MIT Alums Withdrawing Financial Support Over School’s Drift Into Wokeness
“damaging the institution and academic freedom at large”
This is the key to changing colleges and universities. If enough alums did this, things would change quickly.
From City Journal:
Goodbye, MIT
We graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology more than 50 years ago. MIT was academically rigorous, and it taught us our crafts and the essence of problem-solving, enabling us to thrive in our careers. We owe much to our alma mater and have donated to it regularly.
No more.
The current MIT administration has caved repeatedly to the demands of “wokeness,” treating its students unfairly, compromising the quality of its staff, and damaging the institution and academic freedom at large.
We object to MIT’s politically correct measures, including the firing of its Catholic chaplain. In the early days of the George Floyd protests, before the details of Floyd’s death were clear, Father Daniel Moloney sent a letter outlining his thoughts on the event to the university’s Catholic community. It was a sincere examination of conscience from a person whose job it was to examine conscience, yet it prompted his immediate dismissal. MIT’s leadership apparently took umbrage at his statement of these simple facts: that George Floyd “had not lived a virtuous life” (based on his multiple criminal convictions) and that “most people in the country have framed [Floyd’s death] as an act of racism. I don’t think we know that.”
Moloney did not present these statements as justification for Floyd’s death; to the contrary, his letter begins, “George Floyd was killed by a police officer, and shouldn’t have been.” But MIT found the letter intolerable and fired the chaplain. (We are not Catholic, by the way, but believe fairness transcends religion.)
We also deplore MIT’s new mandatory diversity training.
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Comments
Indeed.
The Institute sends me alumni “news,” and in the past half-year or so it’s become unbearable. I really thought the place would hold out. Now, apparently, it’s just a poor echo of what it was forty years ago.
Class of ’79 here. Getting into MIT from a mediocre public high school and graduating was a huge win that taught me excellence and set me up for success in life. Hardest thing I’ve ever done, and I’d do it again in a minute!
I stopped my annual donations a few years ago after leftists overran the place. The alumni mag “Technology Review” used to be packed with interesting articles, now it’s unreadable woke gibberish that I recycle. I do scan the class news for names I recognize from 40 years ago.
The global warming propaganda is particularly obnoxious, the diversity hype is a close second. It’s identical to what I see in my professional (architecture) magazines – 95% is equity, social justice, climate change, sustainability, diversity, 5% is design and construction technology.
MIT’s decline is a bellwether of the decline of western civilization.
Cornell ’62
On 20 Apr 69, I decided I was not going to donate as an alumnus until president James Perkins’ agreement with the armed students had been nullified and all diplomas given to the armed militants were annulled; I haven’t donated one red cent for the past 52 years