← Previous Post: | Next Post:

 

A comment from a Harvard library worker at a rally to protest layoffs.

“So it’s a very bad situation. We feel like Harvard has plenty of money. When I came here 20 years ago they had $4.5 billion in their endowment. Now they have 29 billion. To me, that’s a staggering record of capital accumulation. And they made some risky investments that made the endowment skyrocket during the boom times – leveraged private equity, oil, timber, hedge funds, and of course these things, when the economy is doing great they do fantastic and the endowment doubled in just a few years. Predictably, in a downturn, those investments are going to take a hit. But they want us to pay for that. They want ordinary workers to pay for their investment strategies. They pay their top people – one guy got 6.4 million in a year for managing a Harvard endowment. There were several of them. It was reported in the Globe. He goes up from 3 million to 6 million. So why do they have to cut jobs?”

Margaret Soltan, March 7, 2009 8:06AM
Posted in: harvard: bar fly

Trackback URL for this post:
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/wp-trackback.php?p=10205

8 Responses to “A comment from a Harvard library worker at a rally to protest layoffs.”

  1. theprofessor Says:

    Fortunately, this library worker doesn’t need to worry. Harvard has a faculty chock-full of progressives-confertam, et coagitatam, et supereffluentem, in St. Jerome’s lingo. I am very confident that they will step forward and offer to take 10% cuts in their very generous salary and benefit packages to help maintain the staff. Caring and sharing and all that, you know. I know the faculty at Gilligan, who will be caring and sharing to the tune of several percent next year, requested that low-paid staff be exempt from salary cuts, increasing their own give-back as a consequence. If we academic castaways can manage this, what radiant acts of self-sacrifice and generosity can we expect to see from our Ivy League relatives?

  2. Margaret Soltan Says:

    “At least one student wondered if famous faculty benefitted students at all, or merely moved to the school to do minimal teaching and mostly conduct research. Jackson responded by noting that most faculty are able to roll over sabbaticals from previous teaching posts, or that they are granted some deference for the difficulties associated with moving across the country, but that all would eventually teach students.”

    At a sit-down with the new dean of Harvard law, students begin to wonder…

    http://media.www.hlrecord.org/media/storage/paper609/news/2009/03/05/News/Howell.You.Jackson-3661086.shtml

    Maybe, like Florence Babb, they’ll be asked to teach two courses a semester in these difficult times.

    Will they, like Florence, file expensive grievances?

    http://www.margaretsoltan.com/?s=florence+babb

    They’re lawyers, after all.

  3. The_Myth Says:

    UD still has a chip on her shoulder about Babb?

    There was a bit of an update to the Babb story, so you might need to revise your Babb-as-greedy narrative to accommodate the fact that she was already teaching 3 courses when the story made headlines.

    "In addition to her teaching, Babb serves as graduate coordinator in the women’s studies center. Given her duties as coordinator, her new teaching load expanded to three courses over spring and fall semesters — as opposed to four classes — because her coordinator responsibility qualifies as a course."

    http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/02/24/babb

  4. Margaret Soltan Says:

    Myth, if you think grad coordinator for a small women’s studies center qualifies as a course, I have some land in Florida to sell you.

  5. dave.s. Says:

    Harvard is worse off than it looks: they bought a lot of long-term investments (forest land, mines, real estate) which, if they try to get out of now, will leave them in dreadful shape. They’re trying to hold on rather than sell at fire sale prices. Many alums, like me, are focused on the grotesque amount they do have and turn them down when they hit us up for funds. So they have a lot of stuff locked up, and what is liquid they are over-committed for.

    I mean, their problems all of us should wish to have… but they do have money problems.

  6. econprof Says:

    Hmm…the library worker’s complaint sounds familiar. Right, could come directly from Ayn Rand’s "Atlas Shrugged". Some people have money, we have needs, so they have to give us a job and pay us according to our needs.

    It makes me sad that such ideas are not immediately dismissed: America seems to become more and more sclerotic like Europe.

  7. Managing money | Money and Finance Articles Says:

    […]  A comment from a Harvard library worker at a rally to protest layoffs.Posted by joneilortiz via Google Reader   […]

  8. Mark Says:

    If we became even more like Europe, is there a chance we’d end up with econ professors who don’t read Ayn Rand? (Cf. Greenspan, etc.)

Comment on this Entry

UD REVIEWED

Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times

George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil

It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo

There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub

You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog

University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog

[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal

Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education

[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University

The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog

Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages

Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway

From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law

University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association

The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog

I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes

As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls

Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical

University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life

[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada

If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte

Archives

Categories