Dear President Brodhead, Provost Kornbluth, and Dean McClain:

We are writing as Duke faculty to express our support for graduate students across disciplines, programs, and schools coming together to form a union with SEIU Graduate Workers Forward.

As you may know, the National Labor Relations Board recently extended collective bargaining rights to graduate student employees at private universities. Following this decision, graduate students are organizing across the country for better working conditions. We believe that a better working environment for graduate students will also help to improve their institutions of higher education overall. We support the right of graduate students to organize at Duke, and we hope that the Duke administration will remain fully neutral in the process.

Many of us have special relationships with the graduate students in our programs. Thus, we can say with first-hand experience that graduate students do labor crucial to the university’s core teaching and research mission that often goes unrecognized. They serve as teaching assistants in our departments and instruct many courses on their own. Graduate students also work as research assistants in labs and libraries across campus, providing important support to faculty research projects. As significant as these responsibilities are, they do not account for the other, more informal ways graduate students contribute, through mentoring undergraduates, participating in university taskforces and committees, organizing conferences and otherwise strengthening intellectual and social life on campus. They are colleagues in every sense of the word.

Yet, despite their important contributions to Duke’s academic community, the university has not fully met graduate students’ needs. Stipends have not adequately kept with the pace of inflation and the rising cost of living in Durham. Graduate students’ university health insurance program fails to include dental insurance and requires prohibitively high costs to include family members. Racial discrimination and sexual harassment grievance procedures do not fully address graduate students’ workplace dynamics. It is time to offer our colleagues fair working conditions -- they need and they have earned this much. Duke has the resources necessary to raise standards and improve working conditions.

We appreciate the strong professional and personal relationships we develop with our graduate student colleagues. We want them to have the resources and support they need to do their best work, not only on their own research, but in all the other roles they play on campus. While we try to advocate on their behalf when we can, we think graduate students are best positioned to speak to their own needs and should be empowered to express their interests as a group. They deserve a place, as equals, at the bargaining table.

Sincerely,

Anne Allison, Professor of Cultural Anthropology
Jennifer Ansley, Postdoctoral Lecturing Fellow, Associate Director of the Writing Studio, Thompson Writing Program
Mark Antliff, Professor, Art History & Visual Studies
Daniele Armaleo, Associate Professor of the Practice of Biology
Nancy Armstrong, Professor of English
Rebecca Bach, Associate Professor of the Practice, Sociology
Rann Bar-On, Lecturer, Math
Torry Bend, Associate Professor of the Practice, Theater Studies
Vikas Bhandawat, Assistant Professor of Biology
Antonio Bogaert, Visiting Assistant Professor of Art, Art History & Visual Studies
Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Professor, Sociology
Luke Bretherton, Professor of Theological Ethics, Divinity School
J. Kameron Carter, Associate Professor of Theology, Divinity School
William H. Chafe, Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of History
Leo Ching, Associate Professor of Japanese and East Asian Cultural Studies, Asian & Middle Eastern Studies
Germain Choffart, Lecturing Fellow, Romance Studies
Eileen Chow, Visiting Associate Professor, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
miriam cooke, Professor, AMES
Michaeline Crichlow, Professor of African and African American Studies
Roberto Dainotto, Professor of Romance Studies
Sarah Deutsch, Professor of History
Ariel Dorfman, Emeritus Professor of Literature
John D. French, Professor of History/AAAS
Matteo Gilebbi, Lecturing Fellow, Romance Studies
Shai Ginsburg, Associate Professor of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies
Ruth Grant, Professor, Political Science
Margaret Greer, Emeritus Professor, Romance Studies
Paul J. Griffiths, Professor, Divinity School
Elizabeth Grosz, Distinguished Professor of Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies
Michael Hardt, Professor of Literature
Lynden Harris, Instructor, Stories for Social Change, Theater Studies
Jim Haverkamp, Adjunct Instructor, Arts of the Moving Image
Frances S. Hasso, Associate Professor, Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies and Sociology
Stefania Heim, Lecturing Fellow, Thompson Writing Program
Gregory Herschlag, Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Biomedical Engineering
Mary Hovsepian, Visiting Associate Professor of Sociology
Reeve Huston, Associate Professor of History
Tsitsi Jaji, Associate Professor, English/AAAS
Fredric Jameson, Professor, Literature Program
Micaela Janan, Professor of Classical Studies
Nathan Kalman-Lamb, Lecturing Fellow, Thompson Writing Program
Nancy Kalow, Instructor, Center for Documentary Studies
Peter Klopfer, Professor Emeritus, Biology
Claudia Koonz, Professor Emeritus of History
Robert Korstad, Professor of Public Policy and History, Sanford School
Anna Krylova, Associate Professor, History
Bruce Bennett Lawrence, Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies
Adriane Lentz-Smith, Associate Professor of History
Ralph Litzinger, Associate Professor, Cultural Anthropology
Michelle Longino, Professor, Romance Studies
Wahneema Lubiano, Associate Professor of AAAS
Nancy MacLean, William H. Chafe Professor of History and Public Policy
Anne-Maria Makhulu, Associate Professor, Cultural Anthropology and AAAS
Dana Marks, Visiting Lecturer, Theater Studies
Mary McClintock Fulkerson, Professor of Theology, Divinity School
Ellen McLarney, Associate Professor of Arabic Culture, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
Daniel McShea, Professor of Biology
Neil McWilliam, Professor of Art, Art History & Visual Studies
Louise Meintjes, Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Music
Mark Anthony Neal, Professor, AAAS/English
Diane M. Nelson, Professor of Cultural Anthropology
Jaybird O'Berski, Assistant Professor of the Practice, Theater Studies
Jocelyn Olcott, Associate Professor of History
Ram Oren, Nicholas Professor of Earth System Science, Nicholas School of the Environment
John Orr, Instructor of Health, Wellness and Physical Education
bruce orenstein, artist in residence, arts of the moving image
Snehal Patel, Assistant Professor of Medicine
Peter C. Pihos, Lecturing Fellow, Thompson Writing Program
Stuart Pimm, Doris Duke Chair of Conservation, Nicholas School
Leela Prasad, Associate Professor of Religious Studies
Neil S Prose MD, Professor of Dermatology and Pediatrics
Jedediah Purdy, Everett Professor of Law, Law School
Mark D. Rausher, Professor of Biology
Marcia Rego, Assistant Professor of the Practice, Thompson Writing Program
Jane Richardson, Professor of Biochemistry
Kathy Rudy, Professor, Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies
Andrea Scapolo, Lecturing Fellow, Romance Studies
MJ Sharp, Instructor, Center for Documentary Studies
Stephanie Sieburth, Professor, Romance Studies
Pete Sigal, Professor of History
Irene Silverblatt, Professor of Cultural Anthropology
Margaret Swezey, Instructor, Writing Studio, Thompson Writing Program
Orin Starn, Professor of Cultural Anthropology
Jessi Streib, Assistant Professor, Sociology
Kenneth Surin, Professor of Literature and Religion
Roman Testroet, Visiting Instructor, Music
Susan Thorne, Associate Professor of History
Antonio Viego, Associate Professor, Program in Literature
kathi weeks, Professor of Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies
Robyn Wiegman, Professor of Literature
Will Wilson, Associate Professor of Biology
Lauren Winner, Associate Professor, Divinity School
David B. Wong, Susan Fox Beischer and George D. Beischer Professor of Philosophy