Stanford's Graduate Student Union Tries to Stifle Dissent [View all]

I’m working as a teaching assistant while studying for a doctorate in economics at Stanford, but a campus union is trying to get me fired. The Stanford Graduate Workers Union wants my head on a plate because I refused to sign a membership form and pay dues. I won’t fund an organization whose values and tactics I don’t support.

Similar unions across the country are using their bargaining power not to improve working conditions but to coerce ideological conformity. This isn’t solidarity; it’s suppression. Shame on Stanford for going along with it. In June, the union began seeking to bar graduate students who refuse to pay dues or agency fees from working as teaching or research assistants. That threat is now a reality. The university has told me and several other teaching assistants that we will be fired unless we pay up.

At the University of Chicago, graduate students in a similar position have taken their union to federal court, arguing that forced support of the union violates their constitutional rights. In Graduate Students for Academic Freedom v. Graduate Students United, the plaintiffs—including Jewish students—say they are being compelled to fund a union that promotes the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel, a stance they view as antisemitic.

The graduate unions at both Stanford and Chicago are registered as local chapters of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, a national union that funds progressive activism. In 2015, it became the first national union to support the BDS movement. The Chicago lawsuit, filed in July 2024, invokes Janus v. Afscme, the Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling that public employees can’t be forced to subsidize political speech they disagree with. The Stanford Graduate Workers Union similarly adopted an anti-Israel statement in 2023.

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