prevent unwanted pregnancies through access to birth control. A few weeks ago, a Congressional panel on birth control consisted only of men, showing how often women’s voices are silenced when they most need to be heard. The topic of debate was even more preposterous.  It simply does not make sense to exclude birth control from insurance coverage – and thus make it prohibitively expensive – and simultaneously increase barriers to abortion.

Upon coming to America, I did not just find unexpected attitudes towards abortion and birth control; I also realized that the US and UK had very different norms concerning sex education. In Britain, all schools must teach comprehensive sex ed.  I was shocked to discover that in America, where states and districts can decide whether or not the schools teach their students about sex. When policymakers “choose” not to teach children and teenagers about sex, young people don’t have a choice when it comes to the consequences of your imposed ignorance. If young people are not taught about sex, then they are more likely to have unwanted pregnancies. Last year, the Channel 4 in the UK aired  a primetime tv show called The Sex Education Show, which went beyond schools to ‘educate the nation about sex’. That would never happen here. It seems contradictory that America spends a huge amount of energy talking about abortion, yet enforces no mandatory sex education for its future generations.

Yet, even with proper sex education and access to birth control, unwanted pregnancies inevitably happen. It’s also inevitable that different people will react differently to an unwanted pregnancy. If I or any woman becomes pregnant, we should have the right, the freedom, to decide whether to abort or whether to carry the pregnancy to term. This issue does not affect national politics nor does it affect any other person.  In this spirit I end with my British friend’s remarks: “My abortion didn’t affect you. It never, ever will.”

A Review of Cornel West’s Democracy Matters

By Kelly Maeshiro

Cornel West’s Democracy Matters comes 10 years after his well-known Race Matters, which recharged a national dialogue on race and democracy. In Democracy Matters, as in Race Matters, West focuses on the prospects for democracy, but this time he extends his analysis to areas such as big money, religion, and hip-hop. As always, he critiques capitalist culture, provides a philosophical approach to solutions, and attempts to awaken the “sleepwalking citizenry” and prod us into action.

If democracy is predicated on a certain degree of equality, it is difficult to doubt that our democracy is in shambles: the top 1 percent of earners own 40 percent of the wealth and the 400 richest Americans own more than the bottom 150 million do. West believes that there are three interrelated causes of this inequity: free-market fundamentalism, aggressive militarism, and escalating authoritarianism, all of which stem from the tension between democracy and empire. These competing forces have been present in every era of our national memory. For instance, the early settlers created democracy for themselves, but eradicated 95 percent of the indigenous population. In the early 20^th century, progressive President Woodrow Wilson did much to curb corporate power, yet he also promoted segregationist policies. More recently, when the United Sates invaded Iraq, it did so supposedly to spread democracy, but it was really pursuing natural resources and military might. For West, contradictions between democratic and imperialistic impulses inform every aspect of American cultural life.

In examining this tension, West turns his eye first upon American Christianity. He argues that too much of modern American Christianity is the ugly descendant of what he calls ‘Constantinian Christianity’ (a reference to the Christian Roman emperor), a religious movement that has betrayed spiritual ideals for state power. As Marxist scholar Terry Eagelton writes, modern-day Constantinian Christians, the religious right, are more shocked by the sight of the female breast than they are by the gross disregard society has for the poor, and they care more about regulating the bedroom than they do the boardroom. In contrast, Christians who fight for the poor, the dispossessed, the disenfranchised, and the powerless subscribe to what West terms ‘Prophetic Christianity.’ Throughout American history, the tension between Constantinian and Prophetic Christianity has mirrored the tension between empire and democracy. This can be seen in the fact that both sides of the Civil War prayed to the same god, or in that the bible was used both to justify segregation and to empower the fight for civil rights and black liberation. Thus, political disputes are often fought in religious terms, and vice versa: for instance, West writes that the religious right “equated the liberation theology movement, which put a limelight on the plight of the poor, with Soviet Communism”(166). Oftentimes, the religious right provides the high ideals (i.e. One Nation Under God) that American imperialists use to disguise their real motives: power, profit, and status.

West pays particular attention to the ways in which political, religious, and economic struggles have affected youth culture and music; once again, he finds ample evidence of the empire-democracy conflict. Hip-hop, according to West, was born out of legitimate rage against oppressive forces, and originally was a democratic art form that allowed ordinary young people to express their perspectives. Yet, as hip-hop has become profitable, it has been commodified, bastardized, and betrayed so that the songs which used to bring social issues to the public consciousness now drown it with sex, drugs, and violence, with more greed and less humanity. Like Christianity, hip-hop has suffered a Constantinian sell-out of sorts, though this time literally. Ironically, the majority (72%) of people who currently listen to hip-hop are young whites. In West’s terms, corporate America has bled hip-hop from the “chocolate cities” and sold it to the “vanilla suburbs,” much as Constantine bled Christianity and sold it to the state. West emphasizes that we must preserve those traditions – be they music or religion – that we hold dear before they are used against us.

After addressing these narratives of democracy and empire in culture, West turns his attention to possible solutions to our economic and political problems. As usual, he looks to history for inspiration: West, much to our bemusement, sometimes calls himself a conservative, for he believes in turning to our rich democratic history to find ideas for the future. For West, Ralph Waldo Emerson is the “indisputable godfather of the deep democratic tradition in America” (68). Emerson believed that the political constipation of his day would be solved if people practiced Socratic questioning—that is, asked tough and unpopular questions–and through asking these questions formed a new democratic consciousness. According to West, Emerson teaches us that the heart of being a democrat (small ‘d’) is thinking for oneself and being willing to criticize both the self and the polity. While Emerson was, of course, a 19^th-century American, his views mirror ancient ideals. To this end, West describes the birth of democracy itself, in Athens in 594 BC, when the peasant demos, angered by the greed of the state oligarchs, demanded political reform and were recognized and incorporated into the Council of Areopagus, the state’s highest governing body. Here we see finally why democracy has been so closely related to imperial greed: it was born out of peasant revolt against a greedy system. Empire is in a certain sense, then, older than democracy. Thus any effort to deepen democracy requires the dismantling of empire; for West, this is our greatest responsibility.