Regarding the Compact

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 want to do with it.

Some prompts to spark a cogent reasoning process:

> Signatories commit themselves to [...] transforming or abolishing institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas

What "institutional units" might this mean? How are they identified? Who identifies them? What is the threshold for belittling conservative ideas that might trigger the "transforming or abolishing" remedy?

> Universities shall be responsible for ensuring that they do not knowingly: (1) permit actions by the university, university employees, university students, or individuals external to the university community to delay or disrupt class instruction or disrupt libraries or other traditional study locations [...] signatories commit to using lawful force if necessary to prevent these violations

What do "actions by" "university students" to "delay or disrupt class instruction" refer to? What kinds of disruptive action might the people writing this document be so concerned about that they would ask universities to "commit to using lawful force" to prevent? What sort of scenario is being envisaged here?

> Institutions commit to defining and otherwise interpreting "male," "female," "woman," and "man" according to reproductive function and biological processes.

Doesn't it seem oddly specific to assert a definition like this? Why can't a university decide for itself? How does this assertion square with "maintaining a vibrant marketplace of ideas" and the "empirical assessment of a broad spectrum of viewpoints"? Why only this definition and no others?

I could go on, but hopefully you get the picture. It's an important skill to practice critically reading a document the same way you might critically audit code. Don't ask what it seems like it does, ask what it might allow someone to do.

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.

I mean, you're obviously right about this all. Which is why it's an easy decision. MIT chooses independence and so cannot agree to these terms.

Separately, there is the question of whether it is in the best interest of the US to part ways with organizations such as MIT.

> MIT is taking (lots of) money from federal government

Surely nobody is naive enough to think the federal government is giving money to institutions like MIT with no expectation of reciprocal benefit?

MIT is (was?) full of DoD asset tags to indicate which equipment was paid for by DoD grants. So another way of stating your point is the federal government is investing in programs at MIT to shape which basic research gets done so that it aligns with the best interest of the United States.

(A prior iteration of conservativism would have recognized outsourcing to MIT as a capital-light way of accomplishing a set of policy goals. The alternative being to spin up the whole apparatus in-house without cost sharing. Left to their own devices, engineering students are not likely to discover and research problems that are immediately germane to DoD.)

It is possible to be independent while also accepting grants from the USG. There's no contradiction there. The point of independence is that the Institute gets to determine how it runs its affairs. This Compact is an attempt to move that decision-making process to the White House. Maintaining independence in this environment therefore means abandoning federal research funding.

In theory they could but in practice they don't want to. No company wants to loose $2B a year of free money.

Suddenly loosing 45% of revenues would be devastating.

And yes, MIT is a company. They have a CEO (under a different name), a board of directors, thousands of employees and they provide a service for a fee.

No one that works for MIT wants to loose that money. Not CEO, not board of directors, not employees.

Maybe they'll put ideology first and $2B second but I doubt it.

I like that your ideological counterparts have made the exact same statements about every administration ever.

Your post does not carry weight just because it is heavy.

When all you have is claims of fascism, everything is a nail.

Despite yours or my agreement on the topic of the day, this admin has pushed more power back to states than any in your lifetime. Those sneaky fascists, always giving up power…