MIT is the preeminent university for science, technology, engineering and mathematics in the United States, and arguably the world. MIT has earned its reputation over 150 years as the leading university for training scientists, conducting scientific research, and championing the application of technology to improve the world. MIT has traditionally set the standard against which other technical universities measure themselves.
Scientific knowledge is vast and profound. The advancement of scientific knowledge is the ever evolving quest for truth about the universe in which we live. Scientists strive to continuously expand, update and revised it. Science is never “settled.”
Advancements in scientific knowledge start out as challenges to the prevailing orthodoxy. These challenges understandably provoke disagreements with the then prevailing scientific establishment. Those disagreements are often spirited, rancorous and emotional. Our history has numerous examples of heretical scientists who were initially challenged, and also dismissed, ridiculed, and even persecuted – from Galileo to Copernicus, Darwin, Einstein, Bohr, and many others. But those challenges that survive the strict scrutiny of the scientific method then became the new orthodoxy moving forward.
Challenges to the prevailing science have always sparked disagreements that focus on the validity of the scientists’ work, not on the scientists’ character or the positions they hold on unrelated issues of the times. We are now witnessing a reversal of this discipline at MIT. Surprisingly, a majority of MIT faculty participating in a confidential poll indicated that they were afraid to openly speak their minds. This indicates a giant step back from the Enlightenment practices that have led to the explosive expansion of our knowledge.
Advancements to scientific knowledge can come from any scientist. A scientist’s ability to innovate and contribute does not arise from their ethnicity, race, religion, self-identity, socio-economic class, personal philosophies, behavior, politics, policy preferences, or lived experience. Scientific knowledge is universal and does not care about any of that. No one can predict or prejudge from whom a breakthrough insight might come. As the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman remarked: “There is no authority who decides what is a good idea.” The noble advancement of scientific knowledge – the very hallmark of MIT – depends on tolerance for freedom of speech, diversity of viewpoints, and the freedom to pursue academic inquiry and investigation wherever it leads.
Science cannot advance if dissent is suppressed. The defenders of the prevailing science orthodoxy have been attempting to discredit or silence dissenters through any means, not just by challenging their science on its merits. Numerous examples in the 20th Century shave shown us where adherence to strict ideological norms leads – and the results of such authoritarianism is not pretty. It is important for the integrity of the scientific process itself that scientific speech not be suppressed for any reason and that conclusions are based on all of the available facts.
MIT has lead the advancement of scientific knowledge throughout its long and proud history. As such, it also needs to be on the forefront of advancing that knowledge by vigorously supporting the continuous dialogs, disagreements, and conflicts that are critically necessary to expand scientific knowledge. It is critical that all scientists and students be welcomed into this milieu on the MIT campus, with their contributions be judged solely by the merit of their theories and research. It is vital that all the participants in a scientific debate at MIT be free to speak their minds.
If MIT surrenders its historic embrace of free scientific inquiry and debate, then over time the most innovative scientists will migrate to other universities where their voices and work will be safe. If it continues to allow the suppression of free speech, MIT will have abandoned its legacy, its reputation and its ability to lead the advancement of knowledge. Few associated with MIT want to live through this calamity. Now is the time for MIT to reaffirm strongly its support for free speech, viewpoint diversity and academic freedom. MIT must do this before it is too late.