[934] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
petition in support of academic freedom
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Aram Harrow)
Sun Oct 7 22:38:48 2001
Message-ID: <200110080237.WAA02860@no-knife.mit.edu>
Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2001 22:37:44 -0400
Reply-To: "Documentation at http://web.mit.edu/beland/talk/talk.html"
<MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU>, aram@MIT.EDU
From: Aram Harrow <aram@MIT.EDU>
To: MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU
petition: http://web.mit.edu/justice/www/petition.html
full story: http://web.mit.edu/justice/www/acad_free.html
i was one of the students present at the shell recruiting event and
helped make and distribute the "why shell?" flyers. although i left
rather early during the event, while i was there i can attest to the
discussion being entirely civil and non-disruptive. in fact, at the
end of the session, the other people protesting said that they had a
long friendly conversation with the shell recruiters. the only person
who spoke out of turn or with a raised voice was a random pro-shell
student who was present and was bothered by the persistent focus on
nigeria during the Q&A sessions.
to me, the event seemed like a classic example of exercising freedom
of political speech; everyone was able to calmly and freely express
their opinions in a public academic forum. indeed, it would be
unimaginable for a professor or student to be disciplined in the
slightest way for these sort of actions.
but "academic freedom" - whatever that means - does not necessarily
extend to nonunionized administrative assistants, even during
off-hours, at events sponsored by departments that they do not work
in, and were not present at in any kind of professional capacity.
i obviously have something of a personal stake in this issue, but i
think that questions of free academic speech, and the double standards
for staff and students/faculty, are relevant to the entire MIT
community.
again, the petition that i made is at
http://web.mit.edu/justice/www/petition.html
signing takes less time than reading this email.
please do so.
aram
bcc: mit-talk, peace-list, aepi-discuss, swassd
bcc: phm@media, bexley-minus-fascists
____________________________________________________________
Aram Harrow : aram@mit.edu : web.mit.edu/aram : 617.271.8543
