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spring, when the motley crew of student activists known as the Progressive
Student Labor Movement (PSLM) took over Harvard's Massachusetts
Hall, most of the media attention focused on their demand that the
university pay a so-called "living wage" of $10.25/hour to all its
employees. But the PSLM's ultimatum also insisted that the university
do more to monitor working conditions in the developing world, where
Harvard's athletic apparel is manufactured. Indeed, anti-globalization
rhetoric abounded during the sit-in, a reflection the fact that
the PSLM and its fellow travelers were attacking the "exploitation"
of Third World workers long before they discovered the plight of
Harvard's janitorial staff.
Now, Harvard's activists may have a new target for their sit-ins,
"teach-ins," and incessant chants of "hey, hey, ho, ho, poverty
wages have got to go!" This week, The Harvard Crimson, America's
most venerable campus daily, announced that it will be farming out
the onerous task of creating an online database for its 19th century
articles, by hiring teams of Cambodian typists to complete the job.
These typists will be employed at the going rate in Phnom Penh —
which is to say, roughly 40 cents an hour.
This is the same Harvard Crimson that has editorialized repeatedly
in support of a living wage, writing in April that "the University's
current wage structure allows individuals to live in poverty despite
long hours providing students and professors with essential services,"
and arguing that "it is indefensible for Harvard to maintain its
policy of hiding its low wages through subcontracting jobs." The
Crimson has also seconded the PSLM's anti-sweatshop stance,
declaring "Harvard must shoulder the responsibility to monitor workplace
standards for those outside U.S. borders who work on its behalf."
Is this liberal hypocrisy in action? The Crimson doesn't
see it that way. The Cambodian typists, they point out, are being
hired through a nonprofit group called Digital Divide, which will
offer English lessons and medical care to its employees. More importantly,
40 cents an hour is slightly more than the typists would be earning
working minimum-wage jobs in the garment sector, Cambodia's principal
industry.
Crimson President C. Matthew MacInnis, meanwhile, is insisting
that there is no hypocrisy involved in arguing for a Cambridge "living
wage" and then hiring Cambodian workers at 40 cents an hour. The
poverty line in Cambodia is defined as 66 cents a day, he
says, meaning the typists are being paid the equivalent of six times
that much.
Of course, poverty in Cambodia and "poverty" in Cambridge are completely
different kettles of fish. And it's rather disingenuous for the
Crimson to talk about financial exigencies ("you can't employ
someone in North America to do this kind of job at this cost," MacInnis
told the Boston Globe) after blasting Harvard for outsourcing
jobs to workers whose "poverty-stricken" existences are considerably
more comfortable than the serf-like lives of supposedly well-paid
Cambodians. If Harvard really has an obligation to raise its wages
to $10.25-an-hour — three bucks over the minimum wage — because it
is "an institution whose commitment has long extended beyond pure
academics to include the betterment of its communities, at home
and abroad," as the Crimson prated last spring, then surely
a newspaper that offers such moralistic pronunciamentos should hold
itself to the same standard.
But once one sets aside the spurious logic of a "living wage," the
Crimson's outsourcing decision is clearly the right one — just
ask the Cambodian typists themselves. Khive Rotha, 21, told the
Associated Press that "I've always wanted to use English and computers
to earn a living, so this is a big success for me and my family."
And Eng Naleak, who types 30 words a minute despite having been
born with three fingers on each hand, said that "my life was hopeless
before this opportunity," since disabled people rarely find work
in Cambodia.
The question is whether Harvard's activist clique will listen to
the Cambodians, or to their anti-globalization pieties. Already,
the Crimson has earned the ire of the PSLM by condemning
last year's sit-in in no uncertain terms. "Differences with the
administration over the living wage should be addressed through
efforts to convince, not to compel," they editorialized, and condemned
"the circus-like atmosphere of the protest, complete with drums
and fire-eaters."
The Crimson's rebuke reflects the real political divide on
Ivy League campuses today — not between liberals and conservatives
(who are few and far between), but between the average liberal and
the fervent partisans of the New New Left. Just as Ralph Nader often
seemed to despise Al Gore far more than George W. Bush, Harvard's
"street liberals" (the PSLM, the various identity-politics pushers,
and so forth) expend more energy attacking the "parlor liberals"
of the Crimson than they do, say, the Harvard Republican
Club.
Two years ago, when a Crimson reporter uncovered the story
of campaign improprieties involving the vice president of the student-run
Undergraduate Council, the campus Left went into a frenzy, tossing
out wild accusations of racism (the vice president was black, and
a favorite son of the activist community). And last spring, when
the Crimson's weekly magazine ran a piece — written
by an Asian — about cliquishness and persecution complexes among
Harvard Asians, the street liberals were up in arms, marching on
the newspaper building to demand a retraction, an apology, greater
"diversity" among Crimson editors, and so on down the line.
The New New Left won both those battles — the vice president
remained in office, and the Crimson issued an apology after
the Asian imbroglio. But much of Harvard's ever-so-liberal campus
has become alienated by the thuggery and overheated rhetoric of
the activist types — even as the activists have grown increasingly
bold, and their tactics increasingly confrontational.
Now that the Crimson is daring to dabble in global capitalism,
even with an altruistic edge, Harvard's liberal civil war can only
get hotter.
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