MIT President Sally Kornbluth Doubling Down on DEI After Gay’s Resignation
This time, MIT will try True DEI, and it will work!
UPenn pushed out Liz Magill not long after her awful Congressional hearing about why the university didn’t do anything to combat antisemitism poisoning the campus and her non-apology apology video.
Harvard did the stupid thing, holding onto Claudine Gay for weeks, even though everyone had to know something would happen. Or maybe they didn’t because the elite think they’re untouchable. Gay resigned.
MIT President Sally Kornbluth has been in the shadows. I guess those elites thought it would blow over if Harvard and Gay held their ground.
Two down, one more to go. Sally Kornbluth, call your office. Recall that MIT declined to discipline students who violated school rules during anti-Jewish protests because so many of them were foreign and thus would’ve lost their visas.
— Ilya Shapiro (@ishapiro) January 2, 2024
The day after Gay resigned, Kornbluth told MIT new plans to improve everything for everyone!
Korbluth disguised this plan as an observation of MIT during her first year as president.
The timing cannot be a coincidence.
Kornbluth admitted something she didn’t appreciate a value that everyone in a leadership role should appreciate: “the matter-of-fact problem-solving ethos, the willingness to name a problem, measure it, design a solution and keep iterating until it’s right.”
Excuse me? Did you…did you admit you were not fully qualified to take the job?
Kornbluth doesn’t appreciate the value because she doubles down on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).
DEI is exactly what got these colleges in trouble in the first place!
She sounds like the socialists who claim socialism will work this time because no one has ever tried True Socialism!
This time, MIT will try True DEI, and it will work:
3. Making sure our DEI programs effectively meet campus needs
We will soon announce a new Vice President for Equity and Inclusion (VPEI). With this new role, we have an important opportunity to reflect on and comprehensively assess the structures and programs intended to support our community and create a welcoming environment.
While we address the pressing challenge of how to best to combat antisemitism, Islamophobia and hatred based on national origin or ethnicity in our community, we need to talk candidly about practical ways to make our community a place where we all feel that we belong.
Vice Provost for faculty Paula Hammond will work with the incoming VPEI to think broadly about the best approaches for advancing community, civility and mutual respect on our campus, in the spirit of our MIT Values.
NEW: President Sally Kornbluth announces next steps for @MIT. They are going to:
1. Evaluate “student disciplinary processes”;
2. Review “harassment, bullying, intimidation and discrimination” policies in relation to free expression;
3. Examine DEI “structures and programs”;… pic.twitter.com/vyFZp8QRYc
— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) January 3, 2024
They always have to include Islamophobia even though all the hatred has been pointed at Jews.
The first step is “student disciplinary processes.” No specifics, but I bet it has everything to do with Gay’s plagiarism scandal.
Nothing can save Kornbluth. Bill Ackman has been leading the charge against presidents of colleges who won’t do anything about protecting Jewish students.
Et tu Sally?
— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) January 2, 2024
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Comments
DEI is more necessary because the actual achievers are smarter at MIT.
There should be calls for the entire Harvard board to resign. They are all worse than the bald alien creature was.
There are calls, led by Ackman.
There are and although the plagiarizing affirmative action hire lightweight is stepping down she is going to continue to get that $900,000 salary. Calls for that to be zeroed out should accompany the demand the Board resign.
That’s about $430/hour. That’s more than plumbers or electricians earn. Frankly, I think plumbers and electricians are more valuable members of society.
“elite think they’re untouchable.”
CEOs and other upper management have the same mentality, I had a lot of fun educating them,
And “islamophobia” is not even the correct word. Pretty much no one has any sort of phobia about islam. It is an insult to islam, which has worked so hard over the centuries to foster people’s rational hate of it. islam prides itself on being a threat to all non-muslims. That is one of the foundational pillars of islam.
Anyone who writes a paragraph like that ought to be exiled from society. Honestly. That is an abuse of English that calls for the most severe of punishments.
“And “islamophobia” is not even the correct word. Pretty much no one has any sort of phobia about islam. It is an insult to islam, which … prides itself on being a threat to all non-muslims.”
Slow clap.
Islam should be insulted non-stop, though I am not disagreeing with your point.
Yeah, you gotta get the words right. Part of the game is to flail you. Just like “don’t accept their premise” with questions, “don’t accept their framing” of issues, and especially of you.
“You’re Islamophobic.”
“Wow. When did this become about me? We were talking about the latest spasm of a several generations’ territorial dispute that’s hotted up again lately.”
Myself, I have more fun mocking manifest stupidity, especially when its driven by some kind of true believers. Hamas and sponsors with one move demonstrated their own impotence, and disregard for life; showed themselves to be worthless negotiating partners committed to their neighbor’s extermination; and created a unity of people and government that Israel hasn’t seen for a generation or more.
Truly clever. Must have been “inspired”, even. The highest honor is dying serving the cause, so losing is the best thing, right? Go, them.
Oh my, Sally.
These values/approaches you espouse, every single person on your campus should have been raised with them. Clearly, few were.
I hear she still has lots of progressive support. They even did this remake of Eric Clapton’s Lay Down Sally, asking her to stay …
There is nothing that is wrong
In wanting this racial equity
some pissed alums want you to go
But won’t you make yourself at home
and stay at MIT? So DEI don’t ever leave?
Stay now, Sally, contest with Marxist charms
These MAGA types so campus hate groups don’t walk too?
Stay now, Sally, no need to leave so soon
We still have a large pro-Hamas campus crew
My own ditty is much simpler:
Hey, ho, hey Ho,
Now Sally’s got to go.
She’s trying, but I bet she falls too.
It was defining moment. She is damaged goods. The damaged was self inflicted. She has lost credibility. MIT needs to start fresh.
All colleges and universities need to start fresh, with the exception of a few. Hillsdale comes to mind.
Dig deeply into everything she has published.
The Three Witches of DEI
Double, double toil and trouble:
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
Two careers are left in rubble;
One remains, and is in trouble.
Nothing beats the classics.
In my life I have met a few MIT students and they seemed both very intelligent and decent people. Also have met a few MIT alumni later in their careers and the same could be said of them. After seeing what MIT has chosen to become, my initial reaction to any further MIT people I meet will probably be very different.
Subotai Bahadur
You just have to hope they are smart enough to see through the bullshit and actually want to make the world work. No one should have to fight their university dogma to better the world.
The problem with free-range MIT-ites is they’re so smart and facile, you can’t argue them out of a position taken, no matter how wrong they are. BUT, they can do something hard and novel, which most people can’t.
So, similar to making Ph D’s useful: you aim them at a hard, novel thing you need, positioned so they feel it worthy of their attention. Place fast-followers to catch what they produce and package it so others can use it.
Need I point out that virtually all of these controversial figures in education, politics, law enforcement are….women? Estrogen does not instantaneously equal success.
It’s not true that those students were not disciplined. They are actually currently going through the long-established process for such things:
1) They were immediately banned from campus for anything other than classes or labs. No extracurricular activities, no protests, etc.
2) They have had cases opened up with the Committee on Discipline. The CoD can recommend anything up to and including expulsion.
Now, how those cases will end up remains to be seen. I would hope they’d be at least suspended for a semester or two, if not expelled altogether.
Unfortunately, the discipline policy specifically excludes disseminating any information about the process: as it currently stands, Tech won’t disclose who is being disciplined, what the specific charges are, or the outcomes of the process.
Which is really stupid. If the threat of consequences is supposed to be a deterrent to future mischief, keeping the consequences of the process confidential is like Faber College’s “double secret probation,” and renders the whole exercise pointless.
Time to put some white males in charge.
White makes that haven’t been made to think they are responsible for all the world’s troubles
Would that that is guaranteed to work. Kornbluth inherited the position from a white male, albeit one with no cojones at all: Rafael Reif. He had a presidential demeanor, but zero spine and even less walking around sense. He, in turn, inherited the slot from Susan Hockfield (no winner, she) who inherited it from Chuck Vest, aka Forrest Gump with a bad attitude.
We have had poor leadership at MIT for at least the past 25 years. The Paul Grays and Howard Johnsons—both stellar presidents—are nowhere to be found nowadays. Today we have sock puppets run by kingmakers who deserve to be marginalized. The puppeteer du jour is Gorenberg, whose wife runs a DEI firm that seems to permeate MIT’s power structure. As chairman of the board, he’s the head of the snake. We know what has to happen here.
HoJo was a master of outmaneuvering radical pro-North-Vietnam protestors, often suspending classes when things got hot, and holding assemblies in Kresge Auditorium until people were talked out. I watched from Bexley Hall when an SDS-led mob gathered opposite the Student Center and stormed Building 7, despite loudspeakers on its dome telling them to back off. Some radicals from Bexley had made a battering ram, which was used that day to break into HoJo’s office. The leading invaders were charged and taken to court. Nowadays, with radicals firmly in control of the Institute, no one will get pro-Hamas goons arrested.
My guess there are already betting pools at MIT as to when Kornbluth bails out with her golden parachute. A week? Two weeks? It’s not a matter of “if” anymore, just “when.”
I hope Kornbluth’s “new plans to improve everything for everyone” includes stepping down so that a colored person can have her job.
And I hope you’re being facetious.
MIT is less independently wealthy than Harvard. Mega-rich foreign donors affiliated to Qatar and China, to name but two, are calling all the shots. Whatever happens to Kornbluth won’t affect day-to-day operations and policies. MIT Administration response to past difficulties has always been lots of smooth talk, lots of public discussions and committees, and wait ’til the crisis fizzles out. This one may not fizzle out so easily! The only potential leverage is Federal action to enforce fair treatment of Jews, but Democrats will never do this. Garland is as much of a wokie of Jewish descent as Kornbluth.
Time will tell how long this president defends the indefensible