“It was relatively quiet. The university’s first priority was to ensure minimal disruption to the academic life at Columbia, and I think we were able to do this successfully,” she said.

But Wolach called those numbers “wildly inaccurate.”

“In the Core Curriculum, a majority of the courses is taught by graduate instructors. She’s throwing in every course at Columbia,” he said. “By cooking the books, they are trying to minimize any impact that the strike had.”

In a poll conducted by the Columbia Spectator of 93 graduate students, 65 percent reported having canceled all their classes.

Reynolds said that a majority of Yale’s teaching assistants “respected the picket lines”—meaning they either taught off campus or went on strike.

GESO and GSEU both voted overwhelmingly on April 13 to undertake last week’s strike action.

Yale and Columbia officials have said they will uphold a July 2004 ruling by the National Labor Relations Board, which stated that teaching assistants at private universities are not to be considered employees under the terms of the National Labor Relations Act.

—Staff writer Daniel J. T. Schuker can be reached at dschuker@fas.harvard.edu.