Summer 2024 Letter from MFSA President Wayne Stargardt '74
Summer 2024 Letter from MFSA President Wayne Stargardt '74
July 31, 2024
To Members of the MIT Free Speech Alliance:
The first half of this year has been an eventful time for restoring freedom of expression at MIT – and for MFSA’s efforts to support it.
The campus repercussions of the Middle East conflict continued to roil MIT throughout the spring semester. The Institute generally adhered to its principles in its
Statement on Freedom of Expression and Academic Freedom by allowing the community to express their differing opinions on the conflict, however passionate and occasionally hateful those were. After months of equivocation and attempts to reason with demonstrators who resorted to increasingly provocative escalations, MIT finally and firmly enforced its time, place, and manner restrictions on both the demonstrations and an encampment which were interfering with the Institute’s essential operations.
While the disciplinary process is still unfolding opaquely, and the fall semester is likely to bring new challenges, MIT made strong statements this spring about both the breadth of free expression that the community should tolerate, and where the line exists between protected and unprotected speech. On our website you can review
more detailed summaries of the major events at MIT, the
MIT administration’s official messaging, the opinions of
other members of the MIT community, and coverage in
The Tech and the general press. Our website represents the most comprehensive documentation of the actions and viewpoints concerning the Middle East conflict at MIT.
Unfortunately, the semester closed with a
poll of the MIT faculty which indicates that they still harbor significant fear of cancel culture and retaliation for their viewpoints. This poll highlights how much work still needs to be done at MIT for it to live up to the spirit of its Statement on Freedom of Expression.
MFSA in the First Half of 2024
Let’s review some of the more salient accomplishments of the MIT Free Speech Alliance in the first half of the year. Some of these are successes on plans we announced in
my letter to members at the beginning of the year.
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MIT banned the use of DEI statements
In April MIT
banned the use of DEI statements for faculty hiring and promotions throughout the Institute. MIT garnered significant positive national attention for being the first elite university to abandon using these ideological conformity statements. This MIT policy change fulfills one of the three target objectives we laid out in January. While this policy change only addressed faculty and staff positions, we’re hopeful that we’ll see it carried forward to apply to graduate admissions as well.
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MFSA recommended specific actions to improve free speech at MIT
Building on member responses to our surveys, MFSA
developed a set of actions that it recommends that MIT take to restore the culture of free and open discourse at MIT. MFSA also made suggestions to improve and strengthen the recommendations by the faculty Ad Hoc Committee on Free Expression. Besides publishing these recommendations on our website, MFSA delivered them to the faculty Committee on Academic Freedom and Campus Expression (CAFCE) and to the President of MIT.
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MFSA engaged with the Committee for Academic Freedom and Campus Expression (CAFCE)
MFSA progressed on another of our 2024 objectives by engaging with CAFCE – meeting with the overall committee to express alumni concerns and objectives, delivering our recommended actions to restore a culture of free expression, and continuing dialog with individual committee members. CAFCE reports directly to President Kornbluth and is the faculty-led group that is working on free expression-related policy changes within MIT. The CAFCE co-chairs will be describing their work at our fall conference.
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MFSA made a direct grant to support the Concourse program
As part of its foundational mission, the long-running
Concourse program encourages civil discourse and support for liberal principles such as free speech. Building on our previous financial support for course 24.150 (Liberalism, Toleration and Freedom of Speech), we made a direct grant to support the Concourse program for the coming year.
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MFSA co-sponsored another successful debate on campus
In March we fulfilled another objective and co-sponsored our third debate on campus. Our debates continue to model civil discourse over controversial topics and expand the Overton window of acceptable subjects for discussion. Our recent debate was on the questions of whether sex is biological and binary and whether gender identity should substitute for sex in public policy. The debate was attended by over 100 members of the MIT community, the livestream was viewed by 1,000 people, and the
YouTube video has received over 13,000 views and hundreds of thoughtful comments from beyond the MIT community. In all, the
recordings of our debates have reached more than 50,000 views on YouTube.
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MFSA continued to advocate for freedom of expression at MIT
Over a semester with many free speech issues, MFSA
publicly advocated on behalf of free speech and to support the MIT Statement on Freedom of Expression. Specifically, we made public statements supporting the community’s legitimate free speech rights; recognizing MIT’s
reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions on speech; and
suggesting further steps that MIT could take to improve the climate on campus. These public statements, as well as our private communications to the MIT administration, help fulfill another of our stated objectives for 2024.
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MFSA publicly supported President Kornbluth
After the MIT administration banned the use of DEI statements, MFSA concluded that it was appropriate to recognize and commend President Kornbluth’s leadership towards restoring free speech at MIT. We invited our members to communicate this directly to President Kornbluth and provided a suggested email on our website. Many of our members made statements of support through our website using either our suggested message or creating one in their own words.
Plans for the remainder of 2024
We laid out our objectives for 2024 at the beginning of the year, and they remain largely unchanged for the second half. Some specific objectives are worth highlighting.
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Advocate specific changes to foster freedom of expression
At the beginning of the year we targeted three specific initiatives to help restore the MIT culture. One of those, banning DEI compliance statements, was realized in the spring. Also in the spring MFSA published its comprehensive Recommendations to support freedom of expression at MIT, with five priority recommendations (which incorporate the initiatives we named in January). Our
high priority recommendations are:
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Adopt institutional neutrality
Events over the past year highlight that MIT should protect the reputation of the Institute and the diversity of viewpoints on campus by adopting an institutional neutrality policy such as the University of Chicago’s Kalven Report.
Harvard University adopted such a policy this spring, and MIT should follow suit.
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Stop administrative policing of protected speech
Both the Institute Discrimination and Harassment Response Office (IDHR) and the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards (OSCCS) solicit and accept anonymous complaints about named individuals regarding speech that is nominally protected under the MIT Statement on Freedom of Expression. Just the submission of a complaint results in a permanent entry on a student’s record. These organizations need to be reformed to ensure proper transparency and to limit their actions towards members of the community which serve to inhibit free expression.
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Establish a permanent organization to support freedom of expression
In accord with a suggestion made in the original Ad Hoc Committee report, MIT should establish a permanent institution or body that is responsible for addressing concerns around free speech and academic freedom and for organizing the Institute’s activities necessary to foster a culture of free speech.
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Explain MIT’s free speech values and policies to students
MIT needs to state its free speech culture to students and instruct them on its policies around freedom of expression and academic freedom. This instruction is particularly needed for first year undergraduates to align them with MIT’s values and to help them assimilate into the MIT community.
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Educate administrative staff on the importance of free expression and viewpoint diversity.
Initiatives are already underway to improve tolerance for viewpoint diversity and to improve civil discourse among faculty and students. But MIT’s administrative and support staff, who at roughly 8,000 employees vastly outnumber faculty and instructors, are not being addressed. Many members of the administrative staff do not have a background in STEM education, are not knowledgeable about the scientific method, and are not familiar with MIT’s culture. But they participate in that culture and influence it. The administrative staff needs to be included in efforts to educate the MIT community on MIT’s values and its support for freedom of expression in the pursuit of knowledge.
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Hold our second annual conference
We plan to build on the success of our first conference, and our second conference will focus on the progress which MIT is making towards restoring a culture of free and open expression. We will showcase the prospectives of faculty, students, and the MIT administration, as well as that of free speech advocates from other campuses. Our conference will be held on September 26, the day before the start of MIT’s Alumni Leadership Conference, to make it convenient for ALC attendees to join us a day early. Former MIT professor Steven Pinker
will deliver the conference’s keynote speech, and spots in the conference are quickly filling up. If you’re interested in attending this year’s conference,
let us know ASAP!
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Co-sponsor another debate on campus
In the fall semester we will continue to build on our success in modeling how to have a civil disagreement over a contentious topic. As usual, we will be co-sponsoring a debate on a subject that is of particular interest to the MIT community.
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Strengthen our support for the faculty
In an environment in which many of the faculty fear retaliation for expressing their viewpoints, MFSA positions ourselves as their backstop defender of their intellectual and academic freedom. We are also encouraging the MIT faculty to create their own Council on Academic Freedom similar to independent faculty groups at Harvard, Yale and other universities.
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Grow our membership
Although MIT continues to be in the crosshairs of the media, most alumni are still unaware of the extent to which cancel culture has infected the MIT campus and the suppressive effect it is having on campus expression. We continue to reach out to non-member alumni to educate them about the situation on campus and ask them to join our campaign to restore free speech, viewpoint diversity and academic freedom at the Institute. Since our members are our best ambassadors, we encourage you to help by networking with your friends and classmates.
The tide is turning, and the culture at MIT is starting to improve its support for free speech, viewpoint diversity, and academic freedom. There are reasons to be optimistic that MIT can maintain its exceptionalism and remain the beacon for STEM research, education and scholarship. Admittedly there is still too much self-censorship on campus and much remains to be done to correct that, but we are seeing progress from our advocacy.
Thank you for your supporting our critical mission. You are a member of the largest independent organization of MIT graduates. Your membership gives us the credibility to get involved in the work to restore the culture of this great institution. We primarily rely on the effort and expertise of our two dozen volunteers, and we can use more help. We have a range of needs, many of which do not require a significant time investment, so please consider volunteering.
We also rely on donations from members to fund our events and pay for our programs supporting faculty and students. If you agree that MFSA is making a positive impact on MIT, then please
make a financial donation to support our common cause.
Before I sign off, I have one more announcement I’m happy to share with you, which is that our Board of Directors recently elected me to serve another year as MFSA’s President. I’m proud to have the opportunity to continue leading this organization as we work to preserve MIT’s exceptionalism and restore its culture of open, passionate, and respectful discourse. The work we’ve done so far has been gratifying to me not only professionally, but personally as well. I’m gratified by the Board’s vote of confidence in my service, and am excited to continue building on the progress we’ve made at MFSA.