I'm pretty damn disappointed with the discourse here. What RMS wrote in the MIT mailing list was so reprehensible, that I'm pretty sure the people here defending him must have not read it. So here is the comments he wrote to a major MIT mailing list where he victim-blames child sex trafficking victims in the wake of MIT media lab accepting money from credibly accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein:
> The announcement of the Friday event does an injustice to Marvin Minsky:
> “deceased AI ‘pioneer’ Marvin Minsky (who is accused of assaulting one of Epstein’s victims [2])”
> The injustice is in the word “assaulting”. The term “sexual assault”is so vague and slippery that it facilitates accusation inflation: taking claims that someone did X and leading people to think of it as Y, which is much worse than X.
> The accusation quoted is a clear example of inflation. The reference reports the claim that Minsky had sex with one of Epstein’s harem. (See https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/9/20798900/marvin-minsky-jef...) Let’s presume that was true (I see no reason to disbelieve it).
> The word “assaulting” presumes that he applied force or violence, in some unspecified way, but the article itself says no such thing. Only that they had sex.
> We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his associates.
> I’ve concluded from various examples of accusation inflation that it is absolutely wrong to use the term “sexual assault” in an accusation.
> Whatever conduct you want to criticize, you should describe it with a specific term that avoids moral vagueness about the nature of the criticism.
You can (and we must) acknowledge Stallman's contributions to the field while not condoning his pattern of bad behavior. because if we let a leading figure in the industry act this way publicly, it reflects bad on all of us. We cannot claim to be an industry that accepts and welcomes diverse viewpoints and experiences while still holding up a man who has such a long laundry list of reprehensible behavior as a leader and respected figure in the industry.