Boston Mayor Michelle Wu withdrew as Harvard Law School’s Class Day speaker after the Harvard Graduate Student Union-UAW asked her not to cross its picket line. Her office said Tuesday night that she was deeply disappointed not to attend.
Wu’s team had spent the past week trying to find a way for her to take part without violating the strike, according to her office. A spokesperson said the mayor is a strong ally of organized labor and respects picket lines, but wished the union had accepted one of several alternatives that were offered.
Those options, proposed over several days by Wu’s team and the HLS Class Marshals, included acknowledging the strike from the podium during her remarks or appearing virtually. But the union said those ideas would not have satisfied the picket line. Denish K. Jaswal, the HGSU-UAW president, said the union appreciated the efforts to find a path forward, while also making clear that any participation in Commencement activities, no matter the format, would have required crossing the line.
The withdrawal comes just hours before Harvard Law School’s Class Day ceremony is set to begin Wednesday at 2:30 p.m., forcing the school to rework part of a program that had been built around Wu’s appearance. In an email to graduating law students Tuesday evening, HLS Dean of Students Monica E. Monroe said the event would be reoriented around pre-scheduled speeches from affiliates within the school. She wrote that the school would refocus the speaking program more squarely on student award winners and on remarks and tributes from the Class Marshals.
Harvard Law School first announced Wu as the Class Day speaker on May 11. At the time, Wu said the school helped shape her sense of purpose and that she looked forward to celebrating a class that would now shape the world. That sentiment now sits against the practical reality of a labor dispute that has already reached beyond the law school and into the broader commencement calendar.
The graduate student union had called on several Commencement and Class Day speakers to boycott the ceremonies in solidarity with the strike, including Wu, Conan O’Brien, Mitt Romney and Ronny Chieng. Harvard Law School has not said whether it plans to find a replacement speaker, leaving the program to proceed with a slimmer slate of remarks and a clear sign of how the dispute is reshaping the day before it begins.
