MIT has canceled a professor’s lecture on climate and planets after a “Twitter mob” pushed the university to disinvite him over his political views.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology in nixing the John Carlson Lecture this month cited the “current distractions” following the University of Chicago professor’s comments on diversity, equity and inclusion.
Dorian Abbot, the Chicago professor in the university’s Department of the Geophysical Sciences, was set to give the MIT lecture — which is hosted by the MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences.
But he says the lecture was canceled because of an “outrage mob on Twitter” that demanded he be uninvited after he argued that diversity, equity and inclusion on campus “violates the ethical and legal principle of equal treatment.”
The John Carlson Lecture is a major honor in his field, he said.
“It is an annual public talk given to a large audience and my topic was ‘climate and the potential for life on other planets,'” Abbot wrote. “On September 22, a new Twitter mob, composed of a group of MIT students, postdocs, and recent alumni, demanded that I be uninvited.
“It worked. And quickly,” he added. “On September 30 the department chair at MIT called to tell me that they would be canceling the Carlson lecture this year in order to avoid controversy.”
This MIT public outreach lecture will not be held this year, MIT said.
At the same time, Abbot was invited by the department to present his scientific work on MIT’s campus to students and faculty. Abbot “embraced” this offer, and the department has been working with him on setting a date, according to MIT.
“The Carlson Lecture isn’t a scientific talk for fellow scientists. It has a very specific format and public outreach component, seeking to build public understanding of climate science and to inspire and engage with area high school students,” said Professor Robert van der Hilst, the head of the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences.
“We felt that with the current distractions we would not be in a position to hold an effective outreach event,” he added. “I made this decision at my discretion, after consulting with faculty and students in the department, and knowing that some might mistake it as an affront on academic freedom — a characterization I do not agree with.”
The Academic Freedom Alliance wrote a letter to the MIT department head, saying they’re “dismayed” by the university’s decision to disinvite Abbot.
Keith Whittington of the Academic Freedom Alliance called it “an egregious violation of the principles of academic freedom.”
He added, “If MIT were to cancel the planned and announced lecture of a scholar invited to discuss his academic work with a community of his peers, then it would be repudiating its own stated commitments to academic freedom, sending a chilling message to its own faculty that their rights of intellectual inquiry will not be respected when objections are raised, and diminishing its own standing as one of the great institutions of higher education.”
