This seems like a reasonable response by MIT. I’m struggling to understand where the core disagreement lies though. Would someone who is opposed to this “compact” care to explain their view? I’m not interested in baseless name-calling (“fascist” etc) but I am interested in cogent reasoning.
I didn’t read the compact itself, but I did read the wikipedia article about it, and it seems to be a very positive set of criteria (safeguarding individuality and merit, protecting against the formation of ideological monoculture, protecting against hostile nation-state actors, etc)
It’s bizarre actually, because these institutions should be doing all of these things already. I don’t know what to make of the fact that they aren’t.
Careful not to fall into the "People's Democratic Republic" trap: the way something is described and its purported aims are not at all the same as its actual effects (and, often, not even its intended ones). Politics is, in many cases, the art of selling you a box of spoons with "forks" printed on the label.
Instead of asking "does this agreement sound nice?", ask what power it gives, to whom, and what might they want to do with it.
Some prompts to spark a cogent reasoning process:
> Signatories commit themselves to [...] transforming or abolishing institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas
What "institutional units" might this mean? How are they identified? Who identifies them? What is the threshold for belittling conservative ideas that might trigger the "transforming or abolishing" remedy?
> Universities shall be responsible for ensuring that they do not knowingly: (1) permit actions by the university, university employees, university students, or individuals external to the university community to delay or disrupt class instruction or disrupt libraries or other traditional study locations [...] signatories commit to using lawful force if necessary to prevent these violations
What do "actions by" "university students" to "delay or disrupt class instruction" refer to? What kinds of disruptive action might the people writing this document be so concerned about that they would ask universities to "commit to using lawful force" to prevent? What sort of scenario is being envisaged here?
> Institutions commit to defining and otherwise interpreting "male," "female," "woman," and "man" according to reproductive function and biological processes.
Doesn't it seem oddly specific to assert a definition like this? Why can't a university decide for itself? How does this assertion square with "maintaining a vibrant marketplace of ideas" and the "empirical assessment of a broad spectrum of viewpoints"? Why only this definition and no others?
I could go on, but hopefully you get the picture. It's an important skill to practice critically reading a document the same way you might critically audit code. Don't ask what it seems like it does, ask what it might allow someone to do.
Notably, the language in the compact does not limit legal intervention to those violent actions. It requires action against even peaceful protesting in a library, or even in a hallway or outdoor area (as a student I often studied in both of these places).
Further, your "setting fire to university" video is in South Africa; it hardly seems relevant here. Access to global news will always provide extremes. To me, it's important that actions we take serve the everyday reality rather than the rare occurrences that happen in a few places but are amplified by human attraction to violence and drama.
The second result in your YouTube search is a PBS mini-doc called "Why Do College Campuses Have So Many Protests?"
The questions I offered were prompts to engage critically with why this compact exists. Perhaps watching that video might help you find answers beyond "playing dumb".
> In matters of bathroom, locker-room, and sports segregation, universities will define sex categories based on reproductive and biological criteria.
In other words, trans people can't use the bathrooms matching their gender identity.
> Calls for ideological diversity, not just at the campus level, "but within every field, department, school, and teaching unit."
In other words, every academic department is susceptible to ideological litmus tests defined by the state. If Trump's white house feels like your Computer Science department has too many Democrats in it, you fix that problem or you lose your funding.
> Restricts student visas to foreign students who ... "are ... supportive of, American and Western values."
In other words, another ideological litmus test, only in this case the consequence is that foreign students can be thrown out at will.
> Requires that "university employees, in their capacity as university representatives" as well as all colleges, faculties, departments, and other academic units "abstain from actions or speech relating to societal and political events"
In other words, tenured faculty lose their right to free speech.
> In other words, trans people can't use the bathrooms matching their gender identity.
I think trans people who "pass" can do whatever they want, and in practice it won't be an issue. I do support actual sex segregation in any area of life women will have no chance without it (like sports). The bathrooms thing is stupid, I agree.
> In other words, every academic department is susceptible to ideological litmus tests defined by the state. If Trump's white house feels like your Computer Science department has too many Democrats in it, you fix that problem or you lose your funding.
Every academic department already has really strong ideological litmus tests. It got way less intense with Trump's election, but it's still there. It's not subtle. You can be really good at what you do, but if you're religious or conservative you have no hope of getting a job in tons of fields. Sociology, for instance. It has nothing to do with how good you are at what you do, it's overt political testing. It was (in the case of many University of California schools, like Berkeley) actually the first line in hiring decisions.
> In other words, another ideological litmus test, only in this case the consequence is that foreign students can be thrown out at will.
I think this is reasonable if there's an objective standard. "Doesn't support listed terrorist organizations" is a reasonable standard. The standard should be written in.
> In other words, tenured faculty lose their right to free speech.
"...in their capacity as university representatives...". So no, nobody loses his or her right to free speech. It's just that when you're acting as the mouthpiece of the University, you shouldn't be political if you want federal $. And I wholeheartedly support this. University presidents being political was a fucking disaster (see Reif at MIT).
It is not. Trans people, frequently, look like the opposite sex. Hence there can be no reasonable enforcement of this policy. Cis people, frequently, look like transgender individuals of their own gender. Hence they are liable to receive harassment by any attempt to enforce such a policy. Harassing people, cis and trans, merely trying to use the bathroom in peace, is a far greater imposition than merely existing in the same space as someone else.
Nonetheless, even in cases where someone has managed to somewhat disguise themselves as the opposite sex - or think they have done so - they will still be expected to respect boundaries, and stay out of spaces designated for the opposite sex.
Respecting boundaries means not concerning yourself with the genitals of a person merely trying to use the bathroom. You cannot enforce a policy regarding someone's sex without inspecting their genitals. How is that respecting of their boundaries? How does that lead to a person feeling safer in the bathroom?
Why are you people who insist on male incursion of female spaces so obsessed with "genital inspection"? No-one is asking for this strawman.
Your assumption seems to be that if no-one physically stops these men, they can and will do what they like, with impunity, and that there's no chance of them simply respecting women's boundaries. Is that what you mean?
>Your assumption seems to be that if no-one physically stops these men, they can and will do what they like, with impunity
That seems like a reliable assumption to me. Your assumptions seems to be that if you make a "rule" concerning who can go into which bathroom based on a hidden characteristic, no one will take it upon themselves to enforce this rule, and thus to make frequently wrong guesses regarding this hidden characteristic. That seems like a poor assumption.
>and that there's no chance of them simply respecting women's boundaries
Different people have different boundaries. Different people have different standards as for who should be sorted into which bathrooms. One person's arbitrary standards cannot dominate everyone else's lives. Instead, rules must be made based on reason and fairness, as I demonstrated above.
Regardless of what is in the compact, it's important that our educational institutions have independence to run themselves as they see fit. To make funding conditional to a set of demands by the government takes away that independence.
This is why a couple of conservative schools don't accept any sort of federal money. Liberal schools might be considering doing the same.
Otherwise, yes, an independent school can do what they want. If you want to be truly independent, you have to be willing to walk away from the money. Anybody that gives money can attach conditions to it, including the government.
That is obviously the case that federal money comes with strings and strings curtail independence.
What you seem to imply that there should be no strings. Which is a position you can have but it has never been the case.
To wit, one of the things this compact wants is an enforcement of civil rights act and Biden admin did the same thing:
> The most important stipulation during the Biden administration attached to federal funding for universities was compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This law prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin in any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance, including discrimination against Jewish students through antisemitic harassment or hostility on campus. Universities that fail to adequately address such issues risk federal investigations by the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and potential loss of funding.
> Following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and subsequent campus protests, the administration opened over 100 Title VI investigations into universities for alleged antisemitic discrimination—more than in the entire previous four years combined. This included guidance like a May 2024 "Dear Colleague" letter to colleges outlining examples of prohibited conduct, such as denying Jewish students equal access to education or tolerating harassment.
I didn't say there should be no strings. I believe institutions should follow laws, and if they or society find those laws to be unjust, we have recourse through our democratic institutions.
The Civil Rights Act was legislation put into place by Congress, signed by LBJ, and upheld by the Supreme Court. This compact was a letter sent by the White House telling universities to fall in line with their demands or be refused funding. I find those to be two completely different things.
Highly suggest reading the document[1] if you are interested.
The overarching problem is it moves management decisions from the colleges to the White House. But here are a couple of really problematic points:
- mandates government price setting
- requires institutions to promise to use force against minors when faced with unknown hypotheticals
- requires universities to monitor & censor staff and faculty
- requires government oversight of classroom grading, in the total absence of government standards
- bathroom fetish likely in conflict with state laws
- White House oversight of which academic programs are allowed, and the budgets attached to each. White House does not specify whether programs currently in flight will be allowed to continue through the school year, or whether students in those programs will need to leave immediately.
- White House decides what criteria can be used for admission
- White House decides which "institutional units" are allowed to function
- To enforce a parts of the Compact would effectively require the White House to install commissars at the institution to e.g. monitor speech and communications to ensure they are acceptable. This alone should be disqualifying.
- Many discretionary decisions like the above are made at the White House without any binding written guidance
Basically, an independent university would only agree to this if it would have to close otherwise.
The Compact is not conservative because it centralizes decisions best made lower down; it aims to radically reshape higher education; it mandates prices; it promulgates ideology, and more. Conservatives should also reject this Compact.
- 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.
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?
> And if someone violates that rule and is reported, they need to punish that person appropriately, just as they punish for any other violation of stated rules and regulations.
So how and where exactly is it established that a violation has occurred? If not Seal Team Six and DNA testing (the latter wouldn’t solve the problem conclusively in any case). How exactly are you, random bystander, supposed to know if an arbitrary stranger is male or female?
Real people get this judgment wrong about cisgendered strangers all the time, this isn’t a hypothetical. See sibling comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45543644 for a list of cited examples.
Do you intend for the accused to display their genitals as an affirmative defense? To whom? Is every random accusation going to cause an interaction with the police and a gross violation of privacy?
Because that’s what it sounds like you’re suggesting here.
What's with this bizarre fantasy that humans can't distinguish the sex of other humans? It has to be the most stupid of all the trans activist arguments.
More Republican politicians have been convicted of sexual misconduct in bathrooms than trans people. Perhaps we can start with the real issue, and ban them from public bathrooms first? Remember, facts don't care about your feelings!
> No, the expectation is that people will respect boundaries and voluntarily stay out of the single-sex spaces they have no right to be in.
So currently, these people have the right to be in these spaces (whether or not you disagree that they should, legally, they do), the expectation would, I assume, be that people will respect boundaries and not accost people based on assumptions about their genitals. And yet as GP said:
> 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.
Why would we expect people who are currently accosting people who are in the right place to respect them more when there is additional legal justification to harass them?
Perhaps phrased differently: would you support legal repercussions for someone who falsely or incorrectly reports someone as using an "incorrect" bathroom? If the assumption is that everyone is following the boundaries of these spaces, then breaking that assumption is, bad faith and grounds for a complaint of harassment. You'd agree?
If the policy of MIT or any other institution states that certain spaces are designated as single-sex only, then no, people of the opposite sex do not have the right to use these spaces.
I don't expect people to have a problem with understanding this, in practice. It's really not that difficult to understand what sex you are and where you're allowed to be. Children learn this quite early on.
(Edit: My account is now rate-limited because of downvotes, so I can't reply to any responses. However I would like to point out that if MIT is currently allowing staff and students to use single-sex spaces that are designated for the opposite sex, this is very likely to be a Title IX violation. Unfortunately, sexism is rife in institutions of higher education, and MIT is no exception.)
> If the policy of MIT or any other institution states that certain spaces are designated as single-sex only, then no, people of the opposite sex do not have the right to use these spaces.
Correct, but this is not MIT's policy today, responding to your edit, I do not believe your understanding of title IX is correct, See [0].
>I don't expect people to have a problem with understanding this, in practice. It's really not that difficult to understand what sex you are and where you're allowed to be. Children learn this quite early on.
But in places that do have such policies, people who are using the correct bathroom get harassed. Given that you assume this is easy to understand (and I think I agree), would you support laws that codify harassing people about using the incorrect bathroom as criminal, given that you assume these don't need enforcement, we should discourage vigilantism, right?
[0]: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB10953 suggests that there is a circuit split on whether policies banning students from using gender-identity matching bathrooms would be a Title IX violation, with the 4th and 7th circuits saying that disallowing students from using their preferred bathrooms is a violation, and the 11th saying it is not. Currently there is no circuit split around the opposite question: the 3rd and 9th (and presumably also the 4th and 7th) circuits agree that allowing students to use gender-identity matching bathrooms would not be a Title IX violation, and the 11th Circuit's argument doesn't appear to preclude to a school or district choosing to allow gender-segregated bathrooms, it just allows sex-segregated bathrooms. MIT is under the 1st circuit and I can't find any federal cases at the district level, so it is technically not required to act in any particular way, but given other circuit precedent (and, I think, supreme court precedent under Bostock which says basically the same thing for title VII), I would suspect your interpretation would open MIT to legal risk.
Regarding Title IX, there are still cases working their way through the courts, so we will have to see.
I would be very surprised if colleges letting males enjoy women's locker rooms, and therefore not providing women any single-sex place to change, isn't ruled as being sex discrimination.
Keep in mind this issue is about privacy and dignity and safety for women, not about giving men whatever they want whenever they want.
While you may have whatever feeling about any issue, legally this isn't about "privacy and safety and dignity for women", it's about discrimination. And it's extremely difficult to contort shared facilities into "discrimination".
How do you propose preventing situations such as these?
“The couple said they were in the women's lobby bathroom when a male security guard came in and started banging on the stall doors. Baker said she was in one of the stalls while Victor waited for her near the sinks… Baker was born a woman and identifies as a woman.” [1]
“Gerika Mudra, 18, went to dinner in April with a friend in Owatonna, about an hour south of Minneapolis. When she went to the restroom, a server followed her inside and banged on the stall door while saying: “This is a women’s restroom. The man needs to get out of here,”… Mudra said she felt she had to prove to the server that she is a woman, so she unzipped her hoodie to show she has breasts.” [2]
“Dani Davis was in the women’s restroom at the Walmart where she worked when she heard a man’s voice shouting from outside the stall. The man yelled a slur for transgender people and said he was going to beat them up, Davis said. She was the only person in the bathroom at the Lake City, Florida, store… Davis waited for the man to leave before exiting the bathroom and finishing her shift. Her immediate supervisor was supportive when she reported the incident, she said. So she was shocked and confused when she was fired around a week later for not reporting the incident to the right managers and creating a “security risk.””[3]
“She said that she had entered the restroom with her ex-girlfriend, who handed her a tampon, when two male deputies stormed in, shining flashlights into the stall and demanding she exit. Morton, still using the toilet, was stunned... When she finally exited the stall, she said she lifted her shirt to prove she was not a man, expecting the ordeal to end. Instead, she said one deputy continued to question her appearance, insisting she “looked like a man.””[4]
It would be unfair of me to presume that you believe that all women should wear skirts, keep their hair long, and perhaps shave down any overly square facial bones so as to not invoke any hint of possible masculinity. But if there is a rule in place, then the rule requires methods of being enforced. Expecting women to expose themselves to a security guard or some other investigatory party in order to prove that they should be allowed to pee there is a guaranteed violation of their dignity, whereas the occasional transgender woman using the next stall over is not.
Those already very rare instances will become even rarer when males stop insisting they have a right to access women's spaces based on supposedly womenly thoughts in their minds.
Thankfully, this fad is on the way out, and with it, the overvigilance that has led to unfortunate misunderstandings like you mention in your comment - none of which are justification for males to impose themselves on female spaces.
Your comment still offers no solutions as to how these rules will actually be enforced. For example, do you consider the ordinance in Odessa, TX, to be sufficient? Is offering a minimum bounty of ten-thousand dollars to report on alleged men in the wrong restrooms going to incentivize a reduction in vigilance, or does it encourage yet more of it?
The driving force behind these “unfortunate misunderstandings” is not a worthy justification for increased scrutiny and violence done towards women, either. Can you help me understand what damage is done even if a fully masculine manly man strolls into a woman’s restroom without paying attention, relieves himself in a toilet, (hopefully) washes his hands, and then leaves? And is this violation of the sanctity of a female space more or less violent than a woman being harassed or beaten for using it?
Try considering the opposite situation. Suppose Biden or Obama sent a mandate to universities making unilateral and ideologically-motivated demands of their curriculum, policies, and practices. Everyone cool with that scenario? Or, does each new presidential administration get to impose their will on institutions of higher learning? What would that be like?
There was an Obama "Dear Colleague" letter (actually, 3 of them) that I think at least partially qualify as unilateral and ideologically motivated.
Yes, every new administration can attempt to impose their will on institutions of higher learning (so long as the administration has some sort of leverage, like funding or legal threats). The wise administrations limit their imposition, preferring to allow academia to enjoy high levels of freedom, autonomy, and funding to achieve their mission.
The linked letter reminds schools of their requirements to comply with civil rights statutes that have been on the books in the US for many years. The trump admin, otoh, is on a witch-hunt to “protect” conservative views based on their own feelings and concerns. Not the same.
I think decisions based off race, sex, etc. could probably be eased off a bit. But I don’t know that it should be completely eliminated. Diversity and meritocracy don’t always go hand in hand - I think a healthy balance is important.
Let’s focus on #2: Marketplace of Ideas and Civil Discourse.
> Signatories commit themselves to revising governance structures as necessary to
create such an environment, including but not limited to transforming or abolishing institutional units that
purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.
Only conservative ideas receive protected status under this compact. Why? It is objectively false that only conservative ideas are punished, belittled, and met with threats of violence on the relevant college campuses.
> Such policies also shall recognize that academic
freedom is not absolute, and universities shall adopt policies that prevent discriminatory, threatening,
harassing, or other behaviors that abridge the rights of other members of the university community.
Read strictly, this clause implies no protests or demonstrations of any kind of a college campus, including e.g., the annual pro-life demonstrations at my alma mater (which occasionally became violent, by the way). It is naive to imagine this clause will be enforced equitably.
> Signatories commit to rigorous, good faith, empirical assessment of a broad spectrum of viewpoints among faculty, students, and staff at all levels and to sharing the results of such assessments with the public; and to seek such a broad spectrum of viewpoints not just in the university as a whole, but within every field, department, school, and teaching unit.
Every biology department must hire creationist professors. Every astronomy department must hire flat-earthers. Every geology department must hire young-earthers. Every medical school must hire germ-theory-skeptical epidemiologists.
And across departments, too: we need mathematicians who believe in Fomenko’s new chronology and ultrafinitist historians.
I assume you’ll argue these are hyperbole, but I’ve encountered such people during my time in academia.
> Signatories acknowledge that the freedom to debate requires conditions of civility. Civility includes protections against institutional punishment or individual harassment for one’s views.
So, logically, a professor of classical philosophy must entertain homophobic assertions about Plato and Aristotle, and cannot sanction in any way the student interrupting class in this fashion.
I also see that a Christian student could occupy a Hillel building (a Jewish student organization) and could not be legally removed or administratively sanctioned for doing so under this section of the policy.
You might argue that these fall under the ban on “heckler’s veto” defined later in this paragraph, but strictly speaking they don’t. The “heckler’s veto” ban applies to the hypothetical Jewish students attempting to convince the Christian student to leave.
> Signatories shall adopt policies prohibiting incitement to violence, including calls for murder or genocide or support for entities designated by the U.S. government as terrorist organizations.
Recall how NSPM-7 recently expanded the definition of “terrorist organization” to include groups that display some of the following “common threads”: “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”
How any Islamic student group, no matter how explicitly pro-Israel and pro-Christianity, survives this definition is an real question.
> How any Islamic student group, no matter how explicitly pro-Israel and pro-Christianity, survives this definition is a real question.
This is a disingenuous example, Islamic student groups are not anti-capitalist, anti-American, or anti-Christian, and giving an example like this only creates FUD.
This administration is letting Qatar build an airbase on US soil. I think it’s wiser to believe what people do more so than what they say, or what others say about them.
> I think it’s wiser to believe what people do more so than what they say
I agree, if only because the thing you just said is entirely incorrect. Qatar is not building an airbase on US soil, they are building facilities on a US-owned airbase. This happens every year from the NATO partners like Turkey who have been doing this for decades.
Please do your own research, don't just cite Twitter/X on this crap.
> This administration is letting Qatar build an airbase on US soil. I think it’s wiser to believe what people do more so than what they say, or what others say about them.
I don't think looking at Trump's history of actions toward individual Muslims subject to the authority of the United States government (as distinct from, e.g., foreign states that give him multimillion dollar bribes) really helps your case here, though.
It’s the usual trick of writing something so that an uninterested reader assuming the common meaning of words will be completely nonplussed, but a lawyer or judge reading such a document adversarially will reach many unexpected conclusions.
"nonplussed" means "bewildered" or "really confused". Maybe you mean "not worried"?
If you mean "not worried", then yeah, I bet you're right that there are a bunch of things that could be entailed by the language that aren't obvious. Good point.
I didn’t read the compact itself, but I did read the wikipedia article about it, and it seems to be a very positive set of criteria (safeguarding individuality and merit, protecting against the formation of ideological monoculture, protecting against hostile nation-state actors, etc)
It’s bizarre actually, because these institutions should be doing all of these things already. I don’t know what to make of the fact that they aren’t.