The grad student was teaching an undergraduate course, and when she gave the student a grade of A-minus, the student went over the TA’s head and complained to the professor responsible for overseeing the course who pressured the TA to change the student’s grade to A, without even reviewing the student’s work, according to the TA. She says the student was “smart” but was “coasting” through the class, doing work that would merit a grade of C “at an ordinary institution” but “Harvard undergraduate courses aren’t set up that way.”
It could be just an isolated incident, though the former TA claims she heard similar complaints from TAs in other departments.
The last I heard the median grade at Harvard was an A-minus. Which you could take as evidence of grade inflation, or you could say it shows that not all grades of A-minus get changed to A.