..read more

(A guest post by Lydia Liu) I am a scientist by training, with a Ph.D. from UNC-Chapel Hill, but I found my passion in writing about politics and social and cultural issues. In Spring 2018, I launched a WeChat blog, Moshang USA, which reached more than a quarter-million followers and millions of monthly views in three years. The blog tells the truth of real American life to Chinese immigrants in the USA and worldwide, and to people in China as well. Throughout the life of the blog there was constant censorship, or it could have grown even bigger. WeChat suspended the Moshang blog one time, an ..read more

      This post collects articles on free speech issues that might be of interest to readers. The boldfacing is ours. (1)  “How Ideological Coups Happen: Gradually, and Then All at Once: A Case Study in Ideological Succession,”  Stéphane Sérafin,  Wesley Yang’s Substack (April 16).      “I’ve tried to do so as much as possible, as I did when I cut all reference to indigenous issues from my property law syllabus this year. A tragedy, since the material is both challenging and important—especially if we really are intent on ad ..read more

  This post collects four April 2022  articles on free speech issues that might be of interest to readers of this blog.  (1) “My ACTA "Hero" acceptance speech,” Heterodox Stem Substack, Dorian Abbot (April 8).      “The help of alumni and the public will be necessary to effect this solution. Although faculty can and should form academic freedom lobby groups, many faculty are so focused on their research that they will not participate. Even worse, there seem to be entire departments full of faculty who are antagonistic to free expression. So ironica ..read more

MIT is the preeminent university for science, technology, engineering and mathematics in the United States, and arguably the world. MIT has earned its reputation over 150 years as the leading university for training scientists, conducting scientific research, and championing the application of technology to improve the world. MIT has traditionally set the standard against which other technical universities measure themselves. Scientific knowledge is vast and profound. The advancement of scientific knowledge is the ever evolving quest for truth about the universe in which we live. Scientists st ..read more

The MFSA Free Speech Hotline has had its first tip. It's not inside information, just an anonymous note letting us know about something related to free speech at MIT. Good!  Do send us stuff like that; we may not know about it otherwise. Not every tip has to be about how President Reif ordered a professor to be suicided to prevent him from leaking information on how the Administration was looting the Institute treasury to feed his videogame habit.      The tip said:  Steve Kirsch (stevekirsch.substack.com), after whom an EECS auditorium is named, has bee ..read more

If you ever come across anyone who says "Free speech is violence,” you may find useful this September 1, 2021 FIRE article by Nadine Strossen and Greg Lukianoff: “Free speech does not equal violence: Part 1 of answers to bad arguments against free speech from Nadine Strossen and Greg Lukianoff”. On campus, I often run into people — not only students, but professors — who seem to think they’re the first to notice that the speech/violence distinction is a social construct. They conclude that this means it’s an arbitrary distinction — and that, since it’s arbitrary, the line can be put where the ..read more

The Board of the MIT Free Speech Alliance wrote an op-ed for The Tech published February 17. It starts: “Anybody connected with MIT has likely heard of the “Abbot Affair” by now. Dorian Abbot, a geophysicist from the University of Chicago, was invited to give the prestigious John Carlson Lecture, an annual public event of the MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. Though it is unrelated to his research or lecture topic, Abbot is an outspoken advocate for “Merit, Fairness, and Equality” (MFE), in opposition to the “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) initiati ..read more

A Post by FIRE’s Komi German "Ever since the shooting of George Floyd, it felt like anything you said could be used against you, even if you had good intentions and even if you agreed with the protests, which is why I've decided to remain silent." – self-identified liberal male undergraduate MIT student, class of 2022 "As a recent immigrant from Europe, I was trying to explain how Americans do have a culture and that America isn’t ‘the most racist’ country, but ended up being called a racist ignorant bigot by my peers instead." – self-identified libertarian female undergraduate MIT student, cl ..read more

Background      The MIT Alumni Association sponsored the “MIT Alumni Association Town Hall on Freedom of Expression and Community” on November 22, 2021. Although this purpose was not stated in the announcement of the town hall, the meeting was held in response to the controversy surrounding the cancellation of a speech by Dr. Dorian Abbot that is profiled elsewhere on the MIT Free Speech Alliance (MFSA) web site. This town hall followed two similar town halls which MIT conducted internally for faculty and staff the previous week. The MIT Alumni Association town hall wa ..read more