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Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

president.mit.edu

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Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#111

Post by todd8 »

angrais wrote: post #107
todd8 wrote: post #98

I was at MIT over 50 years ago. I used to give them money, not a huge amount, but enough to create what has become a permanent endowment under my name. However years ago, I had lunch with the then president of MIT and realized that MIT had changed. It was no longer the MIT I experienced. The student body was different, and clearly, they had tweaked the knobs and selected for a different profile of student. It made me…

What do you gain by donating money to the university? Is there a tax break for such donations? What good came out of your donations? Is there traceability and accountability of each dollar donated? I ask as I simply cannot fathom donating money to a university where the overarching aim is often to make money.

I understand what you are saying. Back then, I felt that donating money to a research University would indirectly provide benefits to the entire world by accelerating the advancement of science and technology.

Like other charitable contributions in the US, it is tax deductible. What that means is donating $100,000 has an after tax cost of around $50,000 depending upon one's tax bracket.

Yes there is accountability, and I usually receive a nice note from a couple of the undergraduates that have their undergraduate research projects funded by my modest endowment.

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#112

Post by wjko21 »

yucky wrote: post #39
tablespoon wrote: post #19

> We saw this last fall with the wide range of views around the Carlson lecture. If anyone else was wondering what was being referenced above, I'm guessing it's this: https://thetech.com/2021/10/14/carlson-lecture-cancellation : > Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) Department Head Robert van der Hilst canceled the department’s annual John Carlson Lecture due to controversy surrounding the invited speak…

I don't understand, if he wrote an op-ed uncovering racial discrimination in academia, why would people who are (presumably) against racial discrimination want to cancel his lecture?

Because they redefined the meaning of word "racism" such that their views are no longer considered racist. Unsurprisingly, that also redefined the meaning of "against racial discrimination". Tl,dr: We no longer understand each other.

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#113

Post by Manuel_D »

panarky wrote: post #101
Manuel_D wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone wants to try to promote flat earth ideas let them. I think it's condescending to MIT students to think this is somehow harming them.

People are free to promote whatever crackpot ideas they wish. The question is whether MIT should provide a platform for everyone. Since there are infinite crackpot ideas but only one Kresge Auditorium, the MIT community must make value judgments about what speakers and ideas are worthy, and which ones are not. No institution should be compelled to provide a platform for all speakers and ideas. Some speakers and ideas…

> Since there are infinite crackpot ideas but only one Kresge Auditorium, the MIT community must make value judgments about what speakers and ideas are worthy, and which ones are not

But this is the key thing: Abbot was giving a talk on environmental studies, and confirmed affirmative action was not part of the talk he was giving. The push to exclude him was on the basis of something other the science of his talk.

Here's a better analogy: would it be appropriate to cancel musician'd concert because he's a flat earther? The argument that we have only one auditorium and we should allocate it to a better musician does not make sense unless there's a compelling reason to say that his musical performance abilities are affected by a belief in a flat earth.

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#114

Post by ThrowawayTestr »

gaze wrote: post #106

So, how far are they willing to go? Will they host neo-nazis? Will they host far right conservatives? I wonder if they'd be up for hosting pro-BDS speakers or out-and-out socialists or communists. Freedom of speech is never, ever given out equally, no matter what they say. At some point, something crosses the line into "crying fire in a movie theatre" for just about everyone. This is effectively a statement that some…

Why go to university if the free exchange of ideas is so terrifying to you?

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#116

Post by tomcam »

RHSeeger wrote: post #24
tomcam wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These people are surprisingly easy to spot, by the way. Excellent. So let them say what they want and demolish them with reason instead of suppression.

I'm quoting what I said in anther comment here, but it applies, so... > it takes orders of magnitude more effort to fight against lies and misinformation than it does to create them. As such, letting everyone say whatever they want and expecting the lies to be exposed/countered by the truthspeakers is destined to fail. We've seen this exact thing play out on every social network.

Sorry free speech is hard for you. Unfortunately, it beats all of the alternatives.

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#117

Post by tomcam »

quantumwannabe wrote: post #61
cool_dude85 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't work in some situations. Hitler would not have been DEMOLISHED by facts and logic, to use a youtube-ism.

Hitler went to prison and came out stronger and more popular. Oppressing him didn't work, but there was a chance that the German people could have been convinced that National Socialism wouldn't improve the economy and restore Germany to its pre-WWI glory.

Well he took everyone’s weapons away and imprisoned everyone who spoke against him. So a robust constitution like ours would’ve had a much better chance of standing up to him.

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#118

Post by superb-owl »

panarky wrote: post #96
superb-owl wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also a false equivalence. MIT is obviously only going to consider inviting speakers that would appeal to some subset of its community. The statement doesn't give anyone a right to demand an audience at MIT, it gives the MIT community license to invite controversial speakers.

Which gives the lie to all the sanctimonious talk about protecting all speech that's legal under the First Amendment. MIT isn't protecting all legal speech, they're amplifying speech the MIT community wants to hear, and suppressing speech the community doesn't want to hear. If the MIT community wants to legitimize and amplify speech about perpetuating the current hierarchy of elites, and suppress protest speech aimin…

Free speech isn't about giving all ideas an equal footing. It's about letting any individual speak their mind without fear of repercussions. And that is exactly what MIT appears to be pledging to do here.

Ideas are still subject to the marketplace, and the MIT community is a very discriminating market.

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#119

Post by customkitchen »

Manuel_D wrote: post #83
customkitchen wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You're being vague here, but I suspect by "biased results" you mean they produced a racial (and perhaps gender) makeup you don't like. No, you are completely and utterly wrong on that. This is more of the same intellectually lazy assumptions, please stop this. And I get his point perfectly, it is still insulting and dismissive. When someone starts talking about school vouchers and "merit" in the context of this then…

> No, you are completely and utterly wrong on that. This is more of the same intellectually lazy assumptions, please stop this. Then can you explain what was biased about an admissions process that does not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, and other identity characteristics, if it wasn't the demographics of the student body? It's still vague how a race-agnostic admissions process would be biased. > The fact…

>Then can you explain what was biased about an admissions process that does not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, and other identity characteristics, if it wasn't the demographics of the student body? It's still vague how a race-agnostic admissions process would be biased.

There can still be implicit bias. Please read this publication from MIT on this exact subject: https://tll.mit.edu/teaching-resources/inclusive-classroom/i...

>An African American student in the 4th decile (as in, is scoring above 40% of students and below 60% of students) has the same chances at admission at an Asian student in the top decile.

Ok, but that still doesn't change the facts. The issue is not that there aren't enough qualified students or that unqualified students are being placed above qualified ones or that merit is being ignored. That just isn't what's happening at all. That graph is missing a lot of important context, like the actual court case it was talking about that is currently headed for the Supreme Court:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair_Admissions_v...

The whole thing about "we need more merit" is a misdirection. It's a bad, irrelevant take. This professor should be ashamed to have put his name on such dreck.

>If I have 500 qualified white applicants and 5,000 qualified Asian applicants and I admit 100 whites and 100 Asians have I not discriminated against Asians?

It very well might be so, but now you're coming back around to the same thing about implicit bias again, the very thing that the original article was dismissing as not an issue. The plaintiff even argued in court that Harvard was doing this...

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#120

Post by superb-owl »

AbrahamParangi wrote: post #87
superb-owl wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. We can judge the falsifiability of statements without knowing whether or not they're false. E.g. "red is a better color than blue" is obviously a subjective opinion, where as "ʻOumuamua is made of frozen nitrogen" is obviously a falsifiable statement.

Right, there are specific instances of opinions which cannot be verifiable facts, but the verifiability of a fact is not, in general, itself verifiable!

True! I like this formulation of your statement
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