Research for human rights abuses: how MIT breaks its own rules
This system that claims to value human rights while behaving to the contrary
At MIT, we care deeply about the academic freedom to make progress in our fields, but also about the good of humanity. Yet at times, we are made to feel that these two goals are at insurmountable odds, and questions of research ethics are presented as “nuanced” and complex. More often than not, however, the questions are incredibly simple; in particular, when it comes to questions of grave human rights violations. In this piece, I hope to share some illuminating facts regarding MIT’s research sponsorships, the precedent for rejecting unethical sponsorships, and the blatant contradictions between the Institute’s policy and recent actions regarding research sponsorships that directly involve human rights violations.
MIT publishes its research sponsors online in documents they call the “brown books.” Among the sponsors are US governmental entities like the DOE and DOD, and companies like Amazon and Google. There is only one foreign military that sponsors research at MIT: the Ministry of Defense of Israel (IMoD).
The research sponsored by the IMoD ranges from the engineering of fiber-optic cables and the sensing of distant electromagnetic signals to the development of portable intelligent surveillance technologies and algorithms to coordinate swarms of drones.
There is currently $1.6 million in the standing budget from these contracts, which seems like a lot but only constitutes around 0.03% of MIT’s total research budget. That means for every $1 of IMoD money MIT has, there are more than $3000 from other sources. In each of the currently sponsored labs, these grants only comprise about 1% of the total budget, which includes other sources of funding for many nearly identical projects.
In 2022, the day after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, MIT ended its connection with the Skoltech institute that it had founded in Russia. In the process, 45 grants (with a budget totaling $14 million) were unilaterally slashed, affecting 26 research groups. In the 2023 brown books, the Skoltech entries from the 2022 brown books are simply copied with the suffix “_do not reopen”. As MIT promises, transitional funding was provided to the affected researchers, and the research carried on without the ties. The website contains the following quotes:
“Following the military attack on Ukraine launched by the Russian government on February 24, 2022, MIT President L. Rafael Reif, in consultation with senior leadership, determined that MIT’s relationship with the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech) must end.”
“This decision has direct impacts on principal investigators (PIs) at MIT who have been leading Skoltech program projects, and on their students. The Institute is in close communication with the PIs to offer guidance and to make sure that the students involved can complete their research and academic work without interruption.”
The same happened in 2020, when MIT distanced itself from the Saudi oil company ARAMCO because the Saudi government had assassinated the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The decision was informed by a committee of faculty established, on this occasion, by president Reif to address ethical issues in donations and research sponsorships.
The committee’s final report (which we often call the “Suri report”), although never formally incorporated into MIT policy, is publicly available on MIT’s faculty governance site and a list of official MIT reports. It advises evaluating sponsorships from organizations, including governmental ministries, based on a system of “red” and “yellow” lights. To quote the report,
“A red light flashing should, as red lights do, stop action. The metaphor of a red light implies automatic rejection of the gift or engagement” (p. 17).
The listed red light criteria include the following entry:
“3. Has this institutional partner directly engaged in, supported, or funded any gross violations of political, civil, or human rights?
4. Do the institutional partner’s policies and their enforcement in this engagement involve a gross violation of political, civil, or human rights?” (p. 2).
The report defines political, civil, and human rights as follows:
“Political rights include procedural fairness in law, such as the rights of the accused, including the right to a fair trial; due process; the right to seek redress or a legal remedy; and rights of participation in civil society and politics, such as freedom of association, the right to assemble, the right to petition, the right of self-defense, and the right to vote.
Civil rights include ensuring people’s physical and mental integrity, life, and safety; protection from discrimination on grounds such as race, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, color, age, political affiliation, ethnicity, religion, and disability; and individual rights such as privacy and the freedom of thought, speech, religion, press, assembly, and movement.
For human rights, although not formally defined in international law, “gross violations” denote types of violations that affect in qualitative and quantitative terms the most basic rights of human beings, notably the right to life and the right to physical and moral integrity of the human person…It is generally assumed that genocide, slavery and slave trading, murder, enforced disappearances, torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, prolonged arbitrary detention, deportation or forcible transfer of population, and systematic racial discrimination fall into this category. Deliberate and systematic deprivation of essential foodstuffs, essential primary health care, or basic shelter and housing may also amount to gross violations of human rights.” (p. 19).
Such considerations indeed permeate official MIT guidelines. The MIT policy booklet espouses the Institute’s commitment to “environmental, health, and safety stewardship” in the campus and community but also globally. MIT’s Office of the Vice President for Research claims that the “overriding objective of research collaborations is to advance knowledge for the betterment of humankind.” Indeed, the “betterment of humankind” is given a central role in MIT’s mission statement.
When the Coalition for Palestine camped on Kresge Lawn last spring, we did it in solidarity with the displaced people in Gaza, but we also had a goal. We wanted MIT to follow through on its commitments by ending the unethical research sponsorships, and the encampment was a tool to get their attention.
Because of the pressure exerted by the encampment, a team of students was able to get meetings with administrators to negotiate applying their guidelines to the IMoD sponsorships. The negotiation team presented the admin with a proposal to end the sponsorships and provide transitional funding to impacted researchers, but administrators refused. When pressed about the Suri report in particular and the human rights violations by the IMoD, an administrator told negotiators that the report would likely not apply due to the “nuance of the situation.”
There’s nothing nuanced about the human rights violations happening right now in the Gaza strip. Consider the statement from the International Criminal Court:
“The Prosecutor is seeking the arrest of Netanyahu and Gallant as co-perpetrators of the war crime of starvation of civilians as a method of warfare and, in association with the starvation campaign (para. 22):
the war crimes of willfully causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or health of cruel treatment, wilful killing or murder as a war crime, and intentionally directing attacks against civilians in Gaza,
and the crimes against humanity of extermination or murder (including through starvation), persecution, and other inhumane acts.”
See also overwhelming evidence from on-the-ground reporting and declaration of intent from Israeli government officials.
Because admin couldn’t agree on this fundamental issue, negotiations broke down, and they ended things by sending an army of riot police to shut down the encampment by force.
Let’s reflect on the absurdity of the situation. MIT has research sponsored by a foreign entity whose minister is wanted by the International Criminal Court for grave human rights violations. The student body ratified two referendums to end these sponsorships, with ample support from faculty and staff. MIT policy demands these sponsorships be ended. MIT has taken action against research ties over the murder of one journalist, while in the present situation over 160 journalists have been murdered, along with tens of thousands of civilians, mostly women and children. MIT claims to act in the interest of Jewish safety, while abetting a regime that continually puts Jewish people in danger in the interest of imperialism. Ending the sponsorships would be the least MIT admin can do to stand against the genocide. Yet they had to be dragged to the negotiation table, and when confronted with the atrocities and their power to stand against them, they equivocated about the “nuance” of the situation. This is unconscionable, no matter what external pressures they may be facing.
We celebrate the success of the Coalition’s recent actions against Lockheed Martin, but we can’t forget that this is only one tiny link in our web of ties to the military industrial complex and the genocide in Gaza (as are the IMoD research sponsorships that MIT refuses to touch). Similarly important is financial divestment, which has been a primary focus of the nationwide student movement. Until then, we are doing our best to highlight the contradictions inherent in this system that claims to value human rights while behaving this way.