Some Notes on Recent Protests at MIT
Introduction
Students and faculty have demanded since the fall of the 2023-24 school year that MIT end its defense research relationship with Israel’s Ministry of Defense (MoD). This is because of the war the nation is conducting in the Middle East against Hamas, which has resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent people on the Gaza strip. Despite calls to divest from many organizations on campus, Institute administration (herein simply the Institute) has ignored all of them by their allegiance to “academic freedom.” Even though I believe that it is easily arguable that protesters in the above situation are in the moral right and the Institute in the moral wrong, not much has actually changed in terms of protestor demands being met. In this essay, I try to understand the failings of current protestors through a survey of recent large-scale protests at MIT.
I. One Side’s Morals are Clearly Better Than the Others
The moral arguments of the protestors of many campaigns at MIT can effectively be generalized to Kant’s categorical imperative:
Suppose there is some moral action X that implies a moral sentiment Y which contradicts some moral law Z.
By way of contradiction, assume that it is morally permissible to do X.
So Y is morally acceptable.
But Y is in contradiction with Z.
So it is not morally permissible to do X, so one is morally obligated to not do X.
Substituting X for “weapons research,” Y for “ending life is morally permissible,” and Z for “the human right to life,” we get Scientists Against Genocide et al.’s argument for why MIT should end its weapons research relationship with the MoD:
By way of contradiction, assume that it is morally permissible to do weapons research.
So ending life is morally acceptable.
But believing that ending life is morally permissible is in contradiction with the human right to life.
So it is not morally permissible to do weapons research, so one is morally obligated to not do weapons research.
Protestors usually bolster the above argument by also presenting reasoning for why doing X is of egregious moral harm. For an example of this argument, see [1].
Historically, the Institute has leaned on the moral principle of “academic freedom:”
Define free speech as the right to say whatever one wants however one wants, without any moral consequence.
Assume free speech can be shown to follow from the moral law.
By way of analogy, one should also have the right to research whatever one wants however one wants, without any moral consequence. Define this as academic freedom.
So, if free speech can be shown to follow from the moral law, one also has the right to academic freedom.
Because we’re in the context of the United States, where freedom of speech is a commonly accepted right, the Institute believes that implication elimination can be used, thus deriving academic freedom. The Institute then uses academic freedom in the following way: by academic freedom, it’s morally permissible for one to research A by any means B. Substituting A for “weapons” and B for “funding from a military body,” we then get the Institute’s argument for why MIT researchers are allowed to do weapons research with the MoD: by academic freedom, it’s morally permissible for one to research weapons through funding from a military body. For an example of this argument, see [2].
I have no interest in defending the protestors’ argument; I hope it is self-evident to the reader. On the other hand, I do take issue with the Institute’s argument, as it is representative of a common misconstrued of what rights freedom of speech actually gives you. What the Institute defines as free speech is not the right as it is understood in the U.S. Bill of Rights (herein positive free speech), but instead a non-conservative extension known as absolute free speech. Proponents of absolute free speech believe that speech should be a negative freedom: no one should be able to stop you from saying whatever you want. Positive free speech, in contrast, is a positive freedom: it limits what people can say—for example, hate speech is off-limits—so everyone has the opportunity to speak. There’s a reason why positive free speech is much more universally accepted than absolute free speech. You’d be pressed to, say, demand the right to vote if someone threw a slur at you every time you opened your mouth to speak, right? Connecting this to academic freedom by way of analogy, how can your research be morally permissible if it’s being used to stop other people from doing research?
Because of the above, I believe it’s obvious that Scientists Against Genocide et al. are in the moral right. Furthermore, they are justified in engaging in raucous protest: they believe their institution is enabling the revocation of the human right to life, an egregious harm! However, despite the strength of their moral arguments and their upping the anti over the 2023-24 school year, they have been wholly unsuccessful in changing the minds of the Institute on participation in military research with the MoD. The rest of this essay is dedicated to eking out an explanation.
II. What Protest at MIT Looks Like
A common argumentative technique used by Scientists Against Genocide et al. is making callbacks to previous student protests, most commonly those during the Vietnam War and the height of South African apartheid. When using this technique, the Protestors imply that engaging in protest demanding divestment is a “tried and tested" technique for introducing change at the Institute [3]. I believe this form of storytelling overly romanticizes what actually took place during these sets of protests and gets in the way of reflecting on what can be done to enact change.
Vietnam War (1969-1973)
South African apartheid (1985-1991)
Saudi Arabia (2018-2019)
Israel-Hamas War (2023-24)
Reason for protest
Participation in the U.S. industrial-military complex
Growing student concerns about the nation’s racial caste system [7]
Interference in the Yemeni civil war, murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi
Participation in the Israeli industrial-military complex
Institute involvement
Hundreds of millions of dollars a year in Department of Defense research funding
Held $336.9 million in South African assets in 1990 (converted to 2024 USD) [8]
Acceptance of $23 million of contracts for the Media Lab in 2019, other contracts and grants from various Saud gov’t arms since the 90s [10]
Acceptance of $11 million in research funding from the IDF since 2015 [11]
Protestor demands
Significantly wind down/end national defense research at MIT
Divest from South African assets
End research and funding relationships with Saudi Arabian government
End research relationship with the Ministry of Defense
Notable forms of protest
“Scientists Strike for Peace” walkout in March 1969 gained international attention [5]
Erection of shantytown on Kresge Oval in 1990 [9]
Spring 2018 protest on Building 7 steps demanding crown prince Mohammed bin Salman have his invitation to campus revoked [10]
Erection of encampment on Kresge Oval in spring 2024, a callback to apartheid protests
Institute response
Institute spun off Draper Laboratory into an independent non-profit. [4] Still maintains its other defense lab Lincoln, strong academic relationship with Draper
No divestment [7]
No Institute-wide divestment, pledged to help individual projects to divest [12]
No divestment as of writing
Of note
Lincoln received around $1.109 billion in total funding–most coming from the DoD–in fiscal year 2019 [6]
Coalition Against Apartheid, the student group that led protest efforts, ceased its widespread protests in 1991, ultimately faded away until its 2023 revival
Defense of response makes use of an early version of academic freedom
Above is a table describing the four most notable nonviolent campaigns on campus in the past 60 years. When they’re all put side by side, a general timeline of a campaign begins to form:
something of great moral urgency happens in the world
students and faculty recognize that the Institute is connected to the event
students and faculty organize, demanding that the Institute disassociate with the organizers of the event
the Institute fully or partially rejects demands
the situation loses its moral urgency due to lack of progress by protestors
“everyone” “moves on”
This pattern is concerning. It not only implies that the current campaign by Scientists Against Genocide et al. may end in failure, but that we as a community are caught in a local minimum regarding the best way to have our demands be met on campus, and are struggling to address the current state of affairs. This is not to say nonviolent protest is in general ineffective, but that a discussion must be had about what is and isn’t working for us as a community. I have no silver bullet, but I do want to spend the next section discussing how some aspects of the current philosophy of protest on campus are likely doing us no favors.
III. Divestment is Not a Sustainable Source of Justice
Divestment is a philosophy seen in all campaigns discussed above. The core idea of divestment is that supporting institutions that do bad things is wrong, so one should pressure institutions to stop supporting such bad institutions. This follows from Kantian ethics (treat all ends as means), but from practical first principles is not enough to create actual change. To ground my argument, let’s consider Draper’s relationship with MIT. Let’s say that MIT commits to no longer partnering with Draper for education or research, thus fully divesting from the organization. While MIT may morally save face by doing so and take away some reputation from the organization, Draper will still receive military funding because they secured their prestige, personnel, and other assets decades ago. Divestment, in general, doesn’t make the problematic behavior go away; it just gives you the moral high ground. With this perspective, it’s easier to empathize with MIT administration for wanting to see if Saudi Arabia could be changed from the inside through collaboration with the Institute [12]; it’s much more proactive than the "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" approach.
I believe calls for divestment are so common on campus—despite their apparent ineffectiveness—because divestment unintuitively looks like an easy layup. Engaging directly with “large” systems is complex and at times depressing. However, engaging with a “smaller” system that you think you’re much more familiar with–for example, your school—seems a lot easier and still allows you to make a difference: “surely, the people at our institution will understand our point of view and swiftly enact justice!” This point of view quickly falls apart when you realize that the reasons that it’s hard to engage with large systems—cultural inertia, entangled organizational hierarchies, externalities—also apply to smaller ones. Because everyone is fighting in smaller battles—demanding that the important, more personal institutions in their lives divest from “larger” institutions—most campaigns inevitably run into burnout and moral urgency drying up, ultimately leading to a collective waste of resources which could have been better used if sharply focused on a higher-order cause. Divestment from morally bankrupt institutions is the morally right thing to do, but it is only one of many steps required to bring about justice, and it seems that, at least on our campus, demanding divestment first brings about the end of many a promising campaign.
Conclusion: What Next?
In this essay, I have argued the following:
a pattern of MIT protestors not having their demands be met by the Institute is showing,
the strength of protestors’ moral arguments is not what’s holding them back, and
a focus on divestment likely is.
I argue the above not because I want Scientists Against Genocide et al. to fail in their protests, but because I think our community has misunderstood how nonviolent protest is supposed to work. Simply engaging in nonviolent protest without regard for the form it takes is not a cure-all for the world’s moral problems. I do not claim that I know the solution, only that a discussion about what should be done desperately needs to be had. I understand that nonviolent protest is not simply a means to an end; it is also a way to find community and cope with moral outrage. At the same time, I worry that our current culture of echoing the greats is holding us back from engineering better social tools and actually addressing these issues. It is important that we as a community have reliable ways of bringing about the justice we want to see, because there will eventually be a situation of moral urgency that is of great importance to you. If we don’t dig ourselves out of this current rut, I’m worried you’ll ultimately flounder, just like the rest.
Acknowledgements
The writing of this piece would not have been possible without the following people:
my philosophy educators here at MIT—Benjamin Brast-McKie of 24.141, and especially Sam Berstler and Philipp Mayr of 24.02—for helping me significantly improve my argumentative skills,
my 24.134 teaching fellow, Benjamín Muñoz Rojas, for giving me regular encouragement and great feedback as I iterated on the ideas of this work,
my father, Peter Williams, who has informed much of my political philosophy and was always willing to chat with me about my ideas,
and fellow classmate Kate Pearce, whose published letter in the Tech [1] gave me the last push needed to finally address this issue in writing.
This piece was written for an independent project in 24.134.
References
[1] Pearce, Kate. “An Open Letter To The MIT Committee on Discipline.” The Tech, 11 July 2024, https://thetech.com/2024/07/11/open-letter-to-cod.
[2] MIT Ad Hoc Working Group on Free Expression and MIT Faculty. MIT Statement on Freedom of Expression and Academic Freedom. 21 Dec. 2022, https://facultygovernance.mit.edu/sites/default/files/reports/20221221_MIT_Statement_on_Freedom_of_Expression_and_Academic_Freedom.pdf.
[3] MIT Graduate Students for Palestine. “No More MIT Research for Israel’s Ministry of Defense.” MIT Faculty Newsletter, 11 May 2024, https://fnl.mit.edu/may-june-2024/no-more-mit-research-for-israels-ministry-of-defense/.
[4] History of The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc. FundingUniverse, http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/the-charles-stark-draper-laboratory-inc-history/. Accessed 17 Aug. 2024.
[5] King, Jonathan, and Aron Bernstein. “March 4, 1969 Scientists Strike for Peace: 50 Years Later.” MIT Faculty Newsletter, Apr. 2019, https://web.mit.edu/fnl/volume/314/king_bernstein.html.
[6] Evans, Eric D. MIT Reports to the President 2019-2020. Lincoln Labratory, https://web.mit.edu/annualreports/pres20/2020.20.00.pdf.
[7] Naylor, Sophia. “MIT Students Campaign for Divestment from Apartheid South Africa, 1985-1991.” Global Nonviolent Action Database, Swarthmore College, 2 July 2010, https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/mit-students-campaign-divestment-apartheid-south-africa-1985-1991.
[8] Anagnostopoulos, Fffie K. “Students Join Divestment Coalition.” The Harvard Crimson, 8 Mar. 1990, https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1990/3/8/students-join-divestment-coalition-pan-undergraduate/.
[9] “Shantytown Built in Protest by Coalition Against Apartheid, 1987.” MIT Black History, https://www.blackhistory.mit.edu/archive/shantytown-built-protest-coalition-against-apartheid-1987. Accessed 17 Aug. 2024.
[10] Sokolove, Michael. “Why Is There So Much Saudi Money in American Universities?” The New York Times, 3 July 2019. NYTimes.com, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/03/magazine/saudi-arabia-american-universities.html.
[11] Projects at MIT Funded by the Ministry of Defense of Israel. 15 Apr. 2024, https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Q13sdsOQsxTtkqG-lebja5l-6-Oy8ERVhF1-JjOe8G8/edit.
[12] Reif, L. Rafael and MIT News Office. “Letter to the MIT Community Regarding Engagement with Saudi Arabia.” MIT News, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 6 Feb. 2019, https://news.mit.edu/2019/letter-regarding-mit-engagement-saudi-arabia-0206.