A Faculty Response to Prof. Michel DeGraff
We want to express our strongest possible support of our colleague and department head Prof. Danny Fox, who was attacked in this column.
Is MIT’s #MindHandHeart for a #BetterWorld compatible with its “vibrant” complicity in Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza?
What could make an elderly senior faculty at one of the nation’s leading institutions of higher education so upset that he stood up, banged his cane on the floor, and demanded that the discussion of recently suspended MIT students protesting against the genocide in Gaza come to an immediate halt because of the turn it had taken.
Our Intifada
Our demand to hostile administrators and the government remains clear: end the US and Israel’s horrific assault on the besieged Palestinians of Gaza and divest from financial and research ties to Israeli apartheid. We publicly challenged MIT to stop doing weapons and surveillance research for the Israeli Ministry of Defense and immediately end Israeli military funding for campus research. To beat down the “student’s intifada,” as it came to be called, police forces across the nation—city, state, county, highway, and campus—arrested almost 3,000 of us.
A Critical Examination of a Primary Protester Demand
One of the primary demands of the recent protests, as listed in the UA and GSU referenda, is for MIT to cut all research associated with the Israeli military. The explanation given is “MIT’s institutional complicity in furthering violence against the Palestinian people through the Institute’s special ties with the Israeli military [1].”
A response to President Kornbluth’s letter to the alumni community
Dear President Kornbluth,
Diasporism – A Radical Vision for Jewish Self-Determination
Publisher’s note: this article was originally published in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning student magazine “Silt” (Vol. 1) and in the pro-Palestinian student magazine “Written Revolution” (Vol. 3).
Jewish alumni say MIT must engage with all members of its Jewish community
We write this statement as Jewish alumni who have been disappointed by the administration’s handling of the Scientists Against Genocide Encampment (SAGE) and related protests on campus. There have been numerous statements in support of SAGE participants already, yet we felt the need to add the perspective of Jewish alumni who see great harm being done to MIT’s Jewish community. We are proud of our Jewish heritage. A heritage encompassing a beautiful diversity of religious practices, other intersecting identities, and yes: a diversity of views on the State of Israel. We are frustrated and concerned by the way the MIT administration has ignored and erased this diversity, weighing some Jewish perspectives far more heavily than others.
Students Exposed MIT Admin’s Shameful Hypocrisy
After the Israeli military killed 35,000 Palestinians, many MIT students answered the call for justice and peace, setting up peaceful encampments on the grounds of this school, asking for divestment from a foreign military in an effort to ramp up pressure to end an ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Crossroads
I am writing to address the “ongoing campus tensions” and the “challenging times facing the MIT community.” This piece is a love letter to the Scientists Against Genocide Encampment and an admonishment of the MIT administration’s brutalities against its own students. It is a plea for MIT to stick by its stated values and devote its resources to the welfare of humanity. More pressingly, it is a call for MIT’s students and workers to stand in solidarity with their peers — rather than MIT as an institution — when it is clear that MIT is building technologies that slaughter civilians.
Resilience Amidst Adversity: MIT’s Struggle with East Side Culture
Publisher’s note: This piece was originally released on May 24 in an email to the MIT undergraduate community (“[EASTSIDE] Paper on Admin Past + Present Actions”).
The Collapse of an Empire
You gather here today to accept your degrees, but I say you must set them aflame—as a beacon illuminating the long road ahead in the struggle for a free world.
A Graduate Student’s Open Letter to OSCCS: Response to Scientist Against Genocide Encampment (SAGE) Suspension
Publisher’s note: the following piece details a letter submitted by Dan Zeno to The Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards in response to his interim suspension as issued by the Committee on Discipline. The work, published here as an open letter, has been edited by editors of The Tech for clarity and conciseness.
Analysis of pro-Palestinian protests on US college campuses
I am an Israeli-born Jew and MIT graduate from the class of 1985. My family has long roots in Israel and first immigrated to what was then part of the Ottoman Empire in the 1820s. I was four years old when the Six Day War broke out. I still remember the weeks preceding the war. I was too young to understand what war meant, but I could feel the overwhelming fear. It hung in the air, and I have often used the cliché that it was so thick you could cut it with a knife. I don’t remember the war itself; I was in a bomb-shelter, but I am told I would not stop crying because I wanted my doll. Two years later, my immediate family immigrated to the United States. When the Yom Kippur War broke out, I was safe, living in a Boston suburb, but my cousin was badly injured.
No more MIT research for Israel’s Ministry of Defense
There is also the question of what we must say. We must speak against atrocities enabled by our science. We must emphasize the urgent moral distinction between what funding we can take—and have the right to take—and what funding we should take.
Antiracism or Oppression: MIT Must Choose
Every member of MIT’s community has a choice in this matter and must decide to either let oppression permeate our culture or take anti-racist action to build a better world. Now, MIT must choose.
A Public Letter to President Sally Kornbluth
It’s as simple as 1-2-3; and the good news is you wrote the steps. It’s time for you to lead us and the world at-large into a brighter future where “every individual has the freedom and support to flourish and grow, and in which we all have a sense of community, connection and shared purpose.”
An open letter urging dissociation from the fossil fuel industry in MIT’s new climate project
We, the undersigned MIT community members, are optimistic about the new Climate Project and are excited to see that MIT is committing its own money to this effort. However, we call for a commitment to prevent fossil fuel influence in this project.The fossil fuel industry has repeatedly demonstrated that they are unwilling to change their business model of indefinite oil and gas production, and association with the industry for climate and energy research is an inherent conflict of interest. For decades, MIT has accepted large sums of money from the fossil fuel industry for climate and energy research, and has allowed the industry to influence research directions. This has led to proven bias towards fossil fuels in our research [1], and a skewed focus on technologies that are favored heavily by the industry for the self-serving reason of promoting fossil fuel production while climate experts agree that production must fall. The new Climate Project is a fresh opportunity to shift our Institute’s research towards true climate solutions, free of the ulterior motives of the fossil fuel industry. To accomplish this goal, we call upon the leaders of the Climate Project and the MIT administration to fully dissociate from the fossil fuel industry by taking the following actions: