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Regarding the Compact

president.mit.edu

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Re: Regarding the Compact

#81

Post by runako »

dylan604 wrote: post #79
runako wrote: post #18

In a way, the overreach in the compact made this an obvious (though not easy) decision. Obviously, an independent university cannot agree to government-mandated pricing or censorship of faculty members. Similarly, government intrusion into grading practices and proactively threatening to use "lawful force" against minors are immediately off the table. That's all aside from the practicality of ongoing assessment, whic…

> In a way, the overreach in the compact made this an obvious (though not easy) decision. If you have morals but lack the conviction to stand by them, do you really have morals?

Unsure what you mean. Obviously MIT is standing on their conviction. That doesn't make it an easy thing to do!

Re: Regarding the Compact

#82

Post by throwup238 »

kjksf wrote: post #71
01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you injured if you can't misgender someone?

Yes, to the extent that any violation of constitution injures me. Forcing me to say things I don't want to say under threat of punishment violates first amendment. It's been litigated and so concluded. The fact that it's the 1st amendment indicates that founding fathers thought that it is indeed the greatest injury us government can inflict on us citizens.

> The fact that it's the 1st amendment indicates that founding fathers thought that it is indeed the greatest injury us government can inflict on us citizens.

By that argument the greatest injury that they were addressing was a weak central government that couldn’t provide for the security and financing of the state. It’s literally called the first amendment because the Bill of Rights was an addendum to the constitution.

Re: Regarding the Compact

#83

Post by pastel8739 »

dylan604 wrote: post #79
runako wrote: post #18

In a way, the overreach in the compact made this an obvious (though not easy) decision. Obviously, an independent university cannot agree to government-mandated pricing or censorship of faculty members. Similarly, government intrusion into grading practices and proactively threatening to use "lawful force" against minors are immediately off the table. That's all aside from the practicality of ongoing assessment, whic…

> In a way, the overreach in the compact made this an obvious (though not easy) decision. If you have morals but lack the conviction to stand by them, do you really have morals?

It's quite possible that an organization has multiple morals, and standing by one moral might feasibly compromise another---choosing which of these morals to violate might be difficult.

Re: Regarding the Compact

#84

Post by nis0s »

necovek wrote: post #55
nis0s wrote: post #46

This tells you who really wears the pants in the relationship. Western nations are screwed because their bedrock is enlightenment, but their adversaries have no such ideals to be held up to. The rule of law that many such organizations enjoy in the West would be denied to them in places their faculty members defend. It’s important to reflect on what works well while trying to fix what doesn’t; discourse often neglect…

Who are these adversaries you speak of? How have they attacked the US of A? As an example, for a long time, spiritual and scientific enlightement was the calling card of the Warszaw pact countries: they just couldn't figure out how to earn money off it (free university education and intensive scentific curiculums in primary and high schools were common). For China today, they are thoroughly convinced they are doing t…

> Yes, I'd rather live in a "Western" country than any of the "adversaries"

It’s important to reflect on why you say this because when push comes to shove, the moral relativism rings a hollow tone. The preceding parts of your post are just part of the education instilled in you from having been exposed to enlightenment-influenced frameworks.

Re: Regarding the Compact

#85

Post by nis0s »

achandlerwhite wrote: post #47
nis0s wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How any Islamic student group, no matter how explicitly pro-Israel and pro-Christianity, survives this definition is a real question. This is a disingenuous example, Islamic student groups are not anti-capitalist, anti-American, or anti-Christian, and giving an example like this only creates FUD.

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.

Re: Regarding the Compact

#86

Post by bmandale »

clessed wrote: post #64
bmandale wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not. Trans people, frequently, look like the opposite sex. Hence there can be no reasonable enforcement of this policy. Cis people, frequently, look like transgender individuals of their own gender. Hence they are liable to receive harassment by any attempt to enforce such a policy. Harassing people, cis and trans, merely trying to use the bathroom in peace, is a far greater imposition than merely existing in t…

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?

Re: Regarding the Compact

#87

Post by kjksf »

sgentle wrote: post #62
periodjet wrote: post #23

This seems like a reasonable response by MIT. I’m struggling to understand where the core disagreement lies though. Would someone who is opposed to this “compact” care to explain their view? I’m not interested in baseless name-calling (“fascist” etc) but I am interested in cogent reasoning. I didn’t read the compact itself, but I did read the wikipedia article about it, and it seems to be a very positive set of crite…

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 playing dumb asking what actions do they mean. Those actions: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=university+prot...

Actions like setting fire to university, which apparently happened yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voqhFZZ9zyA

Actions like smashing windows by masked hooligans: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/CH2kUU3h9j4

Actins like breaking cop's nose: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyMssP-A09A

As to defining a "woman" as anything else than a woman: it's modern day flat earthism, not something a serious person should entertain.

Re: Regarding the Compact

#88

Post by TheCondor »

runako wrote: post #19
tencentshill wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nine universities include: Vanderbilt University Dartmouth College the University of Pennsylvania the University of Southern California Massachusetts Institute of Technology the University of Texas at Austin the University of Arizona Brown University the University of Virginia

This is a motley list. I am guessing the criteria for inclusion was an administration staffer (or their offspring) was not able to secure admission.

That's a very favorable interpretation.

It looks an awful lot like a sampling designed to identify who the "enemies" are.

Re: Regarding the Compact

#89

Post by kjksf »

mtalantikite wrote: post #26
periodjet wrote: post #23

This seems like a reasonable response by MIT. I’m struggling to understand where the core disagreement lies though. Would someone who is opposed to this “compact” care to explain their view? I’m not interested in baseless name-calling (“fascist” etc) but I am interested in cogent reasoning. I didn’t read the compact itself, but I did read the wikipedia article about it, and it seems to be a very positive set of crite…

Regardless of what is in the compact, it's important that our educational institutions have independence to run themselves as they see fit. To make funding conditional to a set of demands by the government takes away that independence.

That is obviously the case that federal money comes with strings and strings curtail independence.

What you seem to imply that there should be no strings. Which is a position you can have but it has never been the case.

To wit, one of the things this compact wants is an enforcement of civil rights act and Biden admin did the same thing:

> The most important stipulation during the Biden administration attached to federal funding for universities was compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This law prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin in any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance, including discrimination against Jewish students through antisemitic harassment or hostility on campus. Universities that fail to adequately address such issues risk federal investigations by the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and potential loss of funding.

> Following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and subsequent campus protests, the administration opened over 100 Title VI investigations into universities for alleged antisemitic discrimination—more than in the entire previous four years combined. This included guidance like a May 2024 "Dear Colleague" letter to colleges outlining examples of prohibited conduct, such as denying Jewish students equal access to education or tolerating harassment.

Re: Regarding the Compact

#90

Post by DrewADesign »

esseph wrote: post #78
01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that worries me. The Nazi party ended on paper, the flags were taken down, but there is no military defeat that really changes the minds of the losing faction. They just went covert, stopped saying the quiet part, and waited.

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 moral code? … like a theocracy? I can’t think of any way that doesn’t immediately instill the tyranny of a minority in its place.

We in the US have been very arrogant in assuming we’ve found the solution to all this when all it took was a few decades — a flash-in-the-pan, really — of consistent, strategic bad faith by the political rulers to undermine the whole thing.

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