[condercet]

Certainly, as a future applicant to grad school, these revelations make me dramatically less likely to consider the Media Lab.

[Vervious]

To be fair, the media lab has an alternative funding model that draws primarily from private sources and not the government. The whole premise is that "there is all this private billionaire/corporate/sovereign money sitting around, let's use it for research". This is in contrast to grants, etc.

Note that MIT's central fundraising office seems to have not been in the know - I don't think this reflects badly on the rest of the institute (yet)

[sharcerer]

I am also wondering the same. Are their other similar labs either in USA or Canada? I liked MIT Media Lab as they didn't have any sort of prerequisite like Bachelors Degree,IELTS etc. If you have proven yourself in their area of interest then you can apply.

[awat]

I’d have to agree to put it lightly it certainly influences my view on MIT. I won’t go as far as assuming people knew but I’d have to imagine anonymous donations with this many 0s where asked about outside of the media lab.

[stallmanite]

Their treatment of this guy is what made me lose respect.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz

[enriquto]

this is arguably much, much worse than the Epstein donation stuff.

Accepting these donations is morally shady. Their treatment of Swartz is downright evil.

[azinman2]

It wasn’t all that many 0s for the media lab.