Graduate student workers picket in front of the Harvard Science Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on 21 April. Credit: John Tlumacki/ The Boston Glob e via Getty Two thousand graduate student workers who went on strike at Harvard University starting on 21 April have brought a sizeable chunk of the institution’s teaching and research activities to a halt. Despite the university being open the next day, the hallways of its medical school’s Veritas Science Center were deserted. “It was completely empty,” says microbiologist and postdoctoral fellow Adam Sychla. “It’s clear the labs aren’t running.” US PhD admissions shrink as fears over Trump’s cuts take hold Representatives of the Harvard Graduate Students Union–United Auto Workers (HGSU–UAW) have been in contract negotiations with the university for more than a year, calling for higher wages, protections for international students at risk of deportation, reforms to Harvard’s system for handling harassment and discrimination cases, and more.…