MIT Shuts Down Internal Grant Database After It Was Used to Research School’s Israel Ties
theintercept.com
Amid Gaza protests, a report from MIT Coalition for Palestine details research funded by Israel on drone swarms and underwater surveillance.

The Israeli Ministry of Defense has poured more than $3.7 million into developing warfare technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 2015, according to a recent report from students and faculty organizing against the war in Gaza.

The report was published last month by the MIT Coalition for Palestine, which represents 19 student and faculty groups on campus, including MIT Divest, MIT Jews for Collective Liberation, and MIT Faculty and Staff for Palestine.

After the student organizers began further probing grant information, the school took down the grant software used for the coalition’s research, said Rich Solomon, a member and MIT graduate student who worked on the report. “MIT has engaged in a sustained and organized campaign of disinformation and propaganda in order to silence and suppress this information,” Solomon told The Intercept.

  • BertramDitore@lemm.eeEnglish
    1553·
    3 days ago

    “Come study with us! As a pillar of academia, we’ll hide knowledge from you whenever it suits our political and financial interests. Higher education is all about close-mindedness and conservatism after all. We promise none of our students will be taught anything that makes them feel uncomfortable about reality. Welcome to college!”

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
      72·
      2 days ago

      Higher education is all about close-mindedness and conservatism after all.

      In a capitalist economy, higher education is about maximizing profit.

    • bestagon@lemmy.worldEnglish
      143·
      2 days ago

      Could academia today be seen in the future in a similar light as we look at the medieval church? It was the gatekeeper of philosophical education (largely on classist principles), to things like literacy, and used humanity’s curiosity and hunger for knowledge as a carrot on a stick to buy into an oppressive status quo.

    • underwire212@lemm.eeEnglish
      6·
      2 days ago

      Yes this is actually exactly how they want to present themselves. More donor money from guess who?

  • Bronzebeard@lemm.eeEnglish
    118·
    3 days ago

    So by hiding their ties…they’ve exposed their ties.

    One would have thought the administrators at MIT would also be smart…guess not.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
      41·
      2 days ago

      By hiding their ties, they can deny, delay, and depose anyone who prints statements to the contrary.

      One would have thought the administrators at MIT would also be smart

      Shutting the door on public inquiry is a long term play that involves a little short term pain. But nobody is going to remember this headline in another news cycle or three.

      Admins are banking on BDS falling down the memory hole like so many other failed civil rights initiatives.

    • floofloof@lemmy.caEnglish
      8·
      2 days ago

      This is worth reading all the way through. MIT takes money from Israel’s defense ministry to research better ways to genocide Palestinians, and subjects any student who points it out to violence and legal attacks.