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Regarding the Compact

president.mit.edu

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Re: Regarding the Compact

#131

Post by Volundr »

dem_bones_ wrote: post #103
runako wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll make it simple in a few steps: 1. Many people have an aversion to harming children. This aversion is not universally shared, but it is a very common stance nonetheless. Children, especially, tend to have an aversion to being harmed. 2. Universities need to recruit children to leave their families and be governed by them (e.g. housing, food, etc.). 3. Parents of children are required to get approval for those chi…

Did you read the rest of the paragraph prior to the sentence you quoted? Any use of lawful force has to be justified by prevention of the violations described thus: > Signatories acknowledge that the freedom to debate requires conditions of civility. Civility includes protections against institutional punishment or individual harassment for one’s views. Universities shall neither support nor permit a heckler’s veto t…

> Misbehaving children need to dealt with too, within the bounds of what is allowed by law. Otherwise, what, you want a loophole for them to get away with all of the above?

Heckling is not against the law last I checked.

Re: Regarding the Compact

#132

Post by justin66 »

DrewADesign wrote: post #90
esseph wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We won the war but never learned as a group how to handle the ideological problems.

That feels oversimplified. A lot of people would think people that oppose Nazis are the ones with the ideological problems. Who defines what a problem is in our society? The majority or some skewing of it. This is the problem that politics is supposed to solve, and then the problem that the electoral college was supposed to safeguard against. How do we avoid the tyranny of a demented majority? Aligning to a specific…

> A lot of people would think people that oppose Nazis are the ones with the ideological problems. Who defines what a problem is in our society? The majority or some skewing of it.

This view presupposes there are not moral facts.

Re: Regarding the Compact

#133

Post by dragonwriter »

nis0s wrote: post #85
achandlerwhite wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To you and me they are not, but to this administration I wouldn't be surprised if they were considered as such.

This administration is letting Qatar build an airbase on US soil. I think it’s wiser to believe what people do more so than what they say, or what others say about them.

> This administration is letting Qatar build an airbase on US soil. I think it’s wiser to believe what people do more so than what they say, or what others say about them.

I don't think looking at Trump's history of actions toward individual Muslims subject to the authority of the United States government (as distinct from, e.g., foreign states that give him multimillion dollar bribes) really helps your case here, though.

Re: Regarding the Compact

#134

Post by dekhn »

dem_bones_ wrote: post #105
aquova wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they completely disagree with the entire document, this is as kindly worded but complete rejection as they could make it.

Most of the document seems reasonable though.

The document was carefully written to look innocuous and reasonable (unlike most Trump communications). However, a close reading indicates that it's a clever trap that gives the government a great deal more power and oversight. Combined with the known ideology of Trump's supporters, it's not hard to see that the document was not intended to be a simple, good-faith attempt at undoing some of modern academia's excesses.

I agree with many of the principles in the document, but I'm good at reading between the lines and determining the true intent of the authors.

Re: Regarding the Compact

#135

Post by dekhn »

laidoffamazon wrote: post #113
fedsocpuppet wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this like a humiliation fetish at this point? This is seriously unhealthy. We don't hate our friends that didn't a go to an eLiTe school because we're not sociopaths. Not sure why I'm even trying since you seem pretty dead set on this, but it's just a lot easier to go through life without made up enemies.

People that go to elite undergrads think the rest of us are a lower inferior caste. I don’t know how that’s even something you can deny. You’ve clearly expended a lot of effort to segregate yourself from the likes of people like me or people that go to SJSU because we don’t have “merit” or “potential”

This is not a productive point to make in this thread.

Re: Regarding the Compact

#136

Post by dekhn »

pastel8739 wrote: post #91
dartharva wrote: post #28

From MIT's financials ( https://facts.mit.edu/operating-financials/ ): Operating Revenue: $5.07B, out of which - Federal funding (sponsored support): $2.30B Operating Costs: $4.78B, out of which - Sponsored research expenditure: $2.10B Additionally, they seem to have $24.57B worth of endowed funds and get gifts and pledges of net ~$0.6B every year. Looks like they can wane off their dependence on federal funding if o…

I really find it surprising how often people bring up endowments as if they are a resource that can be spent. The purpose of an endowment is to produce revenue via investment income; that investment income is already reflected in the operating revenue under "Investment return to operations". MIT cannot and should not spend their endowment beyond this investment income; doing so would jeopardize the long-term viabilit…

This is open to debate. Some endowments are intended to be spent directly, and not everybody agrees that spending some fraction of the endowment curses the university to oblivion. Some financial policies can be suspended (they are not absolute, fixed rules). Many at Harvard felt the endowment was far larger than necessary for long-term viability, and wanted to spend money on capital improvements.

Re: Regarding the Compact

#137

Post by BrokenCogs »

bananapub wrote: post #43
NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #34

I am affiliated and have been affiliated with several top universities, including the two in Cambridge, MA. I'm an academic. I say that because this stuff directly affects my career prospects. The Compact itself can be found here: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/1... It's short, I ask that you read it before commenting. It's too bad MIT has taken this stance. I think the Compact is overall…

> obviously reasonable, good-faith effort to improve universities in the United States I really find HN to be a truly surreal place at this time.

Don't underestimate the wealthy and their moral ambivalence

Re: Regarding the Compact

#138

Post by [deleted] »

bmandale wrote: post #86
clessed wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonetheless, even in cases where someone has managed to somewhat disguise themselves as the opposite sex - or think they have done so - they will still be expected to respect boundaries, and stay out of spaces designated for the opposite sex.

Respecting boundaries means not concerning yourself with the genitals of a person merely trying to use the bathroom. You cannot enforce a policy regarding someone's sex without inspecting their genitals. How is that respecting of their boundaries? How does that lead to a person feeling safer in the bathroom?

[deleted]

Re: Regarding the Compact

#139

Post by boplicity »

kjksf wrote: post #73
boplicity wrote: post #3

Remember, fascism is not an ideology or philosophical idea. It is a system of government. Gaining control of academia is a core part of this system. I applaud MIT for standing up to this. I hope the other universities involved also resist. We'll see.

Given that leftists have gained control of academia, are democrats fascists? My claim of "leftists control academia" is based on data on political affiliation / donations by staff at major universities which is 80-90% democrats.

Fascism is a top-down system of government. If it's true that "leftists" gained control of academia, I don't see that as something that happened via top-down control, which is clearly what the Trump administration is attempting to impose.

Re: Regarding the Compact

#140

Post by sgentle »

kjksf wrote: post #87
sgentle wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Careful not to fall into the "People's Democratic Republic" trap: the way something is described and its purported aims are not at all the same as its actual effects (and, often, not even its intended ones). Politics is, in many cases, the art of selling you a box of spoons with "forks" printed on the label. Instead of asking "does this agreement sound nice?", ask what power it gives, to whom, and what might they wan…

There was a wave of violent disruptions across many universities under the guise of protests. "protestors" took over libraries, disrupted lectures, vandalized university property, used the power of the mob to intimidate students who disagreed. The universities have rules against all of that but failed to stop it, leading to weeks long disruptions on campus. There are videos of all that on the internet. And you're pla…

The second result in your YouTube search is a PBS mini-doc called "Why Do College Campuses Have So Many Protests?"

The questions I offered were prompts to engage critically with why this compact exists. Perhaps watching that video might help you find answers beyond "playing dumb".

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