[924] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: What is the cost of academic and political freedom?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Richard Tibbetts)
Sun Oct 7 13:27:33 2001
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
Message-ID: <20011007131634.A31168@innocuous.mit.edu>
Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2001 13:16:34 -0400
Reply-To: "Documentation at http://web.mit.edu/beland/talk/talk.html"
<MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU>, Richard Tibbetts <tibbetts@MIT.EDU>
From: Richard Tibbetts <tibbetts@MIT.EDU>
To: MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <200110071527.LAA03874@buzzword-bingo.mit.edu>
On Sun, Oct 07, 2001 at 11:27:46AM -0400, Thomas G Cadwell wrote:
> 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...
I beg to differ with your analogy. I agree that heckling a big alumni
donor for his personal beliefs would probably have been across the
line, even if those beliefs were, as you say, unacceptable.
However, Shell is being heckled for its action, or at least its
alleged actions. The money coming to MIT, at least in part and
according to the protesters, comes from human rights violations. If
your huge alumni donor came into his money through Mafia connections,
I think it would be reasonable for people to protest, to heckle, to
encourage MIT to throw the bum out. Even if they were employees.
It is unacceptable for MIT to take money from certain institutions. I
don't believe that Shell is one of these. But I believe that people
should be able to have opinions on the matter and should be allowed to
express them. It should not be possible to buy silence from MIT.
tibbetts
