On Tuesday night, the Stanford Graduate Workers Union announced: canceled It was a strike that was expected as the bargaining committee had reached a tentative agreement with the University. The union was to go on strike on Wednesday morning.

The following letters were sent in response to Jonathan Berk’s letter. Op-Ed. Berk is the AP Giannini Professor of Finance at the Stanford School of Business.

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At first, Professor Berk’s column disturbed me. His tongue drips with disdain and contempt for the graduate workers who rely on him. However, upon further reflection, I now find his argument strange.

This is the product of a conservative, classist sensibility. Conservative with a lowercase “c”: after all, the status quo probably worked for Professor Berk. Fascinating in its simplicity. He makes his point caustically but doesn’t actually interfere with his opponents’ reasoning. Like many of his MBA students, he lives in a world where most students will easily make up for lost tuition and salaries after graduation. He doesn’t live in a world where permanent jobs are becoming fewer and fewer; where attachments earn less than $30,000; A world where underemployment is common among PhDs. Economic relations have nothing to do with power. What is fair for him is the price demanded by the market. I envy him. It seems like a much better world to live in. This is a world where I, as a future graduate of a prestigious law school and on the line for a high-paying summer job, am highly valued. This is a world in which most of my colleagues at the Stanford Graduate Workers Union do not exist.

Professor Berk should strongly consider rewriting his work, applying the research and discussion methods he teaches his students. If he needs help constructing these arguments, I recommend he enroll in one of the excellent seminars offered by colleagues in the humanities, social sciences, or here at the law school. At Stanford Law School, we are often reminded that respectful disagreement is possible, even on controversial issues. But respectful disagreement requires truly respecting those with whom you disagree. In the new draft, I hope that Professor Berk will consider treating his interlocutors with respect; After all, they are his employees and colleagues. I look forward to reading a better written article from him on this topic in the future.

Bryce Tuttle BS ’20, JD ’26

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Dear Editor,

like Professor BerkI left a well-paying job (I was an engineer) to start a PhD. My colleagues also looked at me in disbelief. In my case, it was because I wanted to study education, a field in which I would leave behind any hope of high-paying employment in the future.

As I enter the third year of my doctoral degree, it is only through my engineering career that I have been able to escape some of the stress of food insecurity. I work about 60 hours a week for academics or research. After paying my rent to Stanford, I typically receive between $0 and $377 per biweekly from my salary from the university. pre-tax. I pay about 44% of that in federal and state taxes. That leaves at best $105 a week or $15 a day for all expenses.

I try to avoid getting into debt or living in unsafe housing by investing my savings. Other peers who came from affluent families or were married to STEM majors were similarly able to avoid these stresses. But are these graduate workers only Do we want Stanford to provide education? Independently wealthy people or those entering high-paying fields like finance?

What is Stanford’s purpose? Being instrumental in reproducing social inequality? Or is it to train academics who can help solve society’s biggest problems? If we serve only the rich or those in high-paying fields, then we are such a medium. I suggest we hold Stanford to a higher standard.

Haley Lepp holds a Ph.D. candidate at the Stanford Graduate School of Education.

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TomorrowStanford graduate students will strike as an affiliated union for the first time. This work stoppage is not something anyone is looking for. More precisely, it is the intransigence of the administration that has brought us to this point. If the university’s reluctance to respond to reasonable economic demands of the Stanford Graduate Workers Union (SGWU) is based on faulty judgment and lack of understanding, as in the examples of Professor Jonathan Berk last columnIt is no wonder that graduate students have taken such drastic action as cutting the workforce to demonstrate their importance in maintaining the University’s operations.

It is worth outlining some of these economic demands before deconstructing the bad arguments against them. Although Stanford made a statement five-year financing guarantee A few years ago the administration, with great fanfare, refuses to sanctify this promise is transformed into a legally enforceable contract. years later historical inflationwith no commensurate salary increase SGWU is calling for a pay increase for postgraduate workers, with the aim of bringing postgraduate workers back to a wage level equivalent to what they were making just a few years ago. Graduate workers are also looking for reassurance that pay rises won’t happen Instantly consumed by rent increases from Stanford-controlled housing – Transferring the money from the workers’ pockets to the University coffers. SGWU also wants protection Abuses of power and an enforceable complaints procedure implemented by the University refused to accept.

All of these demands mean a demand for a living wage. Despite Professor Berk ridiculing the idea living wageFor graduate workers to continue providing value to Stanford, the demand to earn “enough money to purchase the necessities of living, such as food and clothing,” is a demand that must be met. Only someone truly disconnected from the lived reality of working to support oneself might scoff at the demand for a salary that covers basic needs. It betrays the attitude that graduate education is meant for only for the rich: Those who can afford to take on jobs that do not pay a living wage.

The university claims that current fee rates for graduate students are competitive with peer institutions. Looking at the raw numbers, this is believable if differences in cost of living are ignored. A dollar in Silicon Valley does not translate to a dollar in New Haven, Princeton, or other peer institution districts. Just as we normalized our empirical data for analysis, normalizing the salary to the local cost of living is also important to make a valid comparison. Perhaps Stanford Law School and the Graduate School of Business fail to overcome the need for proper use of data, as seen in the attitudes of our Provost and President. When half or more of your salary goes towards rent, the total dollar amount is cold comfort at best.

The worst argument Professor Berk makes is that he tries to muddy the waters by claiming that tuition fees are an actual part of the compensation that graduate workers receive. No, they can’t eat tuition money—and it’s too large a sum graduate students will never have control over. That’s why University Fought hard against proposed provision Trump’s tax bill would tax graduate students on tuition as if it were compensation. If tuition is truly to be counted as compensation for graduate students, totaling well over six figures, then, by contrast, the thousands of postdoctoral researchers employed by Stanford for at least $70,000 are severely exploited and underpaid. In what world does it make sense for someone with a PhD? Suddenly taking a pay cut of over $40,000 from the same employer while doing graduate research? The university cannot have it both ways.

The truth about tuition money is that it is funds transferred from grants obtained by professors to central University funds. I would expect a finance professor Understanding how to follow the money as it flows During university accountingbut it turns out that this is a huge demand for intelligence. Professor Berk prefers to spend his mental efforts justifying the existence of charlatans in highly skilled professions. Graduate employees never see tuition, and this is a huge cost that professors face.

Therefore, SGWU proposed that the salary increases be met by eliminating graduate tuition. Like Princeton University does.A proposal promptly rejected by Stanford. This approach would increase salaries for graduate employees and ease the burden on faculty scholarships, but administrators refuse to even consider this option. SGWU also provided other ways in which proposed salary increases could be implemented without harming other university stakeholders. The ball is in the university’s court.

Tim MacKenzie received his Ph.D. in Stanford’s Department of Chemistry. During this time, he organized with the Stanford Solidarity Network, the forerunner of the Stanford Graduate Workers Union. He also worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Genetics.