Alumni of a university are certainly a large part, arguably the largest segment of its “community of scholars.” So when a university president or other high official publicly opines about something, he or she implies that that opinion represents the thoughts of a majority of the community. Before the Dobbs decision, several consecutive MIT presidents offered opinions to the public without bothering to check whether those opinions really reflected the thoughts of a majority; they evidently assumed it did, so validating those thoughts apparently didn’t occur to them. Chuck Vest filed an amicus opinion when the Michigan affirmative a tion case went to SCOTUS, Susan Hockfield appeared before the Us Senate talking about “global warming,” and Raphael Reif was more than happy to go along with the DEI mishegas and publicly cancelling the Carlson lecture.
Which was his undoing, and which, in no small measure, brought about his becoming aware of the large megaphone effect. Plus the fact that he was completely out of touch with a large segment of the people he thought he represented. His defense of cancelling the Carlson lecture was flimsy at best. What he hadn’t anticipated was the magnitude of the immune response that it would elicit. First, it exposed a disgracefully anti-freedom culture that had apparently been festering for some time. And it coalesced over 1,000 (and still growing) like-minded people to oppose that culture: we formed the MIT Free Speech Alliance, MFSA. Reif became aware that caving in to a small but vocal group of protesters did nothing except show them that be vocal and obnoxious was sufficient for them to get their way. The tail wagged the dog.
Reif hid behind the rhetoric that “The issues this situation has brought to the surface are complex.”* They are anything but complex. It was simply that he and the EAPS department were spineless and voluntarily impotent. So when Dobbs came along, he issued a letter saying that he had received many communications bemoaning it, but that people on both sides of the issue have strong feelings and that it would be inappropriate for him to comment. Looked like he had finally read the memo. By then he had already given notice of stepping down as president.
He didn’t mention the absurdity of complaining about a SCOTUS decision on abortion to the president of a STEM university. What did the snowflakes expect him to do? Reopen the comfort rooms that sprung up when Trump was elected? Jeez….
* I’ve kept the letter and my reply to it. Furnished on request.