[923] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: What is the cost of academic and political freedom?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Thomas G Cadwell)
Sun Oct 7 11:36:43 2001
Message-ID: <200110071527.LAA03874@buzzword-bingo.mit.edu>
Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2001 11:27:46 -0400
Reply-To: "Documentation at http://web.mit.edu/beland/talk/talk.html"
<MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU>, Thomas G Cadwell <tcadwell@MIT.EDU>
From: Thomas G Cadwell <tcadwell@MIT.EDU>
To: MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 06 Oct 2001 18:56:31 EDT."
<Pine.LNX.4.30L.0110061853260.20654-100000@happiness-hotel.mit.edu>
This is pretty typical. The guy in question is an employee of MIT, and
is supposed to look out for MIT's interest. Doing so on campus AND
in this venue is not appropriate, as he is much more a representitive of
MIT while there, than anywhere else.
Yes its a university, yes there is freedom of speech, yes we are supposed
to have a free marketplace of ideas here, but I think this case is such bad
judgement that MIT is well justified in its reaction. Had it been
off campus, it wouldve been an entirely different manner.
This is akin to if a bunch of people who were MIT employees heckled
some huge alumni donor who they felt was racist or a homophobe or something.
Ok, sure his beliefs are not acceptable in the modern day, but effectively
shooting MITs efforts in the foot makes you a very bad employee and outweighs
any good you do otherwise -- and thast what it really comes down to. I
hope that similar example makes it more clear...
Tom
