MIT Shut Down Internal Grant Database After It Was Used to Research School’s Israel Ties
MIT Shut Down Internal Grant Database After It Was Used to Research School’s Israel Ties
Amid Gaza protests, a report from MIT Coalition for Palestine details research funded by Israel on drone swarms and underwater surveillance.
The Israeli Ministry of Defense has poured more than $3.7 million into developing warfare technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 2015, according to a recent report from students and faculty organizing against the war in Gaza.
The report was published last month by the MIT Coalition for Palestine, which represents 19 student and faculty groups on campus, including MIT Divest, MIT Jews for Collective Liberation, and MIT Faculty and Staff for Palestine.
After the student organizers began further probing grant information, the school took down the grant software used for the coalition’s research, said Rich Solomon, a member and MIT graduate student who worked on the report. “MIT has engaged in a sustained and organized campaign of disinformation and propaganda in order to silence and suppress this information,” Solomon told The Intercept.
“Come study with us! As a pillar of academia, we'll hide knowledge from you whenever it suits our political and financial interests. Higher education is all about close-mindedness and conservatism after all. We promise none of our students will be taught anything that makes them feel uncomfortable about reality. Welcome to college!”
Could academia today be seen in the future in a similar light as we look at the medieval church? It was the gatekeeper of philosophical education (largely on classist principles), to things like literacy, and used humanity’s curiosity and hunger for knowledge as a carrot on a stick to buy into an oppressive status quo.
Other than the medieval church, global academia has the fundamentals right, imho. The methods are flawed but the general goal is the right one.
The problem in the US is not a fundamental flaw in academia, but lack of political understanding that a state benefits from educated citizens and fundamental research that isn't immediately monetisable. That resulted in this weird situation, where the most prestigious facilities are just sport centers with a side hustle in education.
In the future the methods of today's global research will more likely be seen as something like greek philosophers. The goal of generating knowledge was right. The method of just writing down what your two remaining neurons, that haven't drowned in wine yet, produced and never verifying it, was... let's call it flawed from a modern perspective.
Oof
Higher education is all about close-mindedness and conservatism after all.
In a capitalist economy, higher education is about maximizing profit.
*US Academia
Yes this is actually exactly how they want to present themselves. More donor money from guess who?
So by hiding their ties...they've exposed their ties.
One would have thought the administrators at MIT would also be smart...guess not.
They're administrators, not academics.
By hiding their ties, they can deny, delay, and depose anyone who prints statements to the contrary.
One would have thought the administrators at MIT would also be smart
Shutting the door on public inquiry is a long term play that involves a little short term pain. But nobody is going to remember this headline in another news cycle or three.
Admins are banking on BDS falling down the memory hole like so many other failed civil rights initiatives.
MIT administrator dusts off their hands...
"Problem solved!"
I wonder who's going to get an FBI raid and the threat of life imprisonment for this?
Turds.
archive.org link to the "the tech" opinion piece that was redacted.
This is worth reading all the way through. MIT takes money from Israel's defense ministry to research better ways to genocide Palestinians, and subjects any student who points it out to violence and legal attacks.
I guess they're really proud of their support for Israel.
Sounds like mossad blackmailed someone kek. Hai unit 8200 or whatever you're called! Dumbfuckzzz
Not sure why you down voted. If you research any person of like a few minutes you get the "visited Israel" or "was associated with X" and you look up "x" and it says he was a "spy"
It is insane how they control Congress and the White House, and people don't think they can't blackmail a university through grants or blackmail!
You check who downvotes you? That's cringe dude
I'm sure buying them is generally easier, this being the United States Of America.
Ya that's fair,.crazy low sums people will do corrupt stuff for. If you're going to be corrupt... At least get paid substantially for it. All this nonsense for stuff below like 200k is astonishing. I do hope Trump prosecutes the Democrats for that. At least some US federal politicians will see jail time 🤣 if the Trump admin doesn't actually go after some of them well..
They are just supposed to be controlled opposition, sending the higher ups to prison might lead to an actual workers party. Which as we know based off the decades of stories of "trump stiffs contractors because he can" is questionable as an outcome Trump particularly cares for, his donors definitely wouldn't be fans.
They can go that route. I don't think the business leaders and federal politicians of the world realize how fragile their lives are. How easy it is to 3d print guns and have your tracks covered with enough planning. Personally, I highly doubt Luigi was the one that killed that CEO considering his ties to Pelosi. That is a very, very repeatable event. At scale. Especially if co-ordinated to split glowy resources.
Only $4 million? That's not a lot in research money
Cutting your face to spite the mirror.