MIT Administration Continues to Support Free Speech during Current Campus Controversy: MIT Free Speech Alliance Applauds Focus on Civil Discourse
MIT Administration Continues to Support Free Speech during Current Campus Controversy: MIT Free Speech Alliance Applauds Focus on Civil Discourse
Suzy Nelson, Vice Chancellor and Dean for Student Life at MIT, responding to recent provocative posters on campus, emailed all students suggesting practical and civil steps they could take to counter posters that they find offensive. She advocated contacting the person who put up the offending posters and putting up one’s own posters, and she cautioned against abridging other students’ speech by removing their posters. In addition to reinforcing the Institute’s free speech policy she also encouraged all members of the MIT community to treat each other with respect when she said:
I am encouraged by those who have counteracted what happened over the weekend with more speech — the kind of speech that embodies our aspirations to be a community that treats each other with care, dignity, and compassion.
The MIT Free Speech Alliance continues to be encouraged by MIT’s recent approach to these events, supporting free speech while fostering civility and respect. MIT Free Speech Alliance President Wayne Stargardt said:
“We are heartened that Dean Suzy Nelson sent out a constructive message to students of what to do and what not to do in response to controversial statements or speech they find offensive. Education, and more speech, should be the response.”
MIT’s Undergraduate Association Council put up its own posters in response to the controversial posters, and voted on April 25 to censure the Undergraduate Association President and hold a recall election following the discovery that he was part of the group that put up the posters. He said that the posters were intended ironically, to show that a policy of expansive free speech would allow students to put up posters saying things that other students would find offensive. His action was in response to MIT’s
“Statement on Freedom of Expression and Academic Freedom” passed by the Faculty in December and approved by the President in January. The Statement was part of the
“FEWG Report” (the Freedom of Expression Working Group Report), the recommendations of which are currently being studied and debated.
The MIT Free Speech Alliance (MFSA) has over 1,000 members. Founded by MIT alumni in October 2021 following the cancellation of Dorian Abbot’s Carlson Lecture. MFSA is a member of the Alumni Free Speech Alliance, together with sister organizations at Cornell, Harvard, and the University of Virginia, among other institutions. MFSA is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization and is independent of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.