[927] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
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daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Thomas G Cadwell)
Sun Oct 7 19:10:31 2001
Message-ID: <200110072308.TAA27681@department-of-alchemy.mit.edu>
Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2001 19:08:23 -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
> If we are looking for examples, let's have another one. You say that if MIT
>was courting a wealthy gentelman with somewhat sexist and racist view of the
>world, jumping in and ruining the potential for a large donation would be a
>bad thing for an MIT employee to do. Ok. I consider this to be an extreme
>example. Shell is not an elderly gentelman with a few outdated habits. Shell
>is a company that actively ruins lives of houndreds of thousands of
>Nigerians. The number is actually not exagerated. Shell builds its
>installations without any regard for the local communities. Many of those
>communities have to go somewhere else or die because their land and/or water
>sources are taken away. Shell collaborated with Nigerian dictatorships and
>used the help of Nigerian police and military to arrest and kill those who
>opposed its presence in the country. So I'd compare Shell to a thief and an
>assasin rather than en elderly gentelman with a few quirks.
I'm not denying that Shell has not behaved in an always-benevolent manner,
I'm just debating the wisdom and appropriateness of an MIT employee heckling
a Shell HR person ON CAMPUS AT A SHELL/MIT EVENT :P
> So, what should an MIT employee do if MIT decided to court, say, Osama bin
>Laden. A wealthy gentelman with a somewhat un-PC set of views. Would it be
>ok for us to distribute fliers and ask reasonable questions about such
>donor's human rights record?
:) thats an even more extreme example. I mean, MIT accepting donations
from criminals is a totally different category -- In this case, it would be
at the very least a violation of some sort of anti-terrorism legislation,
and at most, treason.
> The point is that our business relationships make us overlook important
>things. In my opinion, any member of the MIT community has a right to voice
>their concerns. The employee in question just distributed fliers and asked
>questions when questions were encouraged (this is according to all of the
>reports that were circulated here). Nothing wrong with asking MIT students:
>"Are you willing to live with this, should you accept a job with Shell?"
>Many MIT students will be willing to live with this because our personal
>goals tend to be more important to us than the lives of others. One or two,
>perhaps, won't. Shell will forget the incident right away. They get a lot of
>shit all over the place and it doesn't seem to matter to them.
Perhaps so, but MIT surely has the right to tell them not to
do so -- right to free speech is only gauranteed against government
sanctions, not against a private corporations ability to tell you
not to say certain things on their property and threaten to kick you off
if you do. Perhaps on the spot fire is excessive, but at the very least a
stern talking to and a suspension without pay is reasonable. Does this
employee have a history of doing this or not? I mean, theres a fine line
between expressing your opinion and insubordination, and MIT _is_ a corporate
entity and must depend on its employees to share similar objectives and
think in terms of the good of the institute first and foremost.
Much along the same lines, Shell has the right to tell MIT that if
it gets heckled by MIT employees at HR events, it will cut funding, just
like I Can say "if you say bad things about my family members, I'm never
inviting you to my house".
I was not at the event, so I cant comment on the civility of the
protest. I'd be interested to know the exact details though --
passing out fliers is one thing, but verbally assaulting a shell HR
person is another thing entirely. If the employee was out and out
obnoxious about the protest, MIT has a lot more reason to just instafire,
as opposed to it being more like you describe it. Unfortunately, we will
probabaly never know for sure. Like I Said, argument and insubordination
are seperated by a pretty thin line in cases like these.
Tom
