Together with the MIT alumni and the general public, the Abbot Cancellation was a wake up call to the MIT faculty that the culture at MIT had degenerated to allowing speech suppression. Within a couple of months, a significant portion of the MIT faculty signed an open letter to the MIT administration signaling their broad support for freedom of expression at MIT, and specifically calling for MIT to adopt the Chicago Principles to affirm its support for academic freedom and free expression.
In reaction to the public backlash over the Abbot Cancellation, the MIT administration established a faculty-led Ad Hoc Working Group on Free Expression, and charged this group to examine MIT’s current policies on free speech and decide whether any changes in those policies were warranted. This Ad Hoc Committee included representatives from other parts of the MIT community.
After over five months of work soliciting input and deliberating, the Ad Hoc Committee created its draft Report on Freedom of Expression and Academic Freedom in June, 2022. That report was not issued publicly until September 9, 2022, on the afternoon after MIT issued its new Strategic Action Plan for Belonging, Achievement, and Composition (a relabeling of its previous DEI policies).
The Statement on Freedom of Expression and Academic Freedom, the heart of the Ad Hoc Committee’s Report, was then debated and modified over several months of closed faculty meetings. Finally, on December 21, 2022, a majority at a faculty meeting voted to accept the Statement on Freedom of Expression and Academic Freedom as faculty policy.
Less than two months later, the new president of MIT, Dr. Sally Kornbluth, endorsed the Statement as an official MIT policy. Then eight months later, President Kornbluth provided an update that the faculty is forming a committee to propose concrete measures to implement the recommendations that the faculty made in their Report on Freedom of Expression and Academic Freedom.
The MIT Free Speech Alliance publicly applauded the adoption of the Statement as official MIT policy. In the analysis by MFSA, the Statement is a close approximation of the Chicago Principles, and provides a strong, principled policy foundation from which MIT can work to restore its culture of free and open discourse.
MFSA also recognizes the courage of the MIT faculty members who participated in the Ad Hoc Committee, argued to preserve its essential nature against attempts to dilute it in faculty meetings, and voted to adopt it. These brave faculty members persevered despite knowing that they could face retaliation from the MIT administration or cancellation by faculty members opposed to free speech.
Dr. John Tomasi of the Heterodox Academy stated that the MIT Ad Hoc Committee report now represents the gold standard for university statements committed to support free speech.