[931] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: What is the cost of academic and political freedom?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Krzysztof Gajos)
Sun Oct 7 22:28:08 2001
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Message-ID: <LPBBKDNJMGBGHCIBFALCMEKOCKAA.kgajos@ai.mit.edu>
Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2001 13:37:40 -0400
Reply-To: "Documentation at http://web.mit.edu/beland/talk/talk.html"
<MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU>, Krzysztof Gajos <kgajos@AI.MIT.EDU>
From: Krzysztof Gajos <kgajos@AI.MIT.EDU>
To: MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <200110071527.LAA03874@buzzword-bingo.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 Shell is not an elderly gentelman with a few outdated habits.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.
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?
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.
I could write more but I'll stop here.
Yours,
Krzysztof
-----Original Message-----
From: Documentation at http://web.mit.edu/beland/talk/talk.html
[mailto:MIT-Talk@mit.edu]On Behalf Of Thomas G Cadwell
Sent: Sunday, October 07, 2001 11:28 AM
To: MIT-Talk@mit.edu
Subject: Re: What is the cost of academic and political freedom?
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
