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by baked_beanz 250 days ago
My main objections are to the following points:

- Specifically calling out protecting "conservative ideas" in their section on creating an "intellectually open campus environment". This is a dog whistle that makes it patently clear which viewpoints will be protected, and which won't. See what happened to Mahmoud Khalil for a recent example of how this will work in practice.

- Preventing admissions of foreign students based on "hostility to America or our allies", which is obviously an attempt to silence dissent. Who is responsible for defining what "hostility" means? If a foreign student supports boycotting Israel due to their ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people, would they be barred from admission to an American university?

I would contend that threatening to annex Canada and Greenland constitutes "hostility to American allies", but since those talking points are being espoused by the sitting president, it stands to reason that this administration's justice department wouldn't intervene to prevent a potential student with similar views from from admitted to an American school.

- Forcing institutions to define bathroom usage criteria based on biological sex. Putting aside for a moment the fact that this is a blatant attempt to humiliate trans people -- how does this work in practice? Do you hire someone to stand at every bathroom door and prevent people from entering if they don't fit your notion of what that gender is "supposed" to look like? Do you demand identity documents before letting someone use the toilet?

There are plenty of videos online of cisgender people being accosted in the bathroom that aligns with their biological sex simply because other people _assume_ based on their appearance that they are trans.

1 comments

Your "I don't know what words mean" is very selective.

So you don't know what "hostile to US" means.

Do you know what "Unwelcome verbal, nonverbal, or physical conduct based on protected characteristics" means? This is one of the many vague prescriptions in MIT code of conduct.

If I make a sour face at a gay person, is it "unwelcome nonverbal conduct"? Should I be punished for that? But not punished for shouting "from the river to the sea" i.e. demanding annihilation of Israel?

Is your argument that we should just scrap all code of conducts because it is by nature open to interpretation?

Or you just object to those that tickle your politics?