I just figured MIT was making “easy” ethical statements. In general the examples that MIT spoke out about had no opposing parties, had no impact to MIT, and no repercussions. So MIT didn’t really have to care or make a sacrifice to speak out for Dreamers or against Charlottesville and whatnot.

But for anything that requires sacrifice like MBS not giving an endowment, they suck it up. This is what sucks as wishy washy populism as it doesn’t reflect any insight into an orginizarion’s leadership’s values.

MIT is likely concerned with increasing its power. Thus is part of the establishment. Doing lots of great things, but part of the establishment.

Thus their total cop out over Aaron Schwartz back to when they didn’t admit their first black professor until 1956 (http://diverseeducation.com/article/7136/).

There’s a really popular and well respected engineering school that has a big problem with sexual assault. They issue statements and sponsor marches and stuff. But drag their feet on any actions like removing organizations that frequently have members commit sexual assault.

I just consider most of the statements from universities PR and virtue signaling unless it’s acompanied with allocation of resources.