MIT says no
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is arguably one of the finest engineering schools in the country, if not the world. They do teach other subjects, I am sure, but their core strength is more STEM than liberal arts, right?
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology publicly rejected an offer from the Trump administration Friday that would’ve granted the university preferential treatment for federal funding in exchange for new restrictions on the school’s finances, hiring and admissions.
The Education Department has approached nine colleges in recent weeks about signing the compact and MIT is the first to make its position publicly known.
The compact involves changing college admissions policies and faculty hiring, ensuring there is “a broad spectrum of viewpoints” on campus, ensuring sex is defined as “male” and “female,” and adopting a policy of institutional neutrality, which means they won’t weigh in on societal and political events.
Good for them!
MIT President Sally Kornbluth said the administration’s “compact” includes principles they “disagree” with and would ultimately restrict the school’s freedom of speech and independence in a letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon.
I know we rail against the ultra-liberal schools that force-feed our kids all kinds of nonsense. But I have to say that in this case, I am on MIT’s side.
Hey, they were told they could get preferential treatment if they just shut their collective mouths and toed the line. (No, it’s not TOWED, damnit.) And they had the cojones to step up and say no. Probably going to cost them, too.
But I would rather a school be run by an administration that will take a stand for what they believe in, and in this case that belief is that their views can’t be dictated to, and bought by, Federal funding dollars. Agree with their views or not – man, it just doesn’t get any more American and honest than that.
Or maybe French? Urban legend says Voltaire said “I may disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” (Actually it was a biographer of his, Evelyn Beatrice Hall, who coined the phrase. ) Might remember that Voltaire and quite a few other European Enlightenment thinkers had deep influences on some folks we refer to as the Founding Fathers.
I think MIT is following in their footsteps. Agree with ’em or not, I admire their stance.
Category: Diversity, Exploitation
They chose their path…now they have to follow it.
Poor dumb bastards.
This prestigious university will live long after your fucking mind control political cult is long dead.
If they had accepted the regime’s demands their reputation would suffer for generations.
Cry harder
OY VEY, you prove me right once again Major Moonbat, you have a mind that’s like a clogged toilet, the contents of which you always have to splash all over the place for everyone to see!! 😀😀😀😀
I’ve warned you about this.
You don’t get to talk to me like this.
You want to be civil and disagree, fine; but you DON’T get to insult my intelligence to do so. I do not belong to some “cult” that has taken over my mind; I used to be a liberal democrat (Minnesota DFL), but I can truly state that the DFL HAS become a mind control cult over the past 30 years, and has abandoned the people of my state.
Where I come from, we call that “a lack of raising”, it doesn’t say much for how he was brought up!
It’s comical how he accuses EVERYONE else of being brainwashed and completely hanging on every word from DJT without any chance of thinking for ourselves. He doth project much!!
According to “him(?)”, only ANTIFA and the far left socialist democrats care about our country. Funny thing is how they keep saying that they are trying to save our democracy, but IIRC, it was their demagogue, B. Hussein Obama that enacted his plan to “fundamentally change this country”!
I really don’t care what MIT does. Knew a platoon leader back in the day. He had a mechanical engineering degree from MIT. No common sense though. My wife works in higher education. A lot of idiots graduating from college these days. Pretty sure a fair portion have their parents doing their class work. They can’t even figure out what classes they need to graduate, when it us laid out right in front if them. Literally, they have a degree map that shows exactly what they need, but they can’t figure it out. End up as Seniors, and can’t graduate, cause they didn’t take the right classes. Wife’s job is basically to read the degree map for them, and then argue with mom and dad on why their kid doesn’t have the right classes to graduate.
Had a 1st Lt. platoon leader once who had a master’s from a very prestigious university. He lasted about two weeks before the company commander told the battalion commander that one of them was leaving the company. The Lt. lasted another couple of weeks at battalion before being transferred out. Since then I have had a few Ph.D. college instructors who seem to personify the old saying “Those that can’t, teach”. The moral of the story is that credentials don’t guarantee competence.
U of A is debating this too.
Which U of A? There is more than one of them.
Oops. Arizona.
“…in this case, that belief is that their views can’t be dictated to, and bought by, Federal funding dollars.”
Sure. Cannot be bought. Unless the one doing the buying is a lefty they agree with.
A lot of times, the one writing the check get’s to dictate the conditions under which the money is spent. I guess we’ll see if MIT (and other schools) can do okay without that federal check….
The best part about not taking money from other people is not having to listen to what other people have to say about how you run things…when you take their money you have to let them have a say unfortunately….
I’ve always enjoyed not having to listen for most of my life to what anyone else has to say about how I run things, whether business or my personal life…
A singular path can be a lonelier, and financially poorer existence at times, but it remains far better than being financially beholden to people with whom you disagree on every fundamental aspect of life and business.
I don’t have to agree with anything MIT says or does, but I will certainly respect their decision to say thanks, but no thanks to taking money under conditions they find disagreeable to their own personal ethics.
Math and Physics is what it is.
Your personal viewpoint has no bearing on that fact.
If you want to join a transgender glee club go to Harvard.
Takes the king’s geld, play the king’s music.
This is the same philosophy that Hillsdale College subscribes to, that they have never, and will not take ANY FedGov funds, for any reason. Not even for Vets education. With FedGov ducats, come FedGov strings. Hillsdale don’t want to be told what they have to teach, who they have to hire, or who they have to admit. And in Hillsdale’s case, going by past FedGov administrations diktats, that’s a good thing.
Based on what I’ve heard about eastern Ivy League schools endowments (billions with a “B”), I don’t think MIT will be putting on the sackcloth and ashes any time soon.
While I can somewhat respect MIT’s position here, it’s also being somewhat institutionally hypocritical.
I’ll go out on a limb here and say I’m certain that MIT is happy to accept Federal research grants/cooperative programs, Federally-guaranteed student loans, Pell Grants funding student expenses, and the like. Those are all Federally-funded programs.
However, apparently those Federal programs don’t come with conditions that “would ultimately restrict the school’s freedom of speech and independence”, so MIT is free to accept them while being as ideologically/politically biased (or not) as they choose. They just come with dollars that pay a huge chunk of MIT’s bills.
However, I do have to wonder what MIT would do if ALL Federal education support programs required receiving institutions to be strictly apolitical as a condition of receipt.
So long as MIT doesn’t offer useless degrees and doesn’t churn out radical Antifa-wannabe terrorists, I’m good with this.
They rejected it because it is an effort by the regime to control what can and can’t be taught at universities.
If they accepted it they would no longer be among one of the best universities in the world.
It would have been a shock if they had accepted it and the reputation of MIT would not recover in our lifetimes.
Long after Trump, his fascist thought police regime, and the MAGA movement was long dead.
What do you mean by “fascist thought police”. Can you cite a meaningful example of something?
I’m positive that he can’t, we see here time after time that he’s completely incapable of thinking for himself and like the rest of the liberal hive, he only thinks and believes what he’s told to!
Let’s try to say something positive about Major Moonbat aka Commissar and I’ll go first, I’m positive that he’s a brainless dipshit!
RoBaaaaaaaaaaaaaht
Fascism is thst which opposes communism.
Any opposition at all.
“Fascist”, “racist”, “misogynist”, “Islamophobe”, et al. are words thrown at anyone and everyone by liberals losing any argument or debate by those using logic, facts, and/or common sense against the effluvia they spout off!
Commissar is a good example of such people.
Government funding comes with government strings – why is this news to you? Also, we don’t see academic freedom protecting our views, since your kind views them as outside the pale.
I guess higher ed is really about the reputation of the name on the paper, as opposed to brilliant, hard-working researchers.
So says the guy who belongs to a group that believes men can be women, teaches grade school students it’s okay to have sex with adults, are antisemitic and rooted in slavery, murders the unborn and anyone who opposes their worldview, and indoctrinates college students in becoming uneducated and unemployable moronic dipshits.
” his fascist thought police regime”
How is it that you have escaped the attention of this regime?
In an adjacent note, Newsmax refuses to sign the regime’s propaganda driven access policies.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Military/s/Pjik85234S
Okay, fine by me, Newsmax is a private organization and they’re free to do as they please, what’s the big deal about it, Major Moonbat?
They’re exercising their rights under the First Amendment to the Constitution of The United States of America.
You gotta problem with that?
Only when that exercise of the First Amendment involves saying/publishing/doing something he doesn’t agree with. Based on his prior history, if you disagree with him you’re likely to be insulted and called a fascist.
Being called a a fascist by a fascist is just funny.
It’s funny how the guy with the name “commissar” keeps calling this administration a “regime”!
However, the previous REGIME, he called an administration!!
🤦🤷🙄
I will wager that is the only time you will ever say something remotely favorable about Newsmax.
In my post military retirement, I worked for a number of different companies. One of my former bosses (an engineer by education/training and AF reservist) had a shindig at his house that some of us were invited to. His daughter was home from college for the event. She was attending Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). I asked about her degree program and she was getting a bachelor’s degree in History. Not exactly the STEM I was expecting to hear.
I wonder what the other eight colleges talked about in the article.
US News & World Report (not a conservative mouthpiece) does an annual ranking of colleges.
U.S. News & World Report was one of the first American publishers to produce a college rankings list based on a complex formula of publicly reported data that is submitted to the U.S. Department of Education annually by all institutions of higher education.
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/rankings-methodologies