He's being hyperbolic; MIT is still a very friendly hacker school. Aaron DID break the law, and I would not expect ANY school to stand behind him when he blatantly violated the law. It's pretty simple: don't break the law, much less using MIT resources to do so.

That said, they could have handled it with a lot more finesse, especially when it is such horrible publicity for them. I suspect this has more to do with eager lawyers than it does MIT's culture.

Keep in mind that MIT is an academic organization and is committed to, well, academics, not politics; e.g. Stallman did not belong there anyway.