I refuse to teach students who lack basic critical thinking skills—or who condemn my Jewish identity.
January 9, 2024
For most academics, getting a job at MIT is a dream. Until October 7, it
was for me. But in December, I resigned from my post because I could no
longer deal with the pervasive antisemitism on MIT’s campus.
How I got there is a story that is unique to me, but it’s also a story
about what’s happening across American academia today.
I was born in Mexico to a Jewish family. I immigrated to the States in
the 1980s to obtain a master’s at Harvard, and then moved to Israel
for my PhD in computer science from Hebrew University. In 1989, I
started working as an assistant professor at MIT, and after a career in
the financial industry, I returned in 2019 as a lecturer.
As a computer scientist, I normally don’t have time for politics. But
when Hamas invaded Israel on Saturday, October 7, brutally murdering
1,200 Israelis, I emailed the head of my department and urged her to
issue a statement of support for Israelis and Jews. I assumed the reason
was obvious. The university had sent statements before on various
issues—such as a message condemning the murder of George Floyd in 2020
and another standing in solidarity with the Asian community amid a wave
of hate crimes in 2021.
On Monday, the head of my department and its office of Diversity,
Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) sent out a message titled “A time for
community support of each other.”
The message was riddled with equivocations, without mentioning the
barbarity of Hamas’s attack, stating only that “we are deeply
horrified by the violence against civilians and wish to express our deep
concern for all those involved.” I was shocked that my
institution—led by people who are meant to see the world
rationally—could not simply condemn a brutal terrorist act.
That same day, the protests on campus started [2]. Students chanted
“Free Palestine” and “From the river to the sea” with fury and
at times glee, like they were reciting catchy songs instead of slogans
demanding the erasure of the Jewish people.
Even worse, faculty members started endorsing this behavior. One DEI
officer at MIT liked [3] an October 17 post on Twitter stating that
“Israel doesn’t have a right to exist, it’s an illegitimate
settler-colony like the US.” On October 18, a renowned faculty member
in the neuroscience department accused [4] Israel of committing
“genocide” on Twitter. Then, the next day, she tweeted [5] that her
department was seeking a “diverse pool of candidates” for a
tenure-track position in her department’s “inclusive community.” I
remember thinking, with bitter irony, that Jewish academics need not
apply.
The following month, our faculty newsletter [6] was almost entirely
dedicated to the protests, with several professors parroting anti-Israel
propaganda. One professor wrote an anonymous editorial [7] “Thanking
the Protesting Students” for “reminding us that organizing and
voicing dissent—even when it is loud or uncomfortable—_is_ in fact
one of our ‘essential activities.’ ” In another editorial called
“Standing Together Against Hate: From the River to the Sea, From Gaza
to MIT,” linguistics professor Michel DeGraff wrote [8] that the
protesters calling for intifada “have given me hope for the future.”
The only voices in the newsletter standing up for Jews were Jewish. But
we are too few to fight this battle.
Though I cringed as I read these faculty letters, and shuddered as I
walked by protests on campus, nothing has hurt more than watching the
Israeli and Jewish students—who comprise fewer than 6 percent of the
MIT student body—suffer.
On November 14, one of the Israeli PhD students in my department
confided to me that he was taking a few weeks off from the semester to
return to Israel—an active war zone—because he needed to escape the
toxicity of MIT’s campus. This week, he told me he is considering
leaving MIT without completing his PhD.
I am truly in awe of emerging leaders like Talia Khan, an MIT graduate
student, who boldly spoke [9] in front of Congress one month ago,
explaining how her peers told her the young people murdered at the Nova
music festival in Israel on October 7 “deserved to die because they
were partying on stolen land.” She has served as a powerful voice for
the Jewish community, particularly when so many others have been silent.
To the Israeli kids on campus, October 7 is not just some terrorist
attack. Every single one of them knows a victim from that day—someone
who was killed, or maimed, or had a loved one taken from them. They are
now at the age where their friends back in Israel are fighting in Gaza.
Meanwhile, their “peers” on MIT’s campus are labeling them “baby
killers” responsible for “committing genocide.”
Mauricio Karchmer. (Courtesy of the author)
And despite all they’ve been through, the leadership at MIT has failed
them.
In December, MIT’s president Sally Kornbluth gave her infamous
testimony in front of Congress. When Rep. Elise Stefanik asked Kornbluth
if calling for the genocide of Jews violated MIT’s code of conduct,
she said only if it is “targeted at individuals, not when making
public statements.” She said that the chants of “intifada” could
only be considered antisemitic depending “on the context.”
I sent a series of emails to President Kornbluth long before this
hearing, begging her to speak out in support of Jewish students. “They
want to hear that the institute is with them,” I wrote. “They are
suffering, as I am sure you know.” She was always prompt in
responding, and she told me about her attempts to meet with Jewish
students by attending dinner at our campus Hillel. I appreciated her for
that.
I don’t believe she is the problem. I think the problem at MIT—and
across American academia—runs much deeper than the figureheads.
Students at MIT and other elite colleges have been radicalized by
faculty members who have encouraged and even led the student body to
become social justice warriors, supporting their highly progressive
political beliefs. America’s brightest minds are being manipulated by
a force they don’t even understand to adopt a narrow view of the
world. That this is happening at a place where they’re meant to be
exploring a wealth of ideas and have their thinking challenged shocks
me.
This thinking has led to an illiberalism on MIT’s campus, where
certain speakers have been canceled [10] for having the wrong views. In
fall of 2020, environmental scientist Dorian Abbot was uninvited from
speaking at the university for expressing unfavorable ideas about
affirmative action (even though his talk was about climate and life on
other planets). But two years later, MIT’s Women’s & Gender Studies
department and Coalition Against Apartheid co-hosted [11]Mohammed
El-Kurd, a Palestinian poet who has said [12] that Israelis have “an
unquenchable thirst for Palestinian blood.”
Over 65 percent of students from each MIT undergraduate class—or
around 800 students—enroll in my Introduction to Algorithms course
every year. When I looked at the names of the leaders of some of the
most violent anti-Israel groups on our campus, I found a handful of my
students on the list. Then I found out that one of my former teaching
assistants—a bright young woman—was one of the organizers of the
Coalition Against Apartheid and helped bring Mohammed El-Kurd to campus.
I loved my job. But I realized there and then I could no longer train
kids in algorithms, knowing they might one day spread this ideology even
further through their advanced knowledge. I knew I could no longer be a
part of a system that foments antisemitism. In late November, I sat on
the ferry I used to take from MIT’s campus back home and decided that
I should resign. I have worked hard throughout my professional life to
have choices, so I have the luxury of acting on my principles. A few
weeks later, on December 13, I handed in my resignation to the head of
the department.
My letter stated, in part: “I cannot continue teaching Algorithms to
those who lack the most basic critical thinking skills or emotional
intelligence. Nor can I teach those who condemn my Jewish identity or my
support for Israel’s right to exist in peace with its neighbors.”
My boss asked me to reconsider. But my mind was already made up.
It has been one month since I’ve resigned, and for now, I’m spending
a lot of time reflecting. I still have hope MIT can return to its
roots—offering one of the best science and engineering educations in
the world—and that the good forces can beat the bad.
MIT’s mission is to train the next generation of leaders. But right
now, I’m terrified of the thought that today’s students could lead
anything in the future.
_MAURICIO KARCHMER IS A LECTURER AT MIT. HIS LAST DAY WILL BE JANUARY
15. FOR ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE ON THE CRISIS IN HIGHER EDUCATION, READ
ECONOMIST KENDRICK MORALES’S FREE PRESS ESSAY, “I WAS FIRED FOR
SETTING ACADEMIC STANDARDS [13].” _
Links:
——
[1] https://www.thefp.com/p/resigned-mit-october-7-antisemitism
[2] https://www.instagram.com/p/CyJ6UAMptab/?img_index=1
[3] https://twitter.com/bethanyshondark/status/1716831271178117599
[4] https://twitter.com/Nancy_Kanwisher/status/1714616393360937034
[5] https://twitter.com/Nancy_Kanwisher/status/1714977544909242534
[6] https://fnl.mit.edu/issue/november-december-2023/
[7]
https://fnl.mit.edu/november-december-2023/thanking-the-protesting-students/
[8]
https://fnl.mit.edu/november-december-2023/standing-together-against-hate-from-the-river-to-the-sea-from-gaza-to-mit/
[9] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMmZIBI7k1k
[10] https://www.thefp.com/p/mit-abandons-its-mission-and-me
[11] https://twitter.com/MITWGS/status/1580634347597463555
[12] https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/mohammed-el-kurd
[13] https://www.thefp.com/p/i-was-fired-for-setting-academic-standards
https://www.thefp.com/p/resigned-mit-october-7-antisemitism
Hat tip to Yuri
budbromley 