Couldn’t have been worse than the cringefest speech Hank Green gave that’s for sure
First they ignore you,
then they laugh at you,
then they fight you, <-- you are here
then you win.
Would they ban the person if it was a pro Israel speech?
If no, then the school admins can fuck right off
it’s not “pro palestine”, it’s not “anti israel”,
it’s anti genocide of palestinians by israelis…
they try to keep framing it as that, as some nationalist thing….No, no I am certainly anti-Israel as well; I now fully believe the country should be gone away with like was done in Africa whenever they won their independence back.
well that’s just completely divorced from reality
I could 100% respect a university being no politics etc whatsoever in speeches, but 5 bucks says double standard.
“No politics whatsoever” supports the status quo and is therefore political and a double standard.
Lemimygrad level of brain dead argument.
People rarely talk about politics to praise how well everything is going right now. Not being allowed to talk about politics means not being allowed to talk about changing things. If this was the rule everywhere, nothing could ever be changed (democratically).
Do you have any actual counterargument?
Wow that’s pathetic, so theres no distinction left between MIT and that Bible belt shit hole university that didn’t let a student graduate after she came out as gay
The speech in question https://www.instagram.com/reel/DKSH7wJiqYK/
Wow, that’s a lot of hatred against a country and a nation. “Genoside” claims, several times. Still no mentions of how this yet another war started on the 7th of October. 🤦
No one is upset that Israel wanted to do something about being attacked, but what’s happening is so wildly disproportionate. If hamas did that in any other country and that country decided to go full scorched earth in retaliation no one would support that yet somehow a single attack justifies what’s going on now?? If someone eggs your house do you hunt them down, burn down their house, kill them then do the same to all their relatives?? No obvious that’s insane and that’s essentially what’s happening here, the attack was wrong but two wrongs do not make a right and the force of the response is so far above uncalled for
"If someone eggs your house"This is NOT what happened, you must be trolling or delusional.
So… What are your suggestions actions that are not disproportionate?! I have none, which would be adequate against the intentional atrocities by hamas and other paramilitaries.
What happened the 5th of October, do you even know?
Too late. Megha Vemuri already exposed MIT and is a star with her Andor-level speech.
Strisand effect for sure!
For this?
Self censoring is not the answer… Come on MIT, you know better.
Well, now that I say that, MIT has a not perfect track record when it comes to legal matters and policy decisions. I think of Aaron Swartz for instance…
Whenever I try to believe things aren’t bad and that I am delusional for learning how to gun, stuff like this happens. My hopes for a peaceful and boring future are dying.
“You showed the world that MIT wants a free Palestine”.
“You called for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, and you stood in solidarity with the pro-Palestine activists on campus. You faced threats, intimidation, and suppression coming from all directions, especially your own university officials, but you prevailed because the MIT community that I know would never tolerate a genocide."
“Right now, while we prepare to graduate and move forward with our lives, there are no universities left in Gaza…We are watching Israel try to wipe Palestine off the face of the earth, and it is a shame that MIT is a part of it.”
“This means that Israel’s assault on the Palestinian people is not only aided and abetted by our country, but our school. As scientists, engineers, academics, and leaders, we have a commitment to support life, support aid efforts, and call for an arms embargo, and keep demanding, now as alumni, that MIT cuts the ties,"
Fucking even MIT gone mega what fhe fuck.
Desperate to prove their fascist bona fides in the hopes of retaining funding. It will come back to bite them. There’s no winning way to play this game but there’s and honorable and a dishonorable way.
Is Harvard the only big boy that stepped up? There has to be more, right?
Most schools aren’t talking about it or targeted.
MIT owns the majority of the nonvoting shares in Bose. They don’t need funding.
Is Bose relevant anymore? Outside of cars I’ve don’t seen any of their systems on sale for a long time
Is this the same Bose company that makes the standard Bluetooth ANC wireless headphones that everyone and their mother uses if they aren’t using earbuds?
I haven’t seen them in a long time anymore. QC35 was the last popular model in the masses. Now I see way more SoundCore and Sony Earphones
They made $3 billion in 2023, so yeah?
Revenue or profit? What’s the amount if that MIT gets? What’s MITs budget annually? How much comes from federal funds? All questions that might help answer how they reacted,
Why isn’t the slippery politician like position to just say: we are not responsible for the free thought of our graduates or their opinions, nor are we able to bypass the system of accreditation our student earned their education through. Only departments and professors are allowed to award credit for work, and the the administrators do not govern the integrity of their educational success.
They could say it, but I think they realize Trump acts on feelings and not reason, and could cut off their access to funds, so they want to appease him and make him feel good. Basic dictator and appeaser stuff.
MIT is deep in bed with the MIC. Their administration is not friendly towards Arabs unless those Arabs have a line of credit with Boeing or Raytheon.
Whats the MIC?
Military industrial complex
I usually don’t see it in acronym form.
Military Industrial Complex
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military–industrial_complex
Edit: No idea how explaining the definition of the acronym “MIC” got 3 downvotes. Real reddit-tier energy on this thread.
Lemmy usually has 1 to 5 bots randomly downvoting, its normal.
Sometime something totally apolitical like cat photos also get random 1-5 downvotes.
Weird
Presumably because you’re 10min behind the others, and you posted a raw wiki link. I assume those 3 people got a “just fucking google it” vibe from it.
Atleast what my reddit PTSD tells me it could be.
Downvoted for complaining about downvotes. The internet points do nothing. Everyone please downvote me so I can demonstrate how little it matters.
Downvoted for complaining about complaining about downvotes.
Downvoted cause why not? The points don’t matter.
Two negatives make a positive so here’s your upvote.
yeah we dont even count our totals here. I do kind of miss having a total, but I dont miss reddit. I downvoted you, feel free to downvote me back and have yourself a nice day too.
Most big colleges have helped evict and deport people on studen visas. They cooperate and are complicit.
I’m betting it wouldn’t be difficult to find links between MITs research and development labs and weapons and technologies companies involved in Gaza.
Societies are sometimes like big interconnected machines, large parts become complicit in denial, repression, and destruction.
Edit: yep, as expected:
Since at least 2015, MIT laboratories have received millions of dollars from the Israeli Ministry of Defense for projects to develop algorithms that help drone swarms to better pursue escaping targets; to improve underwater surveillance technology; and support military aircraft evade missiles. Two of these sponsorships were renewed since October 7th, 2023, while one came up for renewal in December 2024. Second, MIT maintains institutional collaborations through the ILP, LGO, CSAIL, and MIT Energy Initiative programs with companies that sell vast amounts of weapons to Israel. These include Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest military contractor, as well as Maersk, Lockheed Martin, and Caterpillar. These collaborations grant genocide profiteers privileged access to MIT talent and expertise.
P.S That drone swarm technology is part of why 83% of American doctors who have provided care in Gaza, have reported treating children for being shot in the head. Source: NPR’s The American Life.
"War is a racket. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
…
War like any other racket, pays high dividends to the very few. The cost of operations is always transferred to the people who do not profit."
General Smedley Butler - War is a Racket (1935)
It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
I’d argue that health insurance also qualifies.
Yeah pity he didn’t have any advice on stopping it.
to better pursue escaping targets
What the fuck.
Shooting people in the back is a bad look. Especially when the victim is a child.
It’s unreal that they can just say out loud “we design war crimes” like what the actual fuck.
There is a whole lot of terrible shit going on in Gaza, and Israel is committing war crimes all over the place.
However, chasing down and shooting a fleeing enemy combatant is not a war crime. If a russian soldier tries to flee from a failed assault, Ukrainian troops are free to shoot them in the back. The same applies to troops fleeing a position that is being attacked or encircled. They can be hunted down and shot unless they surrender.
I’m pointing it out because it’s a common misconception the enemies that are unarmed, wounded or fleeing are “out of bounds”, but that’s not the case. It’s perfectly legal to bomb an enemy camp full of sleeping soldiers, or shoot an unarmed or wounded enemy that hasn’t surrendered.
The absolutely horrifying thing with Israel is that they treat starving civilians as if they were soldiers, and shoot unarmed civilian kids in the back.
That is a good shout, withdrawal =/= surrender. You’re not wrong to clarify rules of war, as false accusations lead to propaganda reinforcing against the real accusations.
Though my statement does stand - “they design drone technology for war criminals to pursue fleeing targets” is a factual statement.
Plus, we will almost certainly see a new version of the Geneva convention in response to drone warfare in our lifetime.
Oh, they’re absolutely selling weapons to war criminals that use them to commit crimes, I 100 % agree.
Just wanted to clarify that “persuing fleeing targets” isn’t a war crime, it’s the targeting of civilians itself that is. Your statement,
It’s unreal that they can just say “We design war crimes”
Made it sound like you thought chasing down fleeing targets was itself a war crime, regardless who the target was.
I can see there being some changes to laws of war, or at least interpretation in response to drone warfare. Specifically, there’s a law against “causing unnecessary suffering” which prevents the use of weapons designed with the intent to maim rather than kill. Most countries have banned anti-personnel mines, and use this as part of the reasoning (another being the non-directed nature of the weapons, and long-term effects after the war is over).
Drone-dropped grenades have a clear tendency to wound rather than kill, and I can see an argument that when infantry throw grenades they usually follow up with gunfire rather than leaving the enemy in a field. With this in mind, I can see an argument against drone-dropped light grenades. Then again, drone-dropped grenades give such a massively asymmetric advantage that I have a hard time seeing any army giving them up.
I wonder if these scientists graduating and working for tech that is used for genocide, do they question their research has resulted in deaths of people or they try to rationalize it
Ever watched Destin from the YouTube channel, SmarterEveryDay - he used to work on weapons systems. As did a guy named Tom Campbell - who now discusses his theory of everything on YouTube.
They don’t seem to think about these things.
The philosopher, Robert Anton Wilson, has a movie that touches on this topic, it’s called Borders.
they dont want to think about it, because they will feel guilty or they feel they are complicit
MIT didn’t “go maga”. They are intrinsically tied to government contracts.
Basically all STEM research at the university level is funded by a mixture of corporate and government interests. Even NSF grants (remember when those were a thing…) tend to focus on areas that anyone with a keen eye can see having military applications. One of my favorites was the massive push for graph analytics 10 or 15 years back and people not realizing that was a roundabout way of saying “analyze social media”.
MIT in particular is VERY dependent on this because they need to be “elite”. Smaller state universities can shuffle money around and focus on other funding sources, to a degree. MIT can’t because their staff inherently have good networks and would jump ship the moment their perks start going away.
Contrast that with Harvard where they still get lots of “donations” from rich and powerful lawyers (and politicians) and where the publicity for “fighting the government” can heavily offset all the international students getting put in a concentration camp before their checks clear.
Okay, but on a timeline measured in years instead of quarters, it’s really fucking stupid to punish the factory that churns out engineers for your war machines, right? The government funds STEM education, yielding STEM experts, yielding STEM productivity. Stop funding it, stop making STEM experts, vastly reduce STEM productivity. Pair this with massive reductions on immigrants (and torch the economy to lower desire to come here also) and how does this not lead to brain drain dark ages and empire collapse?
Is it more complicated than this? Am I missing something? Because usually when somebody thinks that everybody else is a fucking moron, they are the fucking moron, and I’m worried that maybe I’m just such a dumb fucking moron that I can’t see what a dumb fucking moron I am.
The ones that already have their phds are already or ready to flee to Europe or another western country. Only the old ones are probably staying
No no, you’re reading it correctly. What you’re omitting is that the Trump administration isn’t the one in charge, it’s Putin (and some influence from China and other competitors). Putin tells Trump to wreck the US, he does, Russia comes out on top.
So Trump is an ML? Hah
Okay, but on a timeline measured in years instead of quarters, it’s really fucking stupid to punish the factory that churns out engineers for your war machines, right?
- You assume that republicans CARE about anything but the immediate moment. The past… over 50 years have been characterized by republicans fucking everything up, Democrats spending years trying to salvage things, and then republicans taking credit for that before fucking it up even worse.
- You ALSO assume that trump and his handlers want a powerful US military or economy.
A dictator almost wants a weak military, so they can’t stage a coup against said dictator. Look at Russia, just installed all loyalists and steal the funding for themselves. China is more of a hybrid, they want better tech to compete with the US, but they are kind of lazy to innovative themselves in some parts of stem, so they resort to industrial espionage and reverse engineering. Just oversimplified this
Russia is more a symptom of cultural greed/theft combined with being ruled by an oligarchy. For example, one thing people don’t realize is that Russia is probably the least likely country to start a global thermonuclear war as they, somehow, have the absolute best checks and balances on that. Based on publicly available information, the Russian model is that putin requires the sign off of at least one high ranking military official to launch nukes. And said military officials are the ones most likely to depose him in a coup.
Similarly, North Korea has a very strong military (relative to the rest of the country). As do many “African Warlords”. The key is to have leverage on said military leaders so that they need to be ready to sacrifice EVERYTHING to lead a coup.
That said, I also think the US is speedrunning the Russian model. Moreso because all of trump’s cronies are some of the dumbest and most incompetent mother fuckers on the planet.
Also, I would strongly encourage refraining from “China is lazy” rhetoric. Most of that is sinophobic bullshit that came out of the US factory/car industry when we refused to modernize/innovate and now have those pesky labor laws preventing true competition. Yeah, China Don’t Care ™ and a lot of knockoffs are literally after hour runs from the exact same production lines (often using the exact same materials…). But a lot of it is also that drop shipping and (now closed?) import exceptions meant it was trivially easy to get Chinese white label products to The West for dirt cheap.
And just look at the EV space for Chinese innovation. Like… they are probably at the forefront of that.
The topic that often comes up is how ridiculously fake so many of the Chinese military weapons are. And… yeah. Lots of proof of concepts and prototypes that get paraded around and never used again. But that is kind of true of all militaries and is a function of a runaway military industrial complex. It is just that we tend to see the US perspective where “Cool ass littoral battleship technology. Please stop saying you are the clit commander” and then we never hear about it again. But you can look at online discourse about the new XM7 rifle for a good laugh about massive overspending to solve a problem that arguably doesn’t even exist (even though much of the soldier complaints are the same as with the FAL back in the day and boil down to “it takes a lot more training and practice to fire a heavy round accurately”).
Nah, there is a LOT of reason to criticize China (see: sweat shops and genocide). But “China is lazy” is just sinophobic bullshit.
I majored in Anthropology in college. I remember watching a documentary about Napoleon Chagnon’s ethnographic study of the Yanomami (a hunting-gathering people in the Amazon) and being surprised about the notice at the beginning stating that his research had been funded by the Atomic Energy Commission. Turns out that many ethnographies from the '50s and '60s were funded by the AEC because they just wanted baseline physiological data on peoples who had not yet been exposed to large amounts of radiation and environmental nuclear byproducts. The actual study of their cultures was a byproduct.
I feel that these ethnographies are an absolutely precious resource as they reveal so much about how our ancestors lived a lifestyle that has completely vanished now, but it’s still kind of depressing to think about where they came from.
The Democratic Party platform is explicitly pro-genocide.
It’s not like the gop is different
The difference is that the GOP has other policies they actually try to enact. Evil policies, yes. But they actually try to implement them.
Democrats don’t implement their (stated) platform when they get into office. Except for the one policy democrats won’t abandon.
and the only one that they are 100% bipartisan, on which defense budget, and full military support for israel
No one cares what the gop platform is.
I tend not to ask unserious people (like the gop) questions or care what they think. I did have expectations of democrats though.
“We encourage students inquiry and critical thinking” “no not like that!”
Calling other people (all the more, a nation as a whole) names - is not critical thinking.
Presenting biased rhethorics (all the more, not in a neutral manner, but emotionally loaded claims) and ommitting any contradicting points - has nothing to do with critical thinking.
Opinions vs facts. One-sided accusing vs rational thinking. 💁
Yeah no. Calling Nazis Nazi is a perfectly rational take. One does not to condemn an active genocide “in a neutral manner,” neither do Nazis deserve neutrality.
MIT? !!! WHAT THE FUCK?
I’m sure a lot of questions would be answered by checking the universities donations.
Research needs money for happening. You need to pay researchers, structures, various staff. Even more so a fancy structure as MIT
Israel (and American Zionists) have the power to cancel a sizeable amount of research contracts with MIT. (AIPAC shows how well organised they are, originally for defence from antisemitism, now for defence from… Palestine? I guess? 🤷♂️ )
Then for MIT (that is a corporation like another) comes to damage control. On one hand PR, on the other money.
MIT took the money, Stanford (in the case of DEI) took the PR.
I am still 100% sure neither of the two can give a damn of Palestinians, Israel or DEI. It’s just MBA stuff 🤷♂️
(I have my opinions on the situation in Palestine but I don’t want this post to be about that)
DARPA money is a hell of a drug?
I have no idea if this is a real thing or not.
If there’s one thing I know: any string of random words is likely a project studied or funded by DARPA.
MIT team receives $10.4 million biomanufacturing grant from DARPA With the grant, MIT’s Biomanufacturing Research Program aims to develop new technologies that can rapidly manufacture biologic drugs on the battlefield.
https://news.mit.edu/2013/biomanufacturing-research-program-grant-0918
So, yeah, DARPA money for drugs is a drug for MIT.
Old article. But… There’s lots out there.
AIPAC pressure.
Kinda brilliant on the class president’s part - still give the speech and get the media coverage for it, but do it before commencement so they’re less likely to steal your diploma as a result.
Massachusetts Institute of Terror
