Candidate Profile: Harriet Harriss

Candidate Statement — Professor Harriet Harriss (PhD) for UFCT President

I am standing for the presidency of the United Federation of College Teachers at Pratt because our community - our shared labor, care, and creative freedom - is under assault. The Institute’s proposed cuts to healthcare, framed as “necessary adjustments,” are in truth regressive redistributions of financial burden that strike hardest at the most vulnerable among us: initiated at the same time that Pratt’s president sought to award herself a salary increase. They represent not only a breach of our collective bargaining agreement, but a breach of trust.

As a former dean, I understand the internal mechanisms of the institution—the policies, financial frameworks, and strategic logics that shape administrative decision-making. This insider knowledge enables me to advocate effectively for structural reform and transparent governance. But I also understand, profoundly, what it means to be faculty: to labor within conditions of care and precarity, to hold the weight of our students’ hope in a political climate increasingly hostile to truth, justice, and intellectual freedom.

Our immediate priority must be to defend the healthcare that protects our bodies, our families, and our dignity. Pratt’s proposed reductions—ranging from $300 to nearly $5,000 annually—violate our existing Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) and undermine the very principle of collective negotiation. These cuts disproportionately affect lower-paid faculty and staff, many of whom already shoulder the heaviest caregiving and health burdens. They signal a dangerous precedent: that austerity can be imposed without dialogue, and that the wellbeing of those who sustain this institution is expendable.

We must respond not with resignation but with solidarity. As UFCT members, we can mobilize collective strength—through coordinated action, transparent communication, and united representation—to ensure that no decision affecting compensation, healthcare, or working conditions is made without us at the table. This will be essential as we enter the upcoming CBA negotiations, which must focus not only on preserving our existing rights, but on advancing equity across all employment categories: adjunct, CCE, full-time, and staff.

As president, I will work to rebuild a culture of collegiality, transparency, and shared governance between leadership and faculty. Our union should not merely react to crisis—it should prefigure a more democratic, caring, and accountable institution. I will call for regular open assemblies, transparent financial reporting, and cross-unit task forces that allow faculty and staff to contribute to long-term planning, not just respond to its consequences.

We are living through a national assault on higher education—on diversity, equity, academic freedom, and even on the idea of public good itself. In such times, unions must become more than bargaining entities; they must be communities of moral and collective courage.

I believe we can meet this moment together—drawing on the same creative intelligence that defines our teaching, research, and art—to insist that Pratt’s future be one of fairness, solidarity, and care.

Together, we can transform our frustration and anger into organized hope, ensuring that our labor—and our lives—are valued not as costs to be cut, but as the beating heart of this institution.