> MIT buckled, becoming yet another major institution in American life to demonstrate that the commitment to free speech it trumpets on its website
The what?
I'm an MIT alum and I cannot remember anything about a commitment to free speech on the website. I don't see one now, and I can hardly see any relevant search results for `"free speech" site:mit.edu` - a few blogs and research papers, but nothing about a commitment, certainly nothing trumpeted. I certainly did not see one when I applied. I applied to a school that claimed to be good at science and engineering.
If you want to argue that MIT or any other institution or perhaps all institutions should champion free speech, sure. If you want to hold people accountable for promises they did make (cf. a Reddit co-founder claiming that Reddit wasn't intended to be a "bastion of free speech" years after describing it as exactly that, Twitter calling itself the "free-speech wing of the free-speech party"), by all means hold people accountable. But the idea that everyone should be on exactly your side of what is actually a complex and multifaceted question because that particular view is obviously what everyone in our culture believes is, frankly, illiberal.
Which gives the lie to all the sanctimonious talk about protecting all speech that's legal under the First Amendment.
MIT isn't protecting all legal speech, they're amplifying speech the MIT community wants to hear, and suppressing speech the community doesn't want to hear.
If the MIT community wants to legitimize and amplify speech about perpetuating the current hierarchy of elites, and suppress protest speech aiming to open up and overturn that hierarchy, it's up to the community.
It has nothing to do with the First Amendment.
Contrary to all the feel-good language about platforming nonconformity, the goal is not to provide an equal platform to all viewpoints, because that would be ridiculous.
Besides the linked article, this was also emailed out to the entire MIT community. And here's the prior discussion on HN when the faculty first endorsed this statement: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34132152
Devil's advocate; MIT and many other universities are technically businesses. And they have become more and more like businesses with each passing year.
So in this case, would complete free speech be out of place by your metrics?
In the case of MIT, which is a 501(c)(3), but also sits on a multi-billion 'endowment'.
I just figured MIT was making “easy” ethical statements. In general the examples that MIT spoke out about had no opposing parties, had no impact to MIT, and no repercussions. So MIT didn’t really have to care or make a sacrifice to speak out for Dreamers or against Charlottesville and whatnot.
But for anything that requires sacrifice like MBS not giving an endowment, they suck it up. This is what sucks as wishy washy populism as it doesn’t reflect any insight into an orginizarion’s leadership’s values.
MIT is likely concerned with increasing its power. Thus is part of the establishment. Doing lots of great things, but part of the establishment.
There’s a really popular and well respected engineering school that has a big problem with sexual assault. They issue statements and sponsor marches and stuff. But drag their feet on any actions like removing organizations that frequently have members commit sexual assault.
I just consider most of the statements from universities PR and virtue signaling unless it’s acompanied with allocation of resources.
Then the campaign to cancel Abbot’s lecture began. On Twitter, some students and professors called on the university to retract its invitation. And, sure enough, MIT buckled, becoming yet another major institution in American life to demonstrate that the commitment to free speech it trumpets on its website evaporates the moment some loud voices on social media call for a speaker’s head.
Two tweets does not seem like a mob. The quality of The Atlantic has really gone downhill. No different from the rest of the hype-filled media.There are 1000x more tweets about the cancellation than tweets that called for his cancellation.
> What would be a less strict university in USA, more libertarian, less police state if you would?
MIT is supposed to be the model of an environment where people who want to break the rules and hack the system can function. Students breaking into buildings, for example, has a long tradition there.
The article sort of hinted at the way what happened was not just a problem for Swartz, but for MIT itself. It is not clear what MIT actually is with the current status quo.
People are free to promote whatever crackpot ideas they wish. The question is whether MIT should provide a platform for everyone.
Since there are infinite crackpot ideas but only one Kresge Auditorium, the MIT community must make value judgments about what speakers and ideas are worthy, and which ones are not.
No institution should be compelled to provide a platform for all speakers and ideas. Some speakers and ideas are worthy of MIT, and many are not.
MIT faculty and leadership should embrace their fiduciary duty to make these hard judgments. They should grapple with what it means for speakers and ideas to be worthy, and what speech should not receive MIT legitimacy and amplification.
Instead this statement evades all of that by pretending to support all speech as long as it's legal.
> It's more like softball, if we're being honest. 99.9% of the public doesn't care, and of the small portion of the public who is familiar with both MIT and W3C... I'll just predict that nobody is going to show up and protest, or bring torches and pitchforks, or anything because of twitter threads. Nobody is going to cut MIT's funding because of this, and they'd have to really cut in order to make MIT reconsider dumping what must be a money-loser for them already.
The thing is, the 0.1% that do care are the people MIT care about what they think. MIT don't care what most people think. They're not giving them money, they're not giving them status, they're providing MIT with nothing. Which is kind of why those people don't care. But the people do care are giving them money and status and other stuff.
MIT is obviously only going to consider inviting speakers that would appeal to some subset of its community. The statement doesn't give anyone a right to demand an audience at MIT, it gives the MIT community license to invite controversial speakers.
Given the amount of demand for MIT they can afford to shed the students that don't support freedom of expression (then again, MIT is not Oberlin so I doubt there are many pro-censorship student).
as an MIT alum, a wealthy one who thought he would leave his fortune to MIT, I applaud this move, but it doesn't get me back to giving.
MIT shouldn't have stopped requiring the tests in the first place, shouldn't have participated in that anti-intellectual "shut down tech" day or whatever that was, and shouldn't have done a dozen other things like cancel speakers to bow to a woke mob.
and MIT needs to stop writing stuff like this (from TFA):
Our research can’t explain why these tests are so predictive of academic preparedness for MIT, but we believe it is likely related to the centrality of mathematics — and mathematics examinations — in our education.
IQ science is well established, and it is well known that the SAT is an IQ test, plain and simple. To pretend otherwise is to dissemble, to be anti-science. Hopefully, MIT will save itself, but I'm sadly not expecting miracles.
> W3C is playing hardball {with} MIT's reputation.
It's more like softball, if we're being honest. 99.9% of the public doesn't care, and of the small portion of the public who is familiar with both MIT and W3C... I'll just predict that nobody is going to show up and protest, or bring torches and pitchforks, or anything because of twitter threads. Nobody is going to cut MIT's funding because of this, and they'd have to really cut in order to make MIT reconsider dumping what must be a money-loser for them already.
Really playing hardball with MIT's reputation would involve getting Tim Berners-Lee in front of the mainstream press to talk about this.
> MIT is playing hardball with people's jobs and W3C assets.
MIT admin specifically have repeatedly shown themselves to be cowards who don't care about students/values/etc on issues other than free speech, so it's not like they're being inconsistent here. (the aaronsw situation, drinkordie, war on student life after the scott krueger alcohol death, etc.)
The what?
I'm an MIT alum and I cannot remember anything about a commitment to free speech on the website. I don't see one now, and I can hardly see any relevant search results for `"free speech" site:mit.edu` - a few blogs and research papers, but nothing about a commitment, certainly nothing trumpeted. I certainly did not see one when I applied. I applied to a school that claimed to be good at science and engineering.
If you want to argue that MIT or any other institution or perhaps all institutions should champion free speech, sure. If you want to hold people accountable for promises they did make (cf. a Reddit co-founder claiming that Reddit wasn't intended to be a "bastion of free speech" years after describing it as exactly that, Twitter calling itself the "free-speech wing of the free-speech party"), by all means hold people accountable. But the idea that everyone should be on exactly your side of what is actually a complex and multifaceted question because that particular view is obviously what everyone in our culture believes is, frankly, illiberal.
reply