Goodbye, MIT

To me the issue is that they fired the guy. It's one thing to disagree with someone's statement or political views, it's another to fire them over it.

It might be different if the chaplain was blatantly racist. But even if we read his statement as "I don't think George Floyd was innocent here" - that is not something you should get fired over. You can't compare this to white supremism, he didn't even imply George Floyd wasn't innocent.

He got fired for saying something which suggested he was a racist.

When you fire people over saying things which suggest they are bigoted, you create a culture where people hide mundane things and non-PC facts. You get people to be shy and not say anything for fear of vaguely implying something bad. And you risk hiding real "harsh truths" like (idk) the fact that the J&J vaccine caused fatal blood clots in 0.000014% of people.

To all, your defenses of the chaplain are more nuanced than even the authors of this article give. The sole argument they make is that the chaplain made "statement of...facts" and "facts are not racist, and stating facts is not racism." As discussed above, this may be true in a narrow sense, but the inclusion, exclusion, and sequencing of facts is the very basis of editorial narrative. If we agree that bigoted diatribes such as the white supremacist example above are a sequence of carefully chosen facts, then how is this a valid defense of anything?

Reading the email in question (https://newbostonpost.com/2020/06/19/heres-what-the-m-i-t-ca...), it really seems like he was attempting to bring together the two camps. At the time the talking point of “oh, he was just a criminal” was pretty widespread as if this somehow justified what happened. In his email, as I understand it he’s addressing people who think like that.

Yeah no ... I described failings in the students - or rather, that wouldn't say 'failings' so much as 'contextually, utterly not prepared, willing or able in any way'.

"A good school will not have most of those problems."

Because a 'good school' is full of conscientious and prepared students, raised by conscientious and prepared parents with jobs and stability.

There is nothing a 'decent group of well meaning teachers' can do when 50% don't show up, 90% are literally years behind in reading and the curriculum, 50% are borderline illiterate, nobody pays attention or does any homework, students get violent in class, they are interested only in the most ridiculous artifacts of pop culture, even the students who might try are bullied, and there are zero role models in the lives of students, kids are neglected and abused and the students collectively could care one bit about learning.

There is no possibility for 'education' to happen on those circumstances.

Give them healthcare, parents stable jobs, 2 parents in stable relationship, stable family life, destroy the gangs somehow make them irrelevant, and watch grades magically rise without a single change to the school. We know this because when you take these kinds out of those stark situations and put them in regular suburban schools with teachers roughly the same credentials, they do reasonably well.

Inner city school teachers are not crap, they're basically 1/2 social workers 1/2 teachers, totally undervalued.

While I agree with the authors opinion, I actually agree with you too, and quite like how succinctly you pointed out their hypocrisy. I personally didn't see it immediately.

Regardless, allow me to answer your question to perhaps give you a different perspective on the matter.

>Who are the people these two chaps see as being hurt by MIT's so-called "wokeness"? I.e., whom are they trying to help with their withdrawal of funds?

They probably see minorities from the Asian community who are hurt terribly from what I can only describe as incredibly racist policies wielded against them by the university. Also, members from poor white communities who also suffer because of these policies.

Furthermore, I think most people would agree the great things Western civilization has achieved over the centuries mostly comes from our respect for free speech and free thought, and the universities have traditionally been the institutions that took the lead roll in this. What will happen when the universities stop being the leaders of free thought? What institutions will take their place? It is not so far fetched to say that everyone on the planet could suffer from this

>Who are the people MIT sees as behind hurt by the people they stopped working with? I.e. whom is MIT trying to help with their options?

I honestly don't know. They clearly aren't trying to help people from disadvantaged communities, because they actively refuse to take into account objective measures such as family income when choosing applicants. I made another comment about this which I will just link to to save space: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29135126.

Given that in the USA, Asians, Indians, and Nigerians all have a higher average family income that white people, it is clear that ones skin color has nothing to do with ones advantages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_U.... What is clear is that ones background determines ones advantages. MIT is clearly making no effort to address these disadvantages, so what are they trying to do? My comment I linked to makes my opinion on that clear.