[nangz]

Remember when MIT media Lab gave a civil disobedience award to bethann mclaughlin for some nebulous #metoo bs who since disgraced herself by LARPing as a fake Native American academic who died of covid? https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/08/twitter-account-emba...

Remember when they chased Aaron Swartz to commit suicide and never gave him a civil disobedience award?

Remember their extremely close links to Jeffrey Epstein?

Sorry but MIT media Lab is absolute trash and an embarrassment to the MIT name.

[mrgordon]

You realize the author of the linked article resigned over Epstein and frequently fought to improve things? Why try to link him to some trash that he vehemently opposed?

And Swartz’s death was caused by JSTOR not the Media Lab FYI

[dredmorbius]

Early on, and to its great credit, JSTOR figured "appropriate" out: They declined to pursue their own action against Aaron, and they asked the government to drop its. MIT, to its great shame, was not as clear, and so the prosecutor had the excuse he needed to continue his war against the "criminal" who we who loved him knew as Aaron.

-- Lawrence Lessig, "Prosecutor as Bully"

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/aaron-swartz-suicide_b_246707...

[tzs]

> And Swartz’s death was caused by JSTOR

Huh? What in JSTOR's behavior [1] do you think caused Swartz's death?

[1] https://docs.jstor.org/summary.html

[mrgordon]

By their own account, “We also reiterated our desire that MIT identify the individual(s) responsible”

They pushed for aggressive chasing down of an individual for stealing some articles that were largely publicly funded as I recall. This escalated to the FBI and led to a laundry list of charges that scared him into suicide. Not great for some research we should have just had available for free after already paying to fund it once

[foldr]

JSTOR has to at least make a show of respecting the licensing agreements that they have with publishers. It can't be seen to wink at an attempt to make its entire archive available for free.

JSTOR actually does a ton of useful work scanning old journal articles. Someone has to pay for this.

[wombatpm]

And MIT threw Adam to the wolves.

[mrgordon]

Correct but not the Media Lab specifically and that’s a big difference

[ponker]

Who's Adam?

[xdavidliu]

some of your points, including regarding Epstein, are valid. However, unless I'm recalling incorrectly, the Aaron Swartz incident wasn't related to the Media lab in particular.

[saeranv]

Yeah, their treatment of Aaron Swartz was despicable, and extremely hypocritical.

[xdavidliu]

I hope by "their" you mean "MIT's", not "MIT media lab's". MIT media lab wasn't particular responsible for the Aaron Swartz situation.

[sbierwagen]

"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[saeranv]

I think the parent comment is relevant since the blog post (and subsequent comments here) praises the hacker/anti-institutionalist mentality of the Media Lab. Yet when Schwartz practiced altruistic, civil disobedience in line with that sentiment, MIT's response was to sue him until he killed himself. They've done a lot of cool things that I'm into, but let's not whitewash history.

[geofft]

The only link between Aaron Swartz and the Media Lab is that they hosted his memorial service.

Step one of not whitewashing history is to be accurate about it. You can't say that the Media Lab is an embarrassment to the MIT name when one of your pieces of evidence is that the rest of MIT - not the Media Lab - did something unconscionable. You can't hold organizations to account if your account is wrong.

And that's the danger with unrelated controversies and tangents - all of a sudden we need to have a discussion about the substance of that controversy and tangent. The angrier you are about something, the more important - and harder - it is to target your anger appropriately. Anger is a great tool. Make sure it is hitting what you intend for it to hit.

(In the interest of disclosure: I am an MIT alum who has never been particularly proud of my alma mater in general; I have no tie to the Media Lab.)

[saeranv]

I could be wrong and am glad to be corrected if I am. It's not like I'm following MIT Media news all day. But did the Media Lab acknowledge and critique MIT for its actions? If so you're right, I shouldn't criticize the MIT Media Lab. But if not I consider them complicit.

Re: the Disobedience Award. I did a google search to find the speech they gave where they discuss why they didn't give it to him. https://www.media.mit.edu/posts/reflections-on-the-disobedie....

I'm glad they recognized his principled and disobedient activism, but there's no acknowledgement about MIT's role in his death, and ultimately they chose not to give him the award.

[geofft]

> I consider them complicit.

That's fine, but that's a different argument from the one being made, that the Media Lab is "absolute trash and an embarrassment to the MIT name."

[unishark]

> Yet when Schwartz practiced altruistic, civil disobedience in line with that sentiment, MIT's response was to sue him until he killed himself.

MIT arrested him for breaking into a closet to access the network. I've never heard anything about them suing him. JSTOR did some kind of settlement agreement. It was the feds prosecuting him for wire fraud etc that undoubtedly led to the suicide.

[nangz]

Sorry, but organisations need to be held to account.

[techer]

But rarely are.