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:
To stop the killing, stop the hate
Dan Ottenheimer '79 SM '82 (Course II) is an Arlington MA resident and an active MIT alumnus - he is an Educational Counselor, co-chair of his Class Reunion Gift Committee, member of the MechE Alliance, AILG volunteer, and a Choralum who has sung at recent MIT Commencements. Dan's father, Fritz Ottenheimer, was born in Germany in 1925, fled to the U.S. in 1939, and returned to Germany as a U.S. soldier toward the end of World War II. Dan is a volunteer second-generation Holocaust speaker for the organization Facing History and Ourselves, and for the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh. The views above are his alone, and do not represent the views of any affiliated organization.
Global Shading: A New Trail for MIT to Blaze
It’s going to get hotter for the rest of your life. Probably a lot hotter. What can be done about this? Specifically, is there anything that MIT scientists and engineers could do?
Regarding “MLK Jr. Gala Action & Remarks”, March 7, 2024
While I agree with their intent of fighting injustice in the spirit of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in many cases the authors' statements, or conspicuous absence of statements, contradict what Dr. King publicly said.
A statement on Jewish activism, safety, and recent events at MIT
Note: this statement is being cross-published in the MIT Faculty Newsletter
In Support of Science for Liberation, Not Oppression: Vote YES
Referendum #2 unequivocally demonstrates to the MIT administration that our undergraduate community stands in support of liberation for the Palestinian people—not with those in power who continue the violence in Gaza.
CAA suspension must be made permanent
It is time now for the MIT administration to take urgent and immediate steps to protect its Jewish students and to ensure their long-term safety. The temporary suspension of CAA is a small step towards accomplishing that objective. For the suspension of CAA to have any real or lasting worthwhile effects, however, it must be made permanent.
From the River to the Sea to Every Mountain Top
Some of my fellow MIT students take issue with the chant “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” But do you know what actually exists from the river to the sea? A fractured patchwork of different political jurisdictions, within which about seven million Palestinians live without the same basic rights as seven million Jews.
A Bavarian MIT?
Despite its size, with over 45,000 students as of 2023, making it the largest technical university in Germany, TUM's demonstration is that even the biggest "tankers" in the higher education sector can navigate swiftly.
MLK Jr. Gala Action & Remarks
Let us remember the words of Dr. King: “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”
Growing concerns about the safety of the MIT community
We have watched with disappointment and unease over the past weeks as the Institute has reacted disproportionately to student activists, as it stifled the voices of our student community members, and as the Coalition Against Apartheid’s guest posts on the MIT Student Life Instagram page led to the page being shut down within hours, all despite Israeli flags lining the windows of the Engineering Building along Massachusetts Avenue for weeks before they were removed.
A Bavarian MIT?
In Fall 2023, Bavaria attracted over 7.2 million visitors, solidifying its status as a dream destination. These figures set a new milestone for the Munich Wiesn, the internationally acclaimed Oktoberfest. Equally record-breaking, and a hot topic for study abroad programs, is the ascendance of Bavaria's Technical University of Munich (TUM). For several years, TUM has been heralded as Germany's leading university, consistently securing top spots in the Shanghai Ranking, QS, and THE, with its graduates being ranked 13th worldwide in employer esteem. Despite Germany's innovation economy having a hard time, TUM students have consistently produced successful high-growth startups, prompting a question: What's going on in the land of Dirndl, Lederhosen, and why does it matter to MIT?
DEI Bureaucracy Fails the Stress Test
Before we create another misguided bureaucracy—and particularly before we select the next Institute Community and Equity Officer, this failure of the existing administrative offices should be recognized by an immediate hiring freeze and a thorough examination of these programs by an objective outside party.