Student Life?

 When I was at MIT the goal was to produce and excel. If you could not do that you were let go. Student life was a myth. Your research had to come first and you commitment to the academic world was a sine qua non.

Now MIT has a Vice Chancellor of Student Life! As they note:

...is an accomplished and compassionate leader whose commitment to student success, belonging, and well-being has been demonstrated throughout her career,” says Nobles. “She brings a deep understanding of the challenges students face today, extensive expertise leading complex organizations, and a collaborative approach that will help her continue the work we have done to strengthen the student experience at MIT.” The Office of the Chancellor oversees student life and learning at MIT. In her new role, .....will lead the student life side of that mission for undergraduate and graduate students. This broad portfolio encompasses dining; well-being and support; student organizations and events; the Department of Athletics, Physical Education and Recreation; and living communities, including oversight of the faculty-led residential house system. 

 This must be a costly position. What does it do? Coddle students? "Dining", are you kidding me? I got to me office at 7 AM and was there till 11 PM. Dining was pickles and coffee. Phys Ed was walking down to Westgate! Who pays for this "cruise director" at MIT?

A Reason Why Tuition is so High!

 In reading a recent MIT News brief they lauded a new employee whose job is:

... associate director of student organizations and programming for the Student Organizations, Leadership, and Engagement Office (SOLE) in the Division of Student Life (DSL), empowers and equips students to lead and serve not only during their time at MIT, but also as they venture into their professional lives. With enthusiasm and a global mindset, she is dedicated to helping students thrive and reach their goals.  

Well there goes another couple of hundred thousand, How long has this organization been around. Do MIT students have time for this stuff, I never did.  

 

An Interesting Observation

 MIT published the statistics on international students. It is interesting in that:

1. 12% of the undergraduates and 40% of the graduate students are foreign.

2. Of the grad students 25% are from the PRC, and totals 1,000 from PRC in both grad and undergrad.

In my time I don't think we had a single USSR student. 

In addition, are the US students that poor that they cannot get admission? MIT funding is mosl;y from the US Government and perhaps one should be focusing on training ad educating US citizens first.  

MIT Demands: Sounds Familiar

 In The Tech there is a great discussion of the demands the Government is placing upon MIT for funding. Simply stated they ask

1. Admission etc predicated solely upon academic performance.

As we had discussed before this makes eminent sense.  No essays, no pictures, no "save the world" interns. Just grades. 

2. Eliminate Campus organizations that create a hostile environment

In my days, SDS was a player seeking to destroy the campus. Campus organizations frankly should be few and far between. The amateur radio club may make sense, the amateur railroad club, etc. 

3. Free tuition if endowment greater than $2 million per student, except for students from "wealthy" families

I never paid tuition, through my PhD.  Scholarships, fellowships, teaching fellowships. All performance based and for the most part Government financed.

4. Freeze tuition rates for five years

This is sticky. First the rates are obscene. But they are artifacts not real. 

 Now 1 above is fine and I have noted this. 2 above may be a bit sticky since I never belonged to such an organization and back in the day SDS for example was not a Campus supported on.

Number 3 is a bit of a push, schools have gotten themselves in this mess with their crazy tuition support rules and over priced tuition.

4 may make sense since it is bloated as is. 

I am 82+, but MIT seems to think I should be incapacitated

 

The WSJ has a piece telling how MIT has an Age Lab and that they incapacitate a student to feel my age. They note; 

It took two people to make me feel like I was a woman in my 80s. At the MIT AgeLab, which works on finding ways to improve life for the elderly, a pair of researchers helped me put on their age-simulation suit. They started with a 15-pound weighted vest, tightening the straps around my body. They added more weights around my ankles and wrists, to replicate the sensation of the loss of muscle mass that accompanies aging. They pulled a blue jumpsuit up over the weights, helping me lift each leg and step into the suit without falling. They added a harness around my waist, and a bungee cord system that attached to different body parts including the back of the ankles and my wrists. The cords reduced my ability to reach up and shortened my stride. The get-up made it even more difficult to stand without a slouch. They put a padded neck collar on to limit my rotation and goggles to distort my vision. Foam-padded Crocs on my feet challenged my balance. The MIT designers call the outfit the “Age Gain Now Empathy System,” or Agnes for short. 

Now back in the 60s some clueless student like this would have most likely been a product of BU before Silber, but not MIT. This shows haw MIT has deteriorated  not me. Now my wife is a few years older than I but she spent the day hedge clipping and root pulling. I did some chain sawing and leaf collecting. 

Yes we both have had cataract replacement, but my wife resulting from her life as a chemist and mine from, get it, ageing.  Yes my knee is shot, but more from damage as a result of travel accidents and less just age. 

I still write more than any graduate student at MIT and my wife reads more than any Harvard undergrad. She spends the week bagging the plants at season's end to be collected so the garden is ready for Spring. We are headed for our home in New Hampshire to do the same there on the side on Mount Tecumseh.  

So yes, I hate many of the new packaging schemes but my wife has shown be how to bang open the pickles. 

Would it not have been better to collect a group of 80+ MIT grads like us and see what we have done. Instead money and time was wasted on what simpletons thought we should look like. This is just another sign of deterioration, not of 80+s but of what MIT allows to be foisted upon us as academic excellence. 

How MIT Has Changed ... Better or Worse

 During WW II MIT managed the Rad Labs, designing and implementing radar systems to protect US forces across the globe. Following that the technology developed led to the explosion of technology that became silicon valley as we know it.

Now MIT has entered the new world.  They note:

Part of ... postdoctoral research involves complementing her computational abilities by acquiring and improving her skills in biochemistry and cell biology, and tissue mechanics and engineering. Her current work on how clitoral anatomy relates to sexual function, especially after gynecological surgery, explores a topic that has seen little research, ... says, adding that her work could improve postoperative sexual function outcomes.

Yes, you read it right. No linger information theory, systems design, genetic structure, cancer research, but, well you can read it. Forty years ago a few MIT coeds published a Sex Survey, in "Thursday", a campus wide news sheet. It exploded with the Administration. Women rating male performance. But the above is now a fully funded research program. 

I wonder where MIT is going next. After its President being a Barbie aficionado, and doing nothing about the rampant antisemitism on campus, well one can just wonder.

MIT Needs a Cleansing

 The NY Times presents a compelling article about MIT and its current management gross negligence. The legal papers filed are also compelling. This was not the MIT I spent years affiliated with. The Augean Stables need cleansing and perhaps this is the first step. The Times notes:

There is no excuse for hypocrisy. There is no excuse for harassment. It seems clear that M.I.T., Harvard and other campuses have failed to uphold their moral and legal responsibilities. Now it falls upon the engine of American justice to impose its consequences and to prove — to this generation and the ones that follow — that this truly is a government “which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”

MIT just announced a Vice President for DEI. Yet Jews get persecuted for their presence. One should read the complaint, it is terrifying, and a shame on the grossly defective Administration. 

MIT, Policies, and Ethics

 The current President of MIT sent out a letter to students, faculty, staff and alumni/ae. She makes four points which are interesting. She notes:

1. Benchmarking and improving student disciplinary processes

MIT’s long-established student disciplinary processes were designed to be fair, proportionate and confidential. Those qualities are vital. However, recent events have spurred some frustration in the community with respect to the timeliness, accountability and transparency of our disciplinary system.

 This is truly a problem of culture. If a speaker is invited to discuss some topic, perhaps opposing the views of some clan established at the Institute, it should be allowed to occur unencumbered unless it incites actions which are material threats to others. It is simple, you do not and cannot shout down speakers. It worked in Germany in the 30s but should not be tolerated at MIT today. The cause is simple, MIT has deliberately changed its culture via its student body and has selected students, and in turn some faculty, who are fundamentally attached to this type of behavior. Proper behavior is like pornography, you know it when you see it. Shouting in someone's face, blocking access to classes or lecture halls, clear threats of violence, well not too hard. Solution, simple, expulsion or termination.

2. A shared understanding of the rights and responsibilities of free expression

In response to a speech controversy in 2021, the faculty approved the MIT Statement on Freedom of Expression and Academic Freedom in late 2022 as the foundation for a strong campus culture of free expression. In its first year, the statement has been tested publicly several times: last spring with a provocative postering campaign, and in multiple moments this fall.

MIT created this problem by its deliberate change of culture. One should try to examine the student body and what was the basis for admission of the culprits opposing free speech. In the old days, students were just too busy with studies to assemble and oppress others. I was a student and faculty member during the Viet Nam War period. Harvard had protests. MIT had virtually none. Yes we had bomb threats, yes we had SDS attacks, but on a day to day basis it was calm. After all, anyone one of us could be drafted in a femto second!

3. Making sure our DEI programs effectively meet campus needs

We will soon announce a new Vice President for Equity and Inclusion (VPEI). With this new role, we have an important opportunity to reflect on and comprehensively assess the structures and programs intended to support our community and create a welcoming environment.

This is the core problem. MIT was based on excellence. Diversity works in environments wherein commonality of performance is the norm. A factory, Government positions, and the like. In a place like MIT, which is highly selective, the choice of people must be blind to anything but thier performance and moral character. That should be the only factors. The DEI cadre has expanded to hundreds of highly paid individuals overseeing the Institute. The needs of the campus are varied. It needs competent facility mangement, lab safety, and of course students and faculty. In the latter two one seeks excellence.

4. Targeted questions in our campus climate survey

To be effective in fighting antisemitism, Islamophobia and hatred based on national origin or ethnicity on campus, we need a clear understanding of the nature and extent of the problem.

 This is an interesting point. Namely a survey to understand the attitudes of students and perforce faculty. MIT has always been a multicultural community. I had students from China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Israel, various European countries, and I was actively participating in the MITES program seeking minority students to bring into the MIT student body. Many of the MITES students I have remained in touch with for over forty years. All have been quite successful. But the question is; what has MIT done in its selection process of students and faculty to actually CREATE this environment?

In my opinion, the point addressed are germane but one suspects that the results will perforce of the people be just a reinforcement of the culture leading to this collapse. Pity!

A University Student Newspaper

 Over the past few months I was impressed by the fairness and depth of coverage by the Harvard Crimson. The reporting was clear, comprehensive and balanced. I have a nexus to Harvard, not as strong as it had been to MIT, and have the habit of reading The Crimson each day. Unlike Harvard however, MIT has no such Institute wide news reporting. The MIT News is a propaganda sheet which has become the classic example of what to think not how to think. 

I think that the MIT students should/must take the example of Harvard and create a newspaper, website if you will, that is a balanced and truthful non-propaganda sheet for the MIT community. Otherwise the propaganda rag of MIT News will form MIT for the years to come. 

In Loco Parentis Circa 2024

 The MIT President, the sole surviving member of the University Presidents telling Congress their tales of woe, writes a letter to the MIT Community (includes us poor Alumni/Alumnae). Following through on the links one observes several facts.

1. MIT no longer helps students how to think but clearly tells them what to think. 

2. I counted hundreds of staff and faculty involved in overhead work as thought police. The costs of this must be enormous! That is why I have refused to donate another penny! The costs of this Stasi like infrastructure is clearly in the tens of millions a year.

3. There are so many goals and wishful thinking that it is impossible to follow any of them. Clarity is gone, transparency is dissolved into a miasma of proto Marxist speak.

4. MIT was know as an egalitarian institution, wherein ones background, genetic makeup, etc were incidental to your ability to produce. Your work was judged by competent peers and not controlled by policy Commissars. 

5. The current President in my opinion may well lead to the demise of the MIT that many of us knew and admired. 

Having been at this blog for now over fifteen years, I saw the changes in our society but I never anticipated that I would ever see the collapse of so cherished institution. MIT was never a place where you went to become indoctrinated by minions of mind changers. It appears to have become that now.

One Suspects that there is a real problem!

 I am not a twitter user but Bill Ackman's account today is explosive but frankly no surprise. Ackman notes:

In light of the affiliated nature of these transactions, in order for MIT to have made these investments in Gorenberg’s wife’s non-profit, the MIT board or a subcommittee designated by the board would have had to approve this investment each year it was made. But why would they have approved this investment for the last five years and I suspect this year as well? The mission of MIT is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century. How is an investment in a non-profit that promotes DEI tools to corporations consistent with MIT’s stated mission? Why would MIT fund an increasing amount of money each year to a board member’s wife’s non-profit , let alone the Chairman’s wife’s company, when the organization does not appear to have gained any traction, let alone any other donors over the last five years? 

 In my years of investing and on Boards the issue of self dealing was always a concern. Thus arms length was the motto of the day. Here we have in my opinion and in my experience a prima facie case of self dealing if the facts are correct.

MIT is truly becoming a collapsing entity. Frankly as I have noted over the years it is most likely the current President's predecessor who may in my opinion bear the fault. 

MIT need, actually demands, an independent white knight to ride in and clear out the stables. Any takers?

UPDATE: I have become aware that Ackman has updated the X posting making not that the donation was made via a rather complex mechanism. Yhis tale may not be over yet.

MIT Corporation Members 1961

 

The above is a list of the MIT Corporation Members from 1961, the year I started college. Note that almost all are from industry, leaders in large corporations at the heart of the growing country. Bush, Killian and Stratton were substantial leaders, all having worked us through WW II. Jimmy Doolittle, of the famous Tokyo raid in 1942, and MIT PhD, was also on the Board.

Try and find any folks like this today on the ECOM. Thus the problems with a President originate from the Corporation ECOM and the like. The ECOM appears to be a fund raising entity, thus the individuals are reflective of today's VC and equivalent community. 

I have noted that the Alumni Assn nominated Corporation members. The Alumni are supposed to elect the Officers of the Alumni Association. However, I cannot recall any request to vote for these people in the last decade. It seems in my opinion to have become a closed club of members who care less.

Openness: Not so much...

 

 MIT alleges to have a set of core values, openness being one. The flags above they argue profess such. However to the bottom left we see the gates closed to all except those approved entry. It is this continuing contrast of realities that makes the current and past administration problematic. Those gates were removed to allow the antisemitic demonstrators to block entry and intimidate any who dare pass. 

The Chair of the Corporation stated his support for the President. He alleges the Executive Committee, with seven outside Directors, are supporters. One wonders why their names were not included.

A Shame

 The MIT News is a daily web site presenting what its writers feel is important items about MIT. After testifying yesterday about the antisemitism prevalent on the MIT campus, the current President's remarks and answers are uncovered. Compare this to the Harvard Crimson, which opined openly on her performance. 

Having been on campus as student and faculty during the Vietnam War period, I saw and experienced the difficulties then. However the Administration was protective of is students, faculty and staff, as compared to the current outsider President. Regrettably in my opinion MIT and its leaders have grossly failed in their duty as leaders.

As an update the MIT News finally presented the MIT President's words. Perhaps they read my posting or perhaps they were just posting more "woke" pieces to flatter their progress to destroy the institution. One need merely to read the question posed and the grossly incompetent answer by the Presidents of the institutions. One suspects that fund raising will shatter. The NY Times has a piece that reinforces some of these issues. Even the NY Post provided a readable summmary of this mess. The Stefanik question was spot on and one that any individual preparing for say a deposition would have a clear answer.

What is a University President?

 What is the purpose of a University President? How has that purpose changed over the past century? We now clearly have a new set of such people and they seem to be implementers of agenda that are dramatically different that their predecessors 50 years ago and even more dramatically than 100 years ago.

 Excerpts from the Inaugural Address by Dr. Julius A. Stratton, eleventh President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, June 15, 1959.

 This institution was created by William Barton Rogers as an expression of faith in certain new concepts of professional education, and from the very outset our academic policies have been directed by a few central ideas. In essence, Rogers maintained that there is dignity and importance in the mastery of useful knowledge; that the foundations of a professional life may profitably be laid in the undergraduate years, combining with and contributing to a liberal education, to the enrichment of both; and that science and engineering can be the legitimate foundations of a higher education. M.I.T. has been built upon these convictions. The contributions of our graduates over the years both at home and abroad provide ample proof of their essential worth.

 The highest goal to which a university may aspire is that its sons and daughters shall be leaders in art and science and that their influence shall be brought powerfully to bear for the welfare of mankind. Throughout the entire history of the Institute, much of the strength of our educational plan has been derived from the rigor and thoroughness of our method. From the day he enters as a freshman, the undergraduate learns to work in depth and to be held accountable for the results. He learns also to work under pressure and to marshal and employ his knowledge under test.

 From this discipline and mastery of fundamentals comes an intellectual self-reliance that will stand him in good stead. But the formal instruction of lectures and classroom is properly only part of the educational process. The intellectual discipline of tests and problems must be supplemented and enlivened by other forces that will arouse and stimulate the impulses of originality latent in every student. We seek to stir our students’ imaginations, to encourage them to break free from the channels of conventional thought, and to teach them to bring to bear upon their problems the facts and methods acquired in the classroom.

 By its very nature, research demands originality in thought and action; and it is in research that the student as well as the faculty can find an outlet for creative interest and energy and share in the intellectual excitement of new discoveries. University research serves but half its purpose if it becomes remote and isolated from the students themselves.

 From his earliest history, man has been driven to build and to do, and the fulfillment of this urge finds its highest expression in the work of the engineer. The engineer is concerned with making and with producing, with converting the yields of pure science to useful products and services. His function is to adapt knowledge to beneficial ends, to find ways and means of solving the practical problems of human existence.

 There is therefore in the education of the engineer the most compelling reason to develop by all possible means the creative and constructive powers of each student. The contributions that the humanities and social sciences have to make to the education of the architect, the scientist, and the engineer have been clearly established.

 Over the past decade the Institute has won wide recognition for the support that has been given to these more liberal aspects of our curricula. The range of our professional activities at M.I.T. has for some time been steadily widening. We are concerned not alone with architecture, science, and engineering for their own sake, but increasingly with fields on which these disciplines have a direct impact in contemporary society. In addition to the obviously related fields of management and economics, we are also active in such areas as psychology, political science, international relations, and other social studies. …

 M.I.T. is a professional school and as such we have an obligation to impart to our students an understanding of both the privileges and responsibilities inherent in the professional estate. Above and beyond all technical competence, the truly professional man must be imbued with a sense of responsibility to employer and client, a high code of personal ethics, and a feeling of obligation to contribute to the public good.

 As a great educational institution, we shall fall short of our mission if we fail to inspire in our students a concern for things of the spirit as well as of the mind. By precept and example we must convey to them a respect for moral values, a sense of the duties of citizenship, a feeling for taste and style, and the capacity to recognize and enjoy the first-rate. M.I.T. is a product of our age. By its aims, its methods, and its ideals it is keyed to the needs and problems of the contemporary world.

 Today, more than ever, the measure of our greatness will be determined by our capacity to educate for leadership.

 JULIUS A. STRATTON

This was from the MIT catalog just before my Freshman year. It meant something then. The leadership of the Institute had made it through WW II and saw the need for continuing improvement and growth. The model worked for several more decades. Today, not so much.  Most of the senior leaders are not from MIT, they are culture warriors, promulgating social ideas often neo Marxist. The MIT of today is unrecognizable in the context of President Stratton's vision.

The Collapse of MIT?

 The MIT News is a rather profligate presenter of politically "perfect" positions. The one noted here is telling of the collapse of a once great institution. They have gone from adults working to save humanity from dictators to immature childish clans where their contribution to humanity are dolls in pink! And the current President of the institution conforms totally with the absurdity! Pity, it was once a world class institution.

MIT Over Time

The following Pics tell a story.

First MIT 1961, when I was a Freshman.

 

 

MIT in 1971 when I finished Grad School

 

MIT today (from Tech Review). We used to have black robes, doctoral stripes and the MIT hood. I gather some "fashion designer" decided to embrace some idea.

 The above tells a powerful story. One that is most likely untellable in today's world. Also MIT is NO FIT!

The End of MIT

 Thanks to all you Marxists! You have achieved what you set out to do. Now let us see what will happen.

According to The Tech at MIT:

MIT graduate students voted to unionize with the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of  America (UE), Chancellor Melissa Nobles and Vice Chancellor Ian Waitz announced in an email to the MIT community April 6. 75% of 3,823 eligible graduate students voted, with 1,785 students (66%) voting in favor of unionization and 912 students (34%) voting against, according to results announced by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Elections were held on April 4–5 in Walker Memorial’s Morss Hall. The MIT Graduate Student Union (GSU), the primary campaign organizers behind the path to unionization, also announced the win on Twitter. They noted that the “historic victory for student-workers at MIT” was by a “landslide margin” and officially renamed themselves as “MIT GSU-UE.” The GSU attached a photo of their first meeting four years ago where “a dozen students in an MIT classroom” were “discussing the needs of graduate workers.” 

Read carefully the last quoted words. You are now "workers", not students, not researchers, not whatever! You are now both watched by the Dean Commissars and controlled by the Committee of Soviets! You have lost your individuality, a construct dating back to 1328 and William of Ockham and personified in the founding of the United States. 

One should remember the phrase: "workers of the world unite". Well a union for MIT Grad students has created a common group of workers. Beware, you will reap what you have sown.

Marx and MIT

 MIT Grad Students are to vote on unionizing. In the old days, yes when I was there, it was a highly competitive environment, kind of like the Marine Corps for techys. Now, under the current administration, it has become the Venezuela of Technical Schools, managed by a collective of administrators and influencers who want to tell everyone what they should be doing. Not the MIT I knew.

My father and brother were in the IBEW, electricians. In New York City even. You see, IBEW members in NYC make small fortunes, based on the union contracts. In addition in unions everyone is equal, unless you are more equal as a union leader. Kind of like Animal Farm.

As a Grad student, you should feel lucky that your tuition is paid for and you get some added experience. I did. Otherwise I would most likely never have finished. The competitive atmosphere of MIT back in the 60s made for the competitive bent of the entrepreneur. Unions despise compensation based on individual performance. They demand uniformity and compliance with the rules of the union bosses. It is the antithesis of a scientific and engineering environment.

Harvard managed to unionize, hopefully MIT does not see it that way. BUT, and this is critical, the management of the place has seeded the grad students with those compliant with such environment. The current management has trained the students perforce of the multiplicity of overpaid and unneeded Deans etc to indoctrinate students and moreover the make certain that no creative and competitive individual is allowed.

One surmises that the establishment of a union is just the next step in this ever forward vision of Marxist compliance. You see, Marx stipulates that individuals do not exist, or more strongly must not exist, but groups do. The proletariat is a class, a class that must conflict with the ruling class, but done so as a group, a class. Thus unions mandate that people belong to this class. It is, in my opinion, in an institution like MIT a truly Marxist step.

As an afterthought, unions make everyone equal, one is part of the grand proletariat. If so, and say someone wins a Nobel Prize, do all get to share in the prize since by definition we are no longer individuals but we are a single mass of people.

Alumni Magazines?

Alumni magazines are typically elements of the fund raising mechanism of universities. They tend to tell positive stories about what the University is doing, the success stories of alumni, and how alumni are giving back. Harvard and Columbia send out prototypical magazines. Always worth a scan, and as one gets older, well you scan departed alumni. But they contain nice pictures and often incentivize giving.

Now come Technology Review, the MIT "alumni" magazine. It has been out of the hands of the Institute after some business type apparently sold it off to a third party. It has become in my opinion a slanted anti-alumni rag.

Take the current comment in an editorial:

I am writing this on April 10, 2020. Twenty-five days have passed since San Francisco became the first US city to impose a stay-at-home order on its residents. It feels like six months. As the covid-19 pandemic has advanced across the planet at dizzying speed, economies and health-care systems have toppled like dominos. At this moment, a tracker run by Johns Hopkins University shows 1,617,204 confirmed cases of coronavirus infection and 97,039 deaths worldwide. That includes 18,279 deaths in Italy, 16,686 in the US, 15,843 in Spain, 12,210 in France, and 7,978 in the UK. By the time I finish writing, these numbers will all have markedly increased. In China, by contrast, the death toll hovers at around 3,340. This week, people began emerging from lockdown in Wuhan, the city to which the outbreak was mostly contained. New York City’s official toll is now 5,150, and that doesn’t count people who were never tested for covid-19. In the first five days of April, 1,125 New Yorkers died on the streets or at home, an eightfold increase over the same period last year. The real toll, in other words, is surely at least double that of Wuhan, which is a larger city, and continues to climb at a terrifying rate.

OK, I get it, the guy is in San Francisco, apparently thinks China is great and always tells the truth and that we are all morons in New York. Great pitch for fund raising.

Perhaps some person in the "giving" group may want to rethink this brilliant decision. Do we really want to be told by someone never affiliated with MIT living in San Francisco how we should be more akin to the PRC?