Remarks Delivered to Faculty Meeting
19 December 2007
I delivered these remarks extemporaneously and wrote them down from memory a few
weeks later. The two versions differ in only small ways here and there.
When I spoke at the faculty meeting on October 17, I said I was a great admirer of our
administration, and today there is nothing I wish to amend or subtract from that. I
also said that I hoped my friends in the administration will not think me disrespectful
or disloyal or ungrateful if I step across the aisle from time to time to join the
loyal opposition on certain matters. I still hope so.
At the faculty meeting on May 16, I rose to say I thought the press release announcing
the resignation of Marilee Jones was sanctimonious and meanspirited. I asked if it was
a sign of a shift toward a more corporate and legal atmosphere and away from a collegial
and community-oriented atmosphere.
Many of my colleagues have told me, spontaneously, that they remember my question; no one
remembers the answer. The words in the response seemed to fall into legitimate phrases,
but they gave little comfort. To me, the real answer came, on Friday afternoon,
September 21, when MIT issued a press statement labeling a student's actions as
“reckless,” and the answer was affirmed when the Chancellor apparently told The
Tech that “It seemed like the right word at the time...we didn't know the facts.”
Because I did not like that answer, I combined with Professor
Manning to introduce the resolution before you. I said at the time that it was not
really about Star Simpson or a particular incident. It is about who we are as a
community, how we function, and how we are perceived.
Accordingly, as I outline what has happened since we introduced our resolution, my range
will seem broad, but always consistent with identifying the substantive differences of opinion
exposed by the Star Simpson incident.
Shortly after the October faculty meeting, Professor Sussman and I went for a bicycle
ride around the Concord–Carlisle loop. It was a glorious day; the sun was shining, and
Professor Sussman lectured beautifully on the physics of the bicycle, with special
emphasis on the relationship between fork angle and stability. Unfortunately, my wallet
went missing.
The following Monday I started replacing my cards. I was most eager to replace my MIT ID
card. My first impression was that it is an improvement; more colorful than the
battleship gray card that I imagine most of you still carry. But when I got back to the
Stata Center and pulled out my card to buy a cup of coffee, I noted what I thought was a
mistake. I am conspicuously identified not as a professor, not as a member of the
faculty, but rather as an employee. Now I suppose in some legal sense I am an employee,
and perhaps President Hockfield's card says employee, too—I hope not—but
nevertheless, it grates on me. I can't imagine introducing myself at public-service
meeting somewhere as an employee of MIT, and I think people would be astonished
if I did.
I don't mean, by the way, to be elitist. Members of the staff at MIT, in every capacity,
are as hard working, dedicated, and important as anyone. I would be happy with a card
we could all carry, and it could say colleague, or comrade, or best of
all, perhaps
constituent.
I thought for a while of burning my ID card ceremoniously, but then it occurred to me that
there is an engineering solution. Duct tape. Now I can be anything I want, and I can
change from time to time.
It is, I suppose, a nugatory example, but it is an example nevertheless of someone making
decisions for me that doesn't seem to understand universities, that doesn't seem to
understand MIT, and certainly doesn't understand me.
What else? The Chair of the Faculty has instructed us, in the November/December issue of
the Faculty Newsletter, on the subject of discussion. I had some trouble
decrypting the article, but I think I have been taught that we should speak face to face
when we differ, but only if the discussion has an low temperature. Alas, I think that
would limit me to comments on the food in the faculty lunch room, because when an issue
really matters, the temperature of my remarks tends to rise with the importance of the
issue, and so it is today.
And then there are the dogs that have not barked in the night. Months have past
and no communication has passed from the administration to Star Simpson. And there has
been no indication that the administration regrets having issued the statement in which
she was characterized as “reckless.”
There was a meeting of the Faculty Policy Committee, which I attended as a guest, at
which the Chancellor shared a bit more about how the word “reckless” was selected. He
reported that it was arrived at, after many hours of deliberation, by senior members
of administration and that the campus police, the medical department, and others were
consulted. I was surprised that he did not mention the Vice President for External
Affairs or the Institute Counsel, but then, in an epiphanous moment, it occurred to me
that they are part of the senior administration.
Medical? I don't suppose they were asked if Star had been in to have her tonsils looked
at. I hoped they responded to the questions put to them with the blank stare that has so
famously characterized our psychiatrists for many decades, but perhaps that is a tradition
that is fading along with others.
We also heard the Chancellor explain that the public thinks of us as arrogant and that
the public demands immediate answers. I thought we could have said that she was a
student, that she was or seemed likely to be charged, and to ensure her right to a fair
trial, MIT would have no further comment while the matter was in the courts. Would the
public not have understood that?
The Chancellor also indicated that he had been working up some sort of principles and he
recited a preliminary version. I have not seen the version he intends to introduce
today, so I will have to anticipate from a version that has been circulated, although
not to me and not universally.
I anticipate that one principle is that we should obey the law. Professor
Manning and I concur. We should obey the law, except, perhaps, in cases of deliberate
civil disobedience.
Another is that we should choose our words carefully, or perhaps more carefully.
But many senior people worked for hours to arrive at the word reckless. Was this
a careful choice? Was it selected instead of a more damning word?
We should avoid compromising a student's right to a fair trial. I thought the
right to a fair trial is guaranteed by our Constitution. Why are we merely to avoid
compromising that right?
We should support our students. We handed a Star Simpson a list of lawyers with
no communication for the next three months. Is that support?
And I expect there will be some complicated principle about establishing context
or something that essentially gives our external relations people free rein to do just
about anything.
These principles look like what they are. Porous, post facto statements intended to
justify a past blunder, rather than nobly conceived ideas intended to guide us in moments
in which circumstances interfere with reflective thinking.
But these principles frighten me in another way because they are so easily caricatured.
Just ask for what they are intended. Are they meant to represent a policy shift? I can
see the headline in Voodoo now: MIT announces a dramatic policy shift; laws to be
obeyed.
Perhaps they are meant as instruction for middle-level administration. Whom have we hired
that doesn't understand that MIT should not interfere with a person's right to a fair trial?
Or maybe they are merely affirmation of established policy. If so, let us remember the dog
that did not bark in the night: a list of lawyers and three months of silence. Is this a
principle-derived practice we want to affirm?
Or perhaps the list is a mixture of shift, instruction, and affirmation. There are 729
possibilities. How will our external affairs people explain to the public which
interpretation is the right one?
But perhaps the list is best noted for what it misses. Not a word about people in our
community other than students, and nothing that suggests we will bother to talk with the
student or the student's representative before we characterize them.
We do not want these principles. We need just one principle: MIT takes care of its
own. And let the principle be interpreted by what Lincoln called the better angels of
our nature, rather than the lesser angels of lawyers and publicists. Then, we can have
an MIT we can be proud of. An MIT we can be loyal to. And an MIT at which we can do the
work that the nation and the world expect of us.
On the matter of loyalty, I want to speak to the relation between loyalty and leadership.
Many years ago, as a freshly minted member of the Naval Research Advisory Committee, I
was touring the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms, California.
The tour guide seemed exceptionally knowledgeable, and although in civilian clothes,
carried herself with military bearing, so I asked, “Are you an ex-marine?” She said,
“Professor Winston, there are live marines and dead marines; there are no ex-marines.”
Where does such loyalty come from? Perhaps some of the explanation lies in their motto,
Semper Fidelis. Always faithful, not sometimes faithful, not faithful if
the public relations people don't object. Always faithful.
But there is more to it of course, and to check out my impressions, I called a friend of
mine, a retired vice admiral, a pilot in back in the Vietnam era, and asked him what it
is about the Marines. “Well,” he said, “it's all about leadership.” “What does that
mean?” I asked, “What makes a good officer?”
“To start with, the officers take care of the men and women who serve under them. They
work hard to ensure that those men and women know their mission, that they are well
trained and well equipped, well fed and well rested, and helped and encouraged to
develop their careers.”
“Yes,” I said to myself, “just what I expected.” And after we chatted a bit about this
and that, and the conversation was coming to a close, he said, “Oh, and there is one more
thing about the Marines. They never leave their wounded behind.”
They never leave their wounded behind. There is no instruction; none is needed. There
are no rules about when you can leave the wounded behind because you do not leave the
wounded behind. You do not think about whether you should; you do not consult with the
public relations people; you just do not leave the wounded behind.
Did we leave Star Simpson behind? She was not wounded in a physical sense, thank god, and
it wasn't a battle, but we left her behind. In fact, we handed her over to the fourth
estate and they cut her to pieces. Try your search engine on “Star Simpson reckless,”
and you will see page after page saying false and terrible things in close proximity to
remarks about how MIT characterized her as “reckless.”
During the past few days I have sent messages to many of you asking you to come to this
meeting, to listen to colleagues speak to both sides of the resolution before us, to
participate, and then to vote your conclusions. I asked for no response but I was
surprised to get 50. A few, mostly from the Sloan School, showed political maturity and
merely thanked me for raising important issues, but the rest with only three exceptions,
were highly supportive. Two of the exceptions agreed with the sentiments behind the
resolution but disagreed with our approach; one, encouraged perhaps by the word
“reckless,” adheres to the false idea that the incident was a deliberate prank or hack gone
bad. Three exceptions, a few guarded encouragements, and the rest highly supportive.
So I thought this resolution would pass.
Now, I think not. I have heard, in a manner that makes me believe it, that the
administration has asked some deans, who have in turn asked some department chairs, to
ask faculty to come to this meeting and support the administration. We all know the power
of department chairs. They control tenure. They control raises. They have enormous
power to reward or punish. Are they here? Are they watching how their faculty vote? I'm
proud to say that my department chairman is here and he is not watching, but what about
others?
How can this happen? I asked people to come and participate. Someone asked people in
power to encourage their faculty to vote with the administration. Somehow I'm reminded
of Section 9.5 of Policies and Procedures, which stipulates that “Harassment is
any conduct, ... that creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive educational, work,
or living environment.” Someone, it seems to me, has a lot of explaining to do.
Well, some of my friends have told me I'm getting into trouble and suggest that I should
adopt a pseudonym, a sort of nom de guerre. I've decided they're right,
but I haven't much imagination in these matters, so I will merely adopt the name of a
distant relative. It isn't much of a change, really. I plan just to drop my family
name in favor of my middle name. So if you should see articles in the Faculty
Newsletter by Patrick Henry, you'll have a good idea who it is.
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