Why I Refused to Attend my 50th MIT Class Reunion
Personal Essay of Dissent Concerning the 50th Reunion of the MIT Class of 1970
Full Text
NOTE: Initially rejected by the editor of our reunion book as inappropriate, this short essay was later accepted as a special contribution by an official class committee. Nonetheless, the publishing company hired to produce the book then refused to include it. Our class president refused to allow on-line discussion neither of the process of censorship nor my proposal to disinvite MIT president Reif from our reunion events (to which he had invited himself). COVID 19 compelled the reunion to be cancelled.
I’ve decided not to attend our 50th reunion. My pleasure in embracing my classmates would have been overwhelmed with sadness by our inability to manage for ourselves whom we let infiltrate our circles. MIT president Reif is expected to attend at least five reunion events. If one compares him with the current USA president, they may think I am not being fair. Well, I have decided not to live in the USA, and despite Trump’s barbarism, I am thinking more of Hannah Arendt’s insight into the “banality of evil.” Our beloved MIT prez “Hojo” fit that description well—as I pointed out when I reviewed his book-length memoir (see my website http://eroseffect.com). “Normal” and seemingly benevolent people with power manage murderous systemic problems with calm equanimity. At our reunion, I refuse to come face-to-face with a man who is helping facilitate the destruction of the planet and freedom on so many levels.
Despite my appeals for discussion, MIT president Reif has been unilaterally included in our reunion despite his acceptance and attempted coverup of $800,000 from Jeffrey Epstein, purveyor of innocent youths to billionaires and princes. While Reif has “apologized” and promised to send that amount of money to survivors of sexual abuse, his actions cannot simply be swept under the rug. While possibly a symbol of good intentions, his sending money to survivors is also be seen as an attempt to buy his continuing presidency. His leadership of MIT has seen the Institute expand and enhance its existing corporate ties to a military-political- corporate system with all its criminal activities—something our class heroically opposed—and something the powers-that-be do not want to jeopardize.
Among other things, Reif oversaw Royal Dutch Shell’s recent multimillion dollar contribution to MIT and sanctioned a decision to rename one of the large auditoria after Shell at the time when our planetary crisis cries out for action opposing Big Oil. Shell has global power that it arrogantly wields. The Dutch royal family has never apologized for its Nazi ties. Shell was such an ardent and unrelenting supporter of apartheid in South Africa that even the City of Boston boycotted it. Yet MIT and Reif embrace it.
On the same day that Reif informed the faculty that he had indeed accepted money from Epstein, MIT published an obituary of David Koch in which not one word was said about Koch’s role in funding climate change deniers nor any of his other nefarious actions. Instead MIT wrote that he was:
“one of the most important benefactors in MIT’s modern history.... At any given moment around MIT, beneficiaries of Koch’s gifts included faculty with endowed professorships, students with fellowships he supported — and toddlers in the childcare center he helped found.”
See: LA Times, How MIT whitewashed the climate change denialism of a major donor, David Koch
As MIT president, Reif has also overseen the creation of the new $1 billion Schwarzman College of Computing after obtaining a $350 million donation from Schwarzman for the new college, all the while Schwarzman’s Blackstone group is involved in burning down the Amazon, exacerbating the housing crisis, and other profitable, but unethical, endeavors. Not to mention, the dean of the new college is a director of Amazon, a company with huge stake in ICE’s deportation machine and the surveillance state. Adding insult to injury, Reif even invited mass murderer Henry Kissinger to speak about ethics at the opening celebration of the college! So much for “ethical computing” and “serious concern for social implications of computing,” which are supposedly part of the new College’s mission.
Reif may have apologized for his lying about Epstein and accepting his money, but that does not excuse his systematic undermining of MIT’s promised role to “best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.” Hundreds of people have already called for him to step down. For our class implicitly to endorse him runs contrary to the values many of us have lived during the last 50 years.