in this issue we offer articles on conduct in the workplace, “#MeToo atMIT” (below) and “MIT’s New Sexual Misconduct Policy” (page 8); responses toU.S. policy on immigrants and immigration, “Solidarity at its Best” and ourEditorial (below), and “Trump’s Insults Pour Salt in Wounds of Haitians” (page 12);and an update on open access to MIT research (page 20).

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http://web.mit.edu/fnl

MassachusettsInstitute ofTechnology

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From The Faculty Chair#MeToo at MIT:Harassment andSystemic GenderSubordination

Solidarity at itsBest: But Need toStay the Course

continued on page 4

Support the Olympic Truce:Diplomacy with North Korea Not War

T H E W I N T E R O LY M P I C S A N D

Paralympics are being held inPyeongchang, South Korea February 2through March 18. In November 2017,the United Nations General Assemblyadopted a resolution calling for anOlympic Truce, or a cessation of hostili-ties during the Winter Games. TheOlympic Truce was a feature of the origi-nal Greek Olympic Games, to allow ath-letes to travel from warring city-states.The current Olympic Truce proposal wassupported by 157 UN Member States,including both Koreas and future hosts ofthe Olympic Games: Japan, China,France, and the United States. In the spiritof the truce, the North Korean and SouthKorean governments have agreed to fieldjoint teams during the Olympic games.

EditorialSupport the OlympicTruce: Diplomacy withNorth Korea Not War; Haiti: Responding toVarious Needs

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January 2018 Women’s March, Washington, DC

Thomas A. Kochan

I N O CTO B E R , T H E WA L L S T R E E TJournal reported that just under 50% offemale workers claim to have personallyexperienced sexual harassment at work,and over 40% of men report that theyhave witnessed harassment. Some menenjoy dominating others, and some seemto believe that women are, and should be,willing to trade sex for employment andadvancement. Of course, the number ofmen who harass women is much fewerthan the number of women harassed; onepredator has many victims. The #MeToomovement has so far focused on some ofthe worst forms of sexual predation,which certainly deserve attention andjustice. However, to understand women’spersistent inequality – not only harass-ment per se, it is time to address the manymen who have not harassed women buthave also not acknowledged their contri-

Susan S. Silbey

TH R E E DAYS B E FOR E CH R I STMAS

I witnessed the power of solidarity at itsbest when a very diverse communitycame together in a park in Chelsea to cel-ebrate what Francisco Rodriguez called a“Christmas Miracle.” The basic features ofFrancisco’s story are well known: Sixmonths ago, Francisco was arrested anddetained by ICE because his petition forasylum had not been renewed. He hadcome to the U.S. in 2006 from El Salvadorafter his colleague was assassinated,fearing he was the next to be attacked. Hesubsequently married and started afamily here and was employed as a custo-dian at MIT since 2011. While impris-oned, his wife gave birth to their fourthchild, an event he was barred fromattending. On Thursday, to his great sur-prise, he was released just in time to spendChristmas with his family.

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Vol. XXX No. 3 January/February 2018

Aron BernsteinPhysics

Robert BerwickElectrical Engineering & Computer Science

*Manduhai BuyandelgerAnthropology

*Nazli ChoucriPolitical Science

Christopher CumminsChemistry

Woodie FlowersMechanical Engineering

Ernst G. FrankelMechanical Engineering

*Jonathan King (Chair) Biology

Helen Elaine LeeWriting and Humanistic Studies

Seth LloydMechanical Engineering

Fred MoavenzadehCivil & Environmental Engineering/Engineering Systems

Ruth Perry (Vice Chair)Literature Section

*Nasser RabbatArchitecture

Patrick Henry WinstonElectrical Engineering & Computer Science

David LewisManaging Editor

*Editorial Subcommittee for this issue

AddressMIT Faculty NewsletterBldg. 10-335Cambridge, MA 02139

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Subscriptions$15/year on campus$25/year off campus

01 Solidarity at its Best: But Need to Stay the Course Thomas A. Kochan From The 01 #MeToo at MIT: Harassment and Faculty Chair Systemic Gender Subordination Susan S. Silbey

Editorial 01 Support the Olympic Truce: Diplomacy with North Korea Not War; Haiti: Responding to Various Needs

08 Introducing MIT’s New Sexual Misconduct Prevention and Response Training and Consensual Relationships Policy David A. Singer

11 MIT Day of Action: April 17, 2018 Call For Participation Roger Levy, Sally Haslanger, Ceasar McDowell for the Day of Action Organizing Team

12 Trump’s Insults Pour Salt in Wounds of Haitians Healing After Succession of Disasters Erica Caple James

14 Inclusive Community Faculty Dinners Edmund Bertschinger

Letters 17 No More MIT Voo Doo Molly Ruggles Teach Talk 18 Comment on “How Deeply Are Our Students Learning?” Eduardo Kausel

Letters 19 Deep Learning or Deep Ratings? Alex Slocum

20 Update on the Task Force on Open Access to MIT Research Chris Bourg, Hal Abelson

22 Teaching this spring? You should know . . .

M.I.T. Numbers 24 MIT Faculty By Gender (AY 2018)

contentsThe MIT FacultyNewsletterEditorial Board

Photo credits: Page1: Kyle Tsui https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65697791; Page 13: Logan Abassi, AFP.

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This decision offers a unique moment topromote peace on the Korean Peninsula. During the 1950s’ war in Korea, theU.S-led military coalition dropped a totalof 635,000 tons of bombs, including32,557 tons of napalm, on Korea, morethan during the whole Pacific campaignof World War II. Prof. Bruce Cumings inhis 2011 treatise, The Korean War: AHistory, describes the devastation of thecities and towns, and the deaths of hun-dreds of thousands of North Koreans.Since then, U.S./South Korea joint mili-tary forces have held “invasion” exercisesoff the coast of North Korea every year fordecades. Is it so difficult to understandthat the North Korean regime andperhaps North Korean people feel theneed for a nuclear deterrent? South Korean President Moon Jae-inhas apparently persuaded PresidentDonald Trump to postpone U.S./SouthKorea war drills that would have over-lapped with the Olympics. Delaying thesemilitary exercises could pave the way for alonger-term “freeze for freeze” deal – asuspension of military exercises inexchange for a ban on North Korea’snuclear and missile testing. Ultimately,this delay could mean an official end tothe Korean War by replacing the 1953armistice with a permanent peace treaty. Another war with North Korea wouldbe more disastrous than the last one,whether conventional or nuclear. The useof nuclear weapons could escalate to aconflagration which would devastate Asiaand the Pacific. South Korea would bearthe immediate brunt of any conflict withNorth Korea and would certainly suffermillions of casualties. The Olympic Trucerepresents a unique opportunity to defusetensions and begin the work of reconcilia-tion on the Korean peninsula. A nationalcoalition has formed to support this effort,calling for endorsement of the Olympictruce [bit.ly/truce-endorse] and a varietyof supporting local actions.

Haiti: Responding to Various Needs On page 12 of this issue, we reprintProf. Erica Caple James’s response toPresident Trump’s January 11 scurrilousreference to Haitian, Salvadoran, African,and other immigrants, “Trump’s InsultsPour Salt in Wounds of Haitians Healing

After Succession of Disasters.” Haiti wasthe first nation in the world to throw offthe curse of slavery and holds an impor-tant place in world history. Its own historyhas been difficult – in part because of itsrole as a beacon of freedom to enslavedpopulations. Prof. James cogently sum-marizes this history and the often-destructive U.S. role. In addition, because of its location inthe Caribbean, Haiti has borne theburden of natural disasters, hurricanes,and earthquakes, including most recentlythe devastating earthquake of January 12,2010, as well as Hurricane Matthew onOctober 4, 2016. MIT faculty and staffwere active in the relief efforts for theearthquake victims (“Responding to theEarthquake: A Workshop, Lecture Series,and More,” MIT Faculty Newsletter, Vol. XXII No. 3). Prof. Amy Smith and theD-Lab have worked on clear water proj-ects and alternate sources of charcoalproduction for cooking, to lessen defor-estation. The cholera outbreaks call atten-tion to the need for improved waterquality and clear water resources. Prof.Michel DeGraff, Dr. Vijay Kumar, andProf. Haynes Miller have led efforts toimprove STEM education through theuse of technology-enhanced active-learn-ing resources and methods in HaitianCreole, also known as “Kreyòl” (“The

MIT-Haiti Initiative: An InternationalEngagement,” MIT Faculty Newsletter,Vol. XXIX No. 1). Prof. James is evaluat-ing post-disaster food and water develop-ment programs in Haiti with supportfrom J-WAFS (the Abdul Latif JameelWorld Water and Food Security Lab).

Graduate students, professors, andscholars of Haitian descent are integral toMIT, as well as belonging to an importantcommunity in the City of Cambridge,whose public schools have long offeredbilingual programs for Haitian students.Just this year, the Boston Public Schoolssystem, with the help of Prof. DeGraff,launched the first ever two-way (Englishand Kreyòl) immersion program inMassachusetts – with a curriculum thatwill enrich the humanity of both Haitianand non-Haitian children in the Bostonarea. President Trump’s comments are onlyone example of the many efforts to dis-credit constituencies and communitieswho are our fellow citizens, students, andcolleagues. Last spring, an MIT faculty,staff, and student coalition organized aDay of Action/Day of Engagement toencourage responses that defended ourbeliefs in inclusiveness and democracy.This effort will be continued this April 17.The call for this follow-up Day ofAction/Day of Engagement can be foundon page 11. We encourage faculty to signon to this effort, and to plan to participateat whatever level appropriate.

Editorial Subcommittee

Support the Olympic Trucecontinued from page 1

Graduate students, professors, and scholars of Haitiandescent are integral to MIT, as well as belonging to animportant community in the City of Cambridge, whosepublic schools have long offered bilingual programs forHaitian students.

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butions, not mentored them, not pro-moted them, all the while grooming oneman after another to take his rightfulplace for succession and success in theworkforce. As disabling as they can be, sexualharassment or assault are not the only – oreven the largest – source of gender subor-dination in most work environments.Women’s occupational inequality isdriven by far subtler processes thathappen every day, like being ignored orhaving contributions overlooked orappropriated, or being assigned to lowerstatus roles while men are pushed ahead,honored and celebrated, often on the basisof women’s work. Women’s subordinationis a consequence of their invisibility otherthan as sexual objects. That is why it istime to address what we might call “theelephant in the room.”

Everyday sexism and subordination As demeaning and frightening as assaultand sexual harassment are, inattentionand disrespect are pernicious too. Theyare effective in systematically denyingwomen their rightful opportunities atwork and in society, desired expertise, andlegitimate positions of professionalauthority. For example, a recent obituary(NY Times, December 31, 2017) forStanford neuroscientist Ben Barres (MIT’76) quotes him as saying that “peoplewho don’t know I am transgendered treatme with much more respect: I can evencomplete a whole sentence without beinginterrupted by a man.” Yet often womenwho have achieved exceptional status andposition cannot expect the same. This istrue even in the most elite and august pro-fessional arenas. Although energetic give-and-take debate characterizes oral argu-ments before the U.S. Supreme Court,these historic engagements have become ashowplace of habituated gender discrim-ination. “When Sandra Day O’Connorwas the one woman on the court, 35.7%of the interruptions were directed at her;in 2002, 45.3% were directed at O’Connor

and Ginsburg. In 2015, 65.9% of all inter-ruptions on the court were directed at thethree female justices. With more womenon the court,” write Jacobi and Schweers,authors of a study of oral argument, “thesituation only seems to be getting worse.”[https://hbr.org/2017/04/female-supreme-court-justices-are-interrupted-more-by-male-justices-and-advocates].

Technology workplaces Closer to home, the situation is no betterand perhaps worse because technologycompanies – the ambition of most of ourstudents’ post-graduate employmentplans – are notoriously inhospitable towomen. A 2015 survey of 200 senior-levelwomen in Silicon Valley [“The Elephantin the Valley” https://www.elephantinthe-valley.com] reported that 47% have beenasked to do lower-level tasks that malecolleagues are not asked to do (e.g., note-taking, ordering food, etc.); 66% saythey’ve been excluded from social or net-working opportunities because of gender;88% have had clients or colleaguesaddress questions to male peers ratherthan to them; 87% have been on thereceiving end of demeaning commentsfrom male colleagues; 75% say they wereasked about marriage and family plansduring job interviews. Ninety percent saythat they have witnessed sexist behavior atcompany gatherings offsite and at indus-try conferences, and 84% have been toldthat they are too aggressive (with halfhearing that on multiple occasions). Although these well-educated, highlyskilled tech professionals reported beingthe target of unwanted sexual advancesfrom a superior, the everyday activities oftheir male colleagues were the more sig-nificant barrier to their enjoying satisfyingwork and rewarding careers. Businessconferences conducted at golfing andfishing weekends, pick-up basketballgames after work, and long nights drink-ing in bars that employ scantily-claddancers and sex workers may not be con-sciously designed to demean or excludewomen – but they do. This extra-curricu-lar fun among colleagues effectively mar-ginalizes women, limiting their ability to

develop professional networks, cultivateshared organizational or professionalidentity, and build friendships helpful forstrong working relationships. While mostmen are not harassers, ordinary male-bonding and socialization rituals rein-force structures that reproducedegradation and subordination ofwomen. In 2015, President Reif appointed aCommittee on Sexual MisconductPrevention and Response, charged withoverseeing the Institute’s policies andpractices for preventing and respondingto sexual misconduct and other forms ofgender-based discrimination. For the lasttwo years, the Committee has been updat-ing Policies and Procedures on sexual mis-conduct, shaping a policy on consensualsexual relationships, and guiding the initi-ation of mandatory sexual misconductprevention training (see page 8 of thisissue). This is important work. However,gender problems in the academy, as else-where, extend beyond blatant sexualassault and harassment.

Gender stratification in engineeringeducationFor more than a decade, I have been col-laborating on a study of the education andcareers of engineers. This was originallybegun as an effort to see whether innova-tions in engineering education wouldproduce a different kind of engineer asdesigners of the programs hoped (at OlinCollege of Engineering and PickerEngineering Program at Smith College).We followed a cohort of students (fromthese schools plus UMass and MIT)through college and into the workplace. Inanswer to the original research question,we found no significant variations in thecareer aspirations, political and socialcommitments, and post-college experi-ences across the four schools. Despite theinnovative educational models and con-sistent with national data, women in ourpanel were twice as likely as men (in thethree co-ed institutions) to switch out ofengineering to other STEM majors. Butmen who switched out of engineeringwere more likely than women to switch to

#MeToo at MITSilbey, from page 1

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non-STEM majors. In other words, thewomen wanted to stay in STEM, but notengineering. We also found that upongraduation, women who did stay in engi-neering earned on average $17,000 lessper year than did their male peers. And yetwhen women transferred out of engineer-ing, they were paid a significantly highersalary (another approximately $17,000)than the men who transferred out of engi-neering. In other words, there was littleincentive for women to remain in engi-neering since high technology workplacesrequiring engineering degrees valuedwomen less than men. Using interviews, diaries, and surveys,we tried to identify the taken-for-granted,often unnoticed and unintended prac-tices that drove these high-achievingwomen away from engineering. (Itshould be noted that women enteredcollege with preparation and SAT scorescomparable to male students and oftenleft with a higher average GPA.)Contemporary media accounts relent-lessly describe toxic workplaces in SiliconValley (and in finance). Interestingly,women engineering students do notdescribe their engineering education insimilarly harsh terms. They offer narra-tives of generally supportive faculty andwelcoming environments. Nonetheless,they also describe being sidelined onteam projects, relegated to managerialrather than technical roles, and in theprocess being denied the same opportu-nities as male students to hone andsharpen their classroom learning throughhands-on skills. Women become thecoordinators and spokespersons for theteams, collecting materials, schedulingmeetings, and sometimes becoming theteam’s public face; however, they also fearthey are doing the “housework” for col-leagues because they presumably lackcomparable technical skills. When women students move fromclassroom to engineering internships,they report similar and sometimes moreblatant exclusion. While internships andsummer jobs provide students additionalopportunities beyond class projects to “tryon” the role of engineer, these worksites

echoed the gender stereotyping experi-enced in school projects: men wereassigned interesting problem-solvingtasks where they could develop their ana-lytic and technical skills, while womenwere more often assigned social and orga-nizational tasks that did not value or growtheir engineering skills. Almost withoutexception, men reported the internshipsand summer jobs as a positive experience,often the highlight of their education.Women’s reports were just not as uni-formly positive as were the men’s. Somewomen spoke highly of their internships,but many thought that they were notgiven equal opportunities. As a conse-quence, fewer women than men reportbeing confident that engineering can be asatisfying lifelong occupation.

Ideological support for inequality /Believing in Objective MeritDifferential experiences in projects andinternships do not prevent the majority offemale engineering majors from complet-ing the course. While providing clear andstrong criticisms of their experiences, theyrarely recognize structural inequities ortranslate their experiences and their ownmarginality into a commentary on theengineering profession itself. Instead,perhaps admirably, they recommit them-selves to finding a place in the profession.They explicitly reject feminist or institu-tional interpretations, often ending a storyabout differential treatment with thecoda: “But I’m Not a Feminist.” To most ofthe women we studied, feminism is avoice of complaint, asking for specialtreatment through affirmative action.They see feminism as an expression ofpartiality for women and so they reject itbecause it suggests that their own talentand experience could not meet objectivestandards of merit and individualachievement. They told us that they doand will succeed because they are betterthan those who complain and becauseengineering’s objective standards of per-formance will reward their greater talentand effort. These accounts help to showhow sex discrimination and the ideologyof meritocracy work together to repro-

duce structural inequality on the basis ofgender. Is it possible that engineering educa-tion not only prepares future engineerswith the technical skills required in hightech workplaces, but through its socializa-tion processes also prepares women stu-dents to anticipate, and male students toreproduce, gender bias? Are we preparingthe student or are we producing the techworkplace? Minimally, a culture of engi-neering education that valorizes technicalprowess while denigrating social skills hassignificant consequences for the culture ofthe technological workplace, as well as foroccupational sex segregation.

Sexism in economicsWe could take this observation to anotherfield. Like engineers, economists claim tobe “very objective in their view of theworld,” despite empirical data to the con-trary [www.nytimes.com/2018/01/10/us/politics/women-economics.html]. Justas undergraduate female engineers areconfident that the engineering profes-sions’ merit criteria are objective, so tooeconomists cling to the notion that theyoperate with objective tools and judg-ment. And yet, the recent outpouring ofresearch on differential treatment ofwomen in economics provides abundantevidence of systematic bias and examplesof outright misogyny. Women’s subordi-nation in economics cannot be fullyexplained by hostile work environments,quid pro quo sexual harassment orwomen’s ability and effort. The mostcommon modes of gender subordinationcome from the more everyday activities ofsimply ignoring women’s contributions,unconsciously preferring the company ofmen, and not acting when harassment isobserved. “I don’t think it’s because wedon’t know what is implicit bias. Weknow,” said Rhonda Sharpe, the Presidentof the National Economics Association.“It’s whether we stand up and call it out,and usually we don’t.”[www.nytimes.com/2018/01/10/us/politics/women-economics.html].

continued on next page

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The evidence has begun to circulatewidely. Heather Sarsons found that menare tenured at roughly the same rateregardless of whether they coauthor orsolo-author. Women, however, becomeless likely to receive tenure the more theycoauthor. Erin Hengel found that paperswritten by female economists scored up to6% higher on readability tests than thoseof men, but that they languish in peerreview a half-year longer than those ofmen – independent of the outcome of thereview. Economists report the samepattern of interruptions when women arespeaking as is observed for STEM scholarsand Supreme Court justices. Alice Wudocumented outright hostility andmisogyny in parts of the economics pro-fession by analyzing posts in a job marketrumor forum. From over one millionanonymous posts exchanging informa-tion about who is hiring and being hiredin the profession, she showed that the 25most often used words associated with thefemale pronoun were not about econom-ics or research skills. In order of frequency,they were: “hotter, lesbian, bb (Internet forbaby), sexism, tits, anal, marrying, femi-nazi, slut, hot, vagina, boobs, pregnant,pregnancy, cute, marry, levy, gorgeous,horny, crush, beautiful, secretary, dump,shopping, date, nonprofit, intentions,sexy, dated, and prostitute.” The parallellist of words associated with discussionsabout men reveals no similarly singular orhostile theme. It includes words that arerelevant to economics, such as “advisor,Austrian (a school of thought in econom-ics), mathematician, pricing, textbook,Wharton” as well as more general termsreflecting dominance such as “goals, great-est, Nobel, bully, burning, fought.”) [www.nytimes.com/2017/08/18/upshot/evidence-of-a-toxic-environment-for-women-in-economics.html]. We disregard anonymous Internetpostings at our peril, even as it protectsthose who wish to hide behind its affor-dance of anonymity. This is speechspoken freely and without consequence,

believing it spoken to like-mindedInternet travelers. We may think this“cesspool of misogyny” (so described byDavid Romer, a Berkeley economist) istoo far removed from our lives at work

and with our students. But it is the under-ground foundation for the visible struc-tures of merit and fairness we aim toestablish and sustain in our own institu-tion. Whether the aggregate effects ofanonymous posting on the Internet out-weigh the consequences of a system ofaction without accountability is a discus-sion worth having by itself, perhaps foranother time.

Aspiring to meritocracy I frequently explain that MIT is one of themost meritocratic institutions of highereducation. I am proud and delighted to beable to say this. Students are admitted onthe basis of their own record, withoutpreference for family or social connec-tions, or reward for past or future philan-thropic donations. Of the mostcompetitive and highly ranked institu-tions, MIT has the lowest percent of ourstudent body coming from the highestincome strata, among the lowest medianfamily income, and until recently thelargest percent coming from the bottomhalf of the income distribution. On issuesof admissions, we show no signs ofincome, race, and gender discrimination.Salaries are regularly scrutinized for indi-cators of similar discrimination. Nonetheless, when we look inside thework we do here – both in teaching ourstudents and working with faculty andstaff – the story is not the same. Perhaps itis time to push the inquiries and effortsdeeper into the ideological justificationsthat mask misogyny. Indeed, recent schol-arship has underscored the persistent role

of belief in “universalistic (or merito-cratic) criteria” among “high status,” andscience-based occupations [Xie, Fang, &Shauman, 2015, p. 333] where gender dis-crimination persists at high rates.

Eliminating male predation will certainlymake many women’s lives better. But aloneit will not make a level playing field. Tounderstand persistent subordination andinequality, we must attend to the habitualroutines of our scholarly endeavors – afterwork gatherings, weekend socializing, taskassignments, habits of interruption, biasesin peer review and against co-authorship –all of which are established initially bymale norms and framed by what is com-fortable for men. The ugly Internet speechreveals what we can find if we dig deep, butwe need only study and assess the routineactivities of our work to understand howour systems of measuring merit do any-thing but. We achieve true equality notwhen the first woman Einstein is namedand celebrated, but when normally com-petent – no less especially accomplished –women are treated the same as the mostordinary of men. And please let me beclear: this is not about lowering standards.It is time we rid ourselves of that shibbo-leth once and for all. Understanding the #MeToo move-ment and addressing the systematic sub-ordination of women requires that weunderstand the structural foundations ofprofessional successes: whoever controlsresources and sets the rules of the gamewill come out ahead. Until now, womenhave been systematically excluded fromboth.

#MeToo at MITSilbey, from preceding page

Susan S. Silbey is Leon and Anne GoldbergProfessor of Humanities, Professor of Sociologyand Anthropology, and Professor of Behavioraland Policy Sciences, and Chair of the Faculty(ssilbey@mit.edu).

Eliminating male predation will certainly make manywomen’s lives better. But alone it will not make a levelplaying field. To understand persistent subordination andinequality, we must attend to the habitual routines of ourscholarly endeavors . . . .

MIT Faculty NewsletterJanuary/February 2018

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While these basic features ofFrancisco’s saga and his release were wellcovered in the media, what is less under-stood and appreciated are the collectiveefforts of the coalition of powerful groupsthat heretofore had never worked togetherthat made it happen. That story starts with Francisco’sunbreakable spirit. He started his com-ments that morning by first thanking Godand attesting to his faith. He went on todescribe, in both English and Spanish (forthe benefit of TV crews from Spanish-and English-language stations), how hekept his spirits up through this ordeal bykeeping busy – cleaning the clothes of hiscellmates, translating for those who didn’tspeak English, and dreaming aboutvarious Spanish dishes he might cook ifhe was still there on Christmas. But he hadhis dark days as well, especially as hethought about his children and new baby.Yet he persevered, convinced that inAmerica justice would prevail because, ashe said, he had broken no laws. And, hishopes were bolstered by what he saw asthe broad, dedicated, and influential mixof people working on his behalf. Francisco even took the time to praisehis guards as good people who treatedhim well. As I listened, I thought justmaybe I was witnessing a contemporarysmall scale Nelson Mandela, a remarkablyunbitter, forgiving, and pious example ofwhy we gain so much from those with thecourage to immigrate to our country. Aside from hearing Francisco’s inspir-ing words, what was so remarkable aboutthe Friday event was the diversity of thosewho came to celebrate his release. It epito-mized the original meaning of solidarity –working together for the common good. Ican’t ever remember being at a gatheringin which an immigrant and his family,MIT, the Service Employees InternationalUnion (SEIU), Jobs with Justice (an NGOthat advocates for immigrant and workerrights), and one of Boston’s most presti-

gious law firms, Goodwin Procter, cele-brated something they accomplishedtogether. Fittingly, Francisco expressed hisappreciation to all both in English andSpanish. SEIU Local 32B and Jobs with Justice(JWJ) carried the torch for Francisco andhis family since he was arrested. They

organized rallies, engaged politicians tosupport his cause, set up a “go-fund-me”site for contributions, and stayed in con-stant contact with Francisco while attend-ing to his family’s needs in his absence.Their mantra, voiced by Lily Huang, Co-Director of Mass. JWJ, spoke volumes,“immigrant rights are worker rights”:organizations that represent immigrantworkers cannot separate out these twoareas of law and politics. MIT helped mobilize the legal teamthat successfully petitioned the court firstto stop ICE from moving Francisco to anout-of-state jail and then convinced gov-ernment attorneys that he could not beheld for more than six months withouthaving a hearing on his case. And about200 MIT faculty, through personal contri-butions, raised over $30,000 to supportthe family in its time of need. MITPresident Rafael Reif often uses the term“One MIT” to describe how the Institutevalues all members of its community –students, faculty, and staff alike. True to itsword, MIT translated it stated values intoaction. The lawyers who worked onFrancisco’s case, led by John Bennett fromGoodwin Procter, donated their time and

expertise to Francisco’s cause. Their onlyregret, as Bennett said, is that there aremany others still detained by ICE whoalso need assistance, but have not gainedas much public awareness or support asFrancisco. They should not be forgotten, apoint that Francisco also made in hisremarks.

And the fight for justice for Franciscomust go on. His petition for asylum is stillbefore the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals,so his coalition of supporters will need tokeep working together as the case movesforward. It is important not to declarevictory yet, but to keep this case firmly inthe public eye until justice is served andthe family can be assured it can remainliving together in this country. Perhaps, as Francisco said, this was aChristmas miracle for him and his family.But there is a larger message here for all ofus: If this diverse set of organizations andpeople can come together in solidarity tosupport each other in this family’s time ofneed, perhaps we can do so as well bystanding up for what is right and fair onother divisive issues facing our countryand our society. An old labor song calls for“Solidarity Forever.” I don’t know aboutforever, but now is as good a time as everto build on this extraordinary example ofsolidarity at its best.

Solidarity at its BestKochan, from page 1

Thomas A. Kochan is George MaverickBunker Professor of Management(tkochan@mit.edu).

Francisco even took the time to praise his guards asgood people who treated him well. As I listened, Ithought just maybe I was witnessing a contemporarysmall scale Nelson Mandela, a remarkably unbitter,forgiving, and pious example of why we gain so muchfrom those with the courage to immigrate to our country.

MIT Faculty NewsletterVol. XXX No. 3

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David A. SingerIntroducing MIT’s New Sexual MisconductPrevention and Response Training andConsensual Relationships Policy

I N A H EARTFE LT E MAI L to the MITcommunity in November, President Reifnoted how sexual harassment “violatesour fundamental expectations of respectand equality,” and acknowledged thatMIT is “not an oasis of safety.” The emailarrived in the wake of a series of revela-tions of misconduct by elected leaders,media personalities, and celebrities, andsought to reassure the community thatMIT is taking steps to address theproblem within our own ranks.Importantly, he noted that some of theseefforts have been years in the making. Starting this year, all faculty and staffwill join all incoming students and newhires in participating in foundationalonline sexual misconduct prevention andresponse training. MIT is also implement-ing a new consensual relationships policy,which prohibits certain relationships inwhich academic and/or supervisoryauthority are present. As the inauguralchair of the Committee on SexualMisconduct Prevention and Response(CSMPR), I would like to provide thefaculty with some context for these newpolicies. The CSMPR was created in the fall of2015 in response to the final report of theSexual Assault Education and PreventionTask Force, an ad hoc committee chargedby the Chancellor in 2014 to reviewcurrent policies and education effortstoward all forms of sexual misconduct.The Task Force recommended that MITcreate an advisory board to review poli-cies, services, and programs on campusand to make sure that momentum wasnot lost with a variety of efforts alreadyunderway. In the fall of 2015, President

Reif gave the CSMPR its charge: toprovide policy guidance to the Provost,Chancellor, Vice President for HumanResources, and Institute Community andEquity Officer, and to oversee an Institute-

wide approach to prevent and respond tosexual misconduct and other forms ofgender-based discrimination. The Committee is large by MIT stan-dards: our roster of 32 members includesfaculty, staff, and students from across theInstitute’s Schools, offices, and divisions.(See text box, page 10, for a link to theCSMPR’s Website.) Our first challengewas to find a room on campus largeenough to accommodate our monthlymeetings. The Committee conducted a triageassessment and agreed that two mainissues warranted special attention: theabsence of required sexual misconductprevention and response training forfaculty and staff beyond new employees;and the absence of a policy on consensualrelationships in MIT’s Policies andProcedures.

Sexual Misconduct Prevention andResponse TrainingSpurred by the final report of the SexualAssault Education and Prevention Task

Force, the CSMPR studied the issue offaculty and staff training. We heard anec-dotes from around MIT that studentswere often better informed about Title IXand applicable laws than faculty and staff,

despite the fact that all faculty and somestaff are considered “responsible employ-ees” who are required to take steps afterbeing informed of an instance of sexualmisconduct. Some faculty expressed a lackof confidence in their ability to help avictim of sexual misconduct and a lack ofknowledge about private and confidentialcampus resources. We also explored thepolicies of MIT’s peer institutions andlearned that many schools require onlinesexual misconduct prevention andresponse training for all employees, notjust new hires. Moreover, Massachusettslawmakers have been considering newlegislation that would require all stateemployees, and possibly all private collegeand university employees, to undergoappropriate training. It quickly becameclear to the CSMPR that MIT should stayahead of these trends and not lag behindits peers. But more importantly, we agreedthat required training is necessary topromote a common and consistent set ofstandards and expectations with regard toTitle IX, and to ensure that faculty and

Starting this year, all faculty and staff will join allincoming students and new hires in participating infoundational online sexual misconduct prevention andresponse training. MIT is also implementing a newconsensual relationships policy, which prohibits certainrelationships in which academic and/or supervisoryauthority are present.

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staff have the know-how to respond toand prevent sexual misconduct at MIT. In the spring of 2016, the Committee –guided by our experts from the Title IXOffice and Violence Prevention &Response – identified the three leadingonline training products used by collegesand universities. Committee membersevaluated each program on their owntime, and representatives from eachcompany joined us to walk us through theprograms and answer our questions. Wecontinued this vetting process throughoutthe spring and came to a consensus thatEverFi Haven for Faculty and Staff wasour top choice for MIT. One benefit of adopting Haven is thatEverFi is already the vendor for ourundergraduate and graduate studenttraining programs, which means thateveryone at MIT – faculty, staff, and stu-dents – will ultimately “speak the samelanguage” about sexual misconduct. As tothe program itself, members of theCSMPR liked its logical flow, high-qualityvideos, sensitivity to diversity, and simpleinterface. In addition to recommending Havenas the training product, the Committeefurther recommended that trainingshould be required for all faculty and staff(students and new hires already receiverequired training), and that MIT shouldconsider brief refresher courses in thefuture for employees who have alreadyreceived training. These recommenda-tions appeared in the CSMPR’s firstannual report. With encouragement from the Provostand Chancellor, I met with each of the fiveSchool deans during the summer and fallof 2016 to share these recommendations,and I was invited to return to three Schoolcouncil meetings. I also represented theCSMPR at a November 2016 meeting ofthe Faculty Policy Committee and aFebruary 2017 Deans’ Group meeting.Feedback from these meetings was gener-ally positive, but some faculty expressedreservations about various aspects of theonline program and uncertainty aboutfaculty compliance with required train-ing. Provost Marty Schmidt, Chancellor

Cindy Barnhart, and Vice President andGeneral Counsel Mark DiVincenzovisited the five School councils late lastyear to continue these discussions. The program is not perfect. Somefaculty might find that clicking through aseries of scenarios, videos, and quizzes isless satisfying than in-person training, an

option that we are continuing to explorefor the full community (it will be offeredas an option to individuals by request). Inresponse to faculty feedback, we have cus-tomized the front end of the trainingprogram and added a wealth of MIT-spe-cific details, including contact informa-tion for relevant offices. The Title IX officeled by Sarah Rankin, in conjunction withthe Provost, Chancellor, HR, and theCSMPR, will continue to work with thevendor to improve the program as wereceive feedback in the coming months. As anyone who takes the training willsee, the program covers all aspects ofTitle IX and related laws and includesmodules on supporting survivors ofsexual assault, encouraging bystanderintervention, and recognizing the poten-tial for violence on campus and in theworkplace. The program offers specificguidance on requirements of supervisorsin responding to student and employeerevelations of sexual misconduct,addressing inappropriate behavior froma supervisor, and responding to intimatepartner violence that affects the work-place. The program takes approximately45 minutes to complete.

New Policy on Consensual orRomantic RelationshipsAfter making a recommendation aboutsexual misconduct prevention training,

the CSMPR turned its attention to MIT’spolicies on consensual relationships. As of2017, MIT was an outlier among majorresearch universities in that we had noofficial policy, just a brief mention ofsexual relationships in our conflict ofinterest policy (Section 4.4 of Policies andProcedures). In contrast, all the other uni-

versities examined by MIT’s Office of theGeneral Counsel (OGC) had detailedpolicies on relationships between facultyand undergraduate students and othercombinations in which academic andorganizational hierarchies create inherentconflicts of interest and potential forabuse of authority. Beginning in 2016, the CSMPRworked closely with Marianna Pierce,policy and compliance specialist in HR,who is an attorney with substantial expe-rience in drafting policies for universitiesand nonprofit organizations; she sketchedout the contours of a policy that fit MIT’soften complicated academic and employ-ment environments. We engaged in aniterative process, joined by Vice Presidentand General Counsel Mark DiVincenzo,senior employment attorney AllisonRomantz from OGC, and Vice Presidentfor Human Resources Lorraine Goffe, totweak the policy to address relationshipsinvolving student teaching assistants(TAs), graduate resident tutors and advi-sors (GRTs/GRAs), and instructors ofonline courses. With a revised draft in hand in early2017, we sought feedback from the facultyofficers, Heads of House, GRT Council,Deans’ Group, Graduate Student Council,a group of EECS graduate and undergrad-

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The program is not perfect. Some faculty might find thatclicking through a series of scenarios, videos, andquizzes is less satisfying than in-person training, anoption that we are continuing to explore for the fullcommunity (it will be offered as an option to individualsby request).

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uate TAs, Faculty Policy Committee, andultimately Academic Council. Manyaspects of the policy were not controver-sial, including rules for relationships withundergraduates. However, the applicabil-ity of the policy to MOOC instructorsrequired more discussion, including aseparate meeting with the directors ofMIT’s professional and executive educa-tion programs. We could not please every-one, but the resulting policy is, in myopinion, both thoughtfully designed andappropriately suited to MIT’s multifac-eted workplace. Here are the basics of the consensualrelationships policy:

• No one in the MIT community otherthan another student (undergraduate orgraduate) can have a sexual or romanticrelationship with any undergraduatestudent. (Special rules apply for TAs andGRTs.)

• No one can have a sexual or romanticrelationship with a graduate student ifthat person is (or might reasonably beexpected to be) in a position of authorityover that graduate student.

• Principal Investigators (PIs) are pro-hibited from having a sexual or romanticrelationship with a graduate student orpostdoc over whom the PI has direct orindirect authority.

• All supervisors (including facultysupervisors) are prohibited from having asexual or romantic relationship withanyone they supervise or anyone overwhom they otherwise have direct or indi-rect influence or authority.

• Relationships between MOOCinstructors and students are prohibitedonly when academic authority is involved,such as when the instructor is involved ingrading and the student is seeking aca-demic credit or a credential. The full policy provides more detailand definitions, and also offers guidanceto faculty on notification, recusal, andmanaging potential conflicts of interest.An FAQ is also available; please see thetext box for links to the relevant Websites.

Concluding Thoughts Required training and the new consen-sual relationships policy have been in devel-opment for more than two years, and reflecta collegial and iterative process involving

faculty, staff, and students. I think it isimportant to note that these policies affectevery single member of this community. AsPresident Reif wrote in his Novemberemail, the important work of preventingsexual misconduct is up to all of us. Training will ensure that all of usunderstand the seriousness of sexual mis-conduct and how to respond to it, while theconsensual relationships policy is an impor-tant step toward addressing the abuse ofauthority and conflicts of interest that canarise when one person has academic orsupervisory authority over another.

MIT’s New Sexual Misconduct PolicySinger, from preceding page Preventing and Addressing Sexual Misconduct at MIT

For reporting options, policies, and resourcesTitle IX and Bias Response Office

617-324-7526https://titleix.mit.edu

For 24-hour support and informationViolence Prevention and Response (VPR)

617-253-2300https://studentlife.mit.edu/vpr

To report a crime or for police assistance617-253-1212

http://police.mit.edu

For details on the consensual relationships policyhttps://policies-procedures.mit.edu/consensual-sexual-or-

romantic-relationships-workplace-or-academic-environment

For details on the Committee on Sexual Misconduct Prevention and Response (CSMPR)

http://facultygovernance.mit.edu/committee/committee-sexual-misconduct-prevention-and-response

David A. Singer is an Associate Professor inthe Political Science Department and Chair ofthe Committee on Sexual MisconductPrevention and Response (CSMPR)(dasinger@mit.edu).

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Roger LevySally HaslangerCeasar McDowellfor the Day of ActionOrganizing Team

MIT Day of Action: April 17, 2018Call For Participation

TH E S ECON D AN N UAL Day of Actionat MIT, a large-scale grass-roots civicengagement and action event, will be heldon Tuesday, April 17, 2018. The Day ofAction comprises community-con-tributed content including lectures, town-hall sessions, film screenings, workshops,and more, devoted to the political, eco-nomic, environmental, and social chal-lenges facing us today, and to communitybuilding and strengthening. It is open toall parts of the MIT and broader localcommunity. Last year’s Day of Action had

over 70 events and drew over 1,000 partic-ipants. April 17 is a student holiday, butnot an Institute holiday, so participationdoesn’t require cancelling or skippingclasses for MIT faculty or students. Together, we act to fulfill MIT’s mission“to bring knowledge to bear on the world’sgreat challenges,” seeking open-mindeddialogue with peers and colleagues ofdiverse backgrounds and views. All of us,regardless of political affiliation, can con-tribute to identifying and seeking out theroots of the greatest challenges facing our

society, and to planning for actionsaddressing these challenges in the presentday and in times to come. We intend thisDay of Action to be open to all, represent-ing the full diversity of our society. We aremade stronger by open, respectful dia-logue and the exchange of ideas from thewidest variety of intellectual, religious,class, cultural, and political perspectives.We invite you to join us, to share your con-cerns and questions, your hopes and ideas,and your knowledge and skills. You can join our efforts by helpingorganize or volunteer, by submitting youridea for a session or activity, or simply bytelling us you plan to attend and spread-ing the word! To learn more and get involved, visit dayofaction.mit.edu. You can read aboutlast year’s events at MIT [https://www.day-ofaction.mit.edu/events-2017] and Princeton[dayofaction.princeton.edu], and aboutMIT’s March 4 Movement of 1969[science.sciencemag.org/content/163/3872/1175]. The Day of Action organizing team canbe contacted at dayofaction@mit.edu.

Roger Levy is an Associate Professor in theDepartment of Brain and Cognitive Sciences(rplevy@mit.edu);Sally Haslanger is a Professor in theDepartment of Linguistics and Philosophy(shaslang@mit.edu);Ceasar McDowell is Professor of the Practiceof Community Development in the Departmentof Urban Studies and Planning (ceasar@mit.edu).

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Erica Caple JamesTrump’s Insults Pour Salt in Wounds of Haitians Healing After Succession of Disasters

ON JANUARY 11, 2018, President DonaldJ. Trump reputedly denigrated migrantsto the United States of African, Caribbean,and Latin descent by asking why the U.S.would want to permit persons comingfrom so-called “shithole countries” toenter America. It goes without saying thatthese words are morally repugnant andbelie our nation’s invitation to receive“your tired, your poor, your huddledmasses, yearning to breathe free.” Whether stated exactly as reported orin some other similarly disparaging form,Trump’s insults poured salt in the woundsfrom which Haitians are still healing aftera succession of natural and human-authored disasters. Eight years ago, on January 12, 2010,Haiti suffered an earthquake that killedbetween 220,000 and 300,000 people, dis-placed more than a million people,destroyed much of the capital’s infrastruc-ture, and leveled the gains the country hadrecently made economically and politi-cally. Political upheaval (1991-1994, 2004-2006), devastating floods and mudslides(1998, 2004), and resulting food shortagesand food riots (2008) hampered theHaitian government’s efforts to securedemocracy and economic security anddeepened the nation’s dependence oninternational governmental and non-governmental humanitarian and develop-ment aid. In many cases, however, humanitarianrelief worsened Haiti’s recovery. The aidthat was to reach Haitians to repair thesedevastating environmental, economic,and political conditions did not arrive orwas largely appropriated by the humani-tarians that raised money from Haitians’

suffering. So-called humanitarians alsointroduced a devastating infectiousdisease that had not been seen in thecountry for more than a century.Beginning in 2010, when U.N. peacekeep-ing forces failed to prevent their ownhuman waste from leaching into a majorriver in the Artibonite region, cholera was

reintroduced in Haiti from Nepal. Sincethen the disease has killed 10,000 peopleand infected nearly one-tenth of the pop-ulation. The U.N. has never acceptedresponsibility for its fault, nor has it pro-vided reparations to victims who stillstruggle with the aftermath of disease. Tens of thousands of Haitians still residein makeshift camps since the earthquakeleveled their homes. In 2016, HurricaneMatthew devastated agricultural produc-tion and damaged infrastructure in thesouth. The aftermath of the storm overbur-dened health facilities still struggling tomeet the needs of Haiti’s people. Although international governmen-tal and non-governmental developmentorganizations continue to provide aidto Haiti, the structure of assistance,largely filtered through private for- andnot-for-profit organizations, has pro-duced a nation now known as the“Republic of NGOs” (non-governmen-tal organizations).

Instead, as Trump’s reputed wordsremind us, Haitians have long been heldat fault for cataclysms not of their ownmaking. Conservative American religiousleader Pat Robertson called the 2010earthquake divine retribution forHaitian’s reputed “pact with the Devil” toachieve independence from France. The

New York Times reported recently thatTrump castigated all Haitians seeking tomigrate to the U.S. as having AIDS. Theaccusation thereby justified a revocationof the Temporary Protected Status thatpermitted Haitians to apply for entranceto the U.S. since 2010, especially given thehumanitarian emergency in Haiti.Trump’s revival of an erroneous assertionfrom the CDC (made in 1982) thatHaitians were vectors of HIV is a painfulevocation of the negative stereotypes thathave been directed toward Haiti andHaitians since the nation’s independencefrom colonial France in 1804. Despite their achievement as the firstblack republic, whose defeat ofNapoleon’s forces precipitated theLouisiana Purchase, the fledgling democ-racy was not celebrated at a time when theUnited States continued to profit fromchattel slavery. Although Haitians foughtin the Battle of Savannah (1779) to helpAmericans gain independence from

Eight years ago, on January 12, 2010, Haiti suffered anearthquake that killed between 220,000 and 300,000people, displaced more than a million people, destroyedmuch of the capital’s infrastructure, and leveled thegains the country had recently made economically andpolitically.

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Britain, in the 19th century, they wereexcluded from the emerging internationalcommunity as embodiments of the“cancer” of black liberty. In 1825, independent “Hayti” wasforced to agree to pay reparations of 150million gold francs to French colonists forthe loss of their property or face contin-ued foreign military incursions to re-acquire the “pearl of the Antilles.”Although reduced in 1838 to 90 milliongold francs, Haiti’s payment took morethan a century and was equivalent tomore than U.S. $20 billion. The U.S. military occupation of Haitifrom 1915-1934, a violent interventionintended to secure American military andbusiness interests in the nation and theregion, left few infrastructural improve-ments. The intervention did leave behinda U.S.-trained Haitian military force thatwould later be mobilized in predatory

ways against the Haitian people, mostnotably by the infamous Duvalier dicta-tors who ruled between 1957 and 1986. During this period, the Duvaliers(François “Papa Doc” and son Jean-Claude) would accumulate external debtand extract wealth from the nation withtacit support from the U.S. and othernations. After the ouster of Jean-Claude,Duvalierist cronies attacked the pro-democracy sector and on September 30,1991, deposed the nation’s first democrat-ically elected president (formerpriest Jean-Bertrand Aristide). Haitians will readily admit that theirdemocracy has been hobbled by theseinternal forces, including the inadequacyand corruption of many of their leaders,challenges with promoting democracyand upholding the rule of law, and aneducational system that has privilegedinstruction in a language (French) that

the majority of the nation does notspeak. But Haitians have continuedworking to build their own nation withthe support of their compatriots in theUnited States (and other nations) whoselabor and entrepreneurship support oureconomy. That Trump rejects Haitians’ accom-plishments and their nations’ uniquehistory is in part a failure of History as adiscipline. But with heads held high andseemingly endless endurance, the dignity,faith, and generosity of the Haitian peoplehave much to offer the world at a time ofsuch inhospitality and incivility.

Editor’s Note: This article originallyappeared in The Globe Post on January 12,2018.

Two people look back as internally displaced Haitians line up for food during a UN distribution in Port-au-Prince on January 18, 2010.

Erica Caple James is Associate Professor ofMedical Anthropology and Urban Studies in theDepartment of Urban Studies and Planning(ejames@mit.edu).

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Edmund BertschingerInclusive Community Faculty Dinners

A S I N S T I T U T E C O M M U N I T Y A N D

Equity Officer I am charged with cultivat-ing a caring community, with the aim ofhelping everyone here feel that MIT ishome. After focusing on staff and studentsfor several years, this year’s emphasisturned to faculty. Early in the fall semester,I wrote individually to every tenured andtenure-track MIT faculty member invit-ing them to participate in a reception anddinner at the MIT Samberg ConferenceCenter. The purpose was to share experi-ences and ideas about what inclusive com-munity means and how to strengthen it atMIT. The invitation referred to the state-ments all academic departments madelast year valuing students’ well-being anddiversity and also to concerns about theability of some students and faculty toremain at MIT to study or to work in lightof executive orders related to immigra-tion. The invitation stated, “I need yourideas on how MIT can respond to thesechallenges and opportunities tostrengthen our community. As a facultymember, you are central to the mind,hand, and heart of our university. Earlythis fall, before academics get too intense,is a good time to reflect on what it meansto be an inclusive community, so that wecan plan together ways to reduce the stressand improve the well-being of us all.”When asked why he accepted the invita-tion, one faculty member replied that theinvitation seemed so personal. The dinners were made possible by theoutstanding contributions of the staffwho supported them: ICEO ProgramDirector Beatriz Cantada, Diversity andInclusion Officer JJ Jackson, and the staffof the Samberg Conference Center.

We hoped that 15% of faculty wouldreply and that 10% would attend one ofthe two scheduled dinners. The responsewas much better: about 30% replied andmore than 15% signed up for the dinners.Each dinner was attended by about 70faculty members. The attendance rate wasremarkably uniform across gender,race/ethnicity, and School. Two factorswere associated with a significantly higherattendance rate: (1) untenured facultywere about twice as likely as tenuredfaculty to attend a dinner, and (2) abouthalf of the attendees at one of the dinnersreported being freshman advisors (com-pared with less than 10% of facultyoverall), a volunteer role that cultivatescommunity. Many other faculty wanted toattend but could not for schedulingreasons. Many faculty have attended theRandom Faculty Dinners started in 1986by then Associate Provost S. Jay Keyser.The two dinners held last September weresimilar in spirit but differed in three ways.First was the specification in advance of afocus on “the challenges and opportuni-ties to strengthen our community.”Second was a structured program,described below. Third was the relativelylarge size of each group, which was apleasant surprise to most attendees. Thiswas due simply to the large number ofinvitations sent; in 2010, Prof. Keyserreported that the acceptance rate for invi-tations to his dinners was 20%, which henoted was about the percentage of facultywho belong to committees outside theirdepartments. The relatively large percent-age of junior faculty at the dinners last fallshows that this correlation is not causal.

Dinner 1: The key elements of inclusive communityFor the first dinner, faculty were presenteda set of four discussion questions:

1.What are the key elements of an inclu-sive, respectful, and caring community?

2.What are some of the greatest chal-lenges to achieving the inclusiveness weseek at MIT?

3.What should MIT leaders andadministrators do to strengthen thecommunity?

4.What can MIT faculty do tostrengthen the community? After faculty met each other and sharedconversations around these questions overdinner, we convened as a group using anaudience polling system to gatherresponses to the first two questions.Attendees could send a text message or usea Web-based form to anonymously trans-mit their comments. For the first question,the 63 responses nearly all fit into one ofsix categories: in descending order of fre-quency these were communication (e.g.,“Open and honest discussions of difficultand even divisive issues”), navigatingsocial identity (gender, race/ethnicity,country of origin, etc.), empathy (e.g.,“Recognizing humanity in someone who’scompletely different from you”), respect,humility, and food and fun together.Analyzing the responses in real time, wecreated a poll asking faculty to vote onwhich of the following three elements wasmost important. The responses were:

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• Learning to listen to others: 50% • Valuing individuals across differ-ences: 34% • Sharing meals and experiencestogether: 16%

Discussion during and after the dinnersuggests that sharing meals together ismore valuable as a catalyst than thesenumbers indicate. Several faculty recalledthe “blue room,” as Pritchett dining hall inWalker Memorial was called in the 1990s,as a place where faculty routinely cametogether outside their departments. Thelong tables encouraged one to meet newpeople in a way that the R&D Pub in Statadoes not. Responses to the second question (“thegreatest challenges”) were not simply themirror image of responses to the first.Many faculty showed that they careddeeply about increasing the value of inclu-sion at MIT and felt frustrated that it wasnot given a higher priority within thedominant culture. Most responsesreferred either to challenges of navigatingsocial identity (e.g., “Negative assump-tions about some groups of people atMIT”) or the inertia of academic culture(e.g., “We feel that this is not a scientificquestion” and “We see inclusiveness ashostile to excellence”). Surprisingly fewfaculty identified time or stress as key bar-riers, perhaps because the group was self-selected to make time for community byattending the dinner. Instead of utilizing the polling systemfor the final two questions, we asked par-ticipants to further discuss the key ele-ments of inclusive community and toreport out suggestions table by table. Insummary, the key elements identified inthe group discussion were:

1. A sense that what you have to con-tribute is valued.

2. Dedicating time to interacting withand getting to know others.

3. Creating work environments thatsupport challenging traditions workingagainst inclusivity.

Suggestions included holding random“MIT people” dinners to allow everyoneto mix, not just faculty; providing trainingon implicit bias; and helping departmentsmanage the excessive informal advisingsome faculty members experiencebecause they are viewed as being moreapproachable by students. This is a regularoccurrence for female faculty and facultyof color.

Dinner 2: Major issues of our timeAfter receiving feedback from attendees,we decided to provide more structure forthe second dinner held eight days later.Faculty were assigned to tables with theaim of reducing isolation of members ofunderrepresented groups. The 10 tablesreceived individual assignments at thebeginning of the dinner (with five distinctassignments, two tables reported out oneach theme). The anonymous feedbacksystem was not used, providing more timefor discussion at the tables. The feedbackreceived afterwards was almost entirelypositive. Because the five topics are of broadinterest and the discussion is of value tothe entire MIT community, I summarizeeach topic and the discussion from thesecond faculty dinner.

Climate data at MITResponses to the Quality of Life Surveystaken by faculty, staff, and postdocs in2016 and students in 2017 were summa-rized for a specific item (“I have to workharder than some of my peers/colleaguesto be taken seriously”) from selectedgroups (faculty, staff, postdocs, under-graduate and graduate students, subdi-vided by several demographic measures).

The survey results show some striking dif-ferences in responses for underrepre-sented groups (LGBTQ, underrepresentedpeople of color, and female faculty andgraduate students) compared with thosefor men. Specifically, respondents fromthe underrepresented groups were muchmore likely to agree that they have to workharder to be taken seriously than men did– female faculty are three times more

likely than male faculty to agree. The dif-ferences are strikingly large and cannot bestatistical flukes. Faculty were asked todiscuss whether the differences arise frominequitable experience or treatment ofdifferent groups, to consider how thismight be tested, and to suggest measuresto improve our understanding and reduceany inequities. Many faculty were puzzled by the dataand wondered about effects of responsebias, e.g., perhaps respondents who feltequitably treated responded at lower rates.(There is no evidence of this; in fact, theresults for faculty themselves are espe-cially striking and supported by numer-ous individual stories.) Attendees focusedon students, not on faculty or staff. Twofaculty members discussed MIT’s reputa-tion as a “praise-free zone,” with onenoting that this was a decades-longproblem. The other said that after he sentemails congratulating students who per-formed well on an exam, a studentresponded with gratitude saying that itwas the first time someone at MIT toldher she was doing something right.Attendees took note of this; perhaps morestudents will now hear praise from faculty.

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Responses to the second question (“the greatestchallenges”) were not simply the mirror image ofresponses to the first. Many faculty showed that theycared deeply about increasing the value of inclusion atMIT and felt frustrated that it was not given a higherpriority within the dominant culture.

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Inclusive teamsGoogle has been studying what makessome teams more effective than others.Given MIT’s broad culture of collabora-tion and use of team-based learning, itseems worthwhile to examine theresearch. Google found that for theiremployees, psychological safety, measuredfor example by how comfortable teammembers feel taking risks, is the mostimportant factor determining how effec-tive a team can be. At the dinner, facultywere asked how important teams are instudent and faculty success, whether theythink Google identified the right factors,and what promising practices exist to helpMIT teams be effective. This was a chal-lenging problem set! Faculty shared examples of studentsfeeling excluded in teams and noted thatthe use of teams varies across disciplines.They noted that tenure is granted to indi-viduals and not teams, and some felt thatthe team concept was more corporatethan academic. They recognized theimportance of building a sense of belong-ing and cited freshman learning commu-nities as a good example. One facultymember asked whether academic advis-ing could be made more team-oriented, asit is in some freshman advising seminars.However, there was little if any discussionabout whether faculty themselves felt wel-comed in their communities and how thismight depend on group identity. Thesubject of teams at MIT is ripe for furtherexploration.

Inclusiveness and diversity in a meritocracyFaculty were given a short letter of per-sonal reflection about MIT meritocracywritten by a faculty member whoattended the first dinner. The letterpointed out that student culture creates ahierarchy by discipline and subdisciplineand suggests that MIT’s value of meritoc-racy (or perhaps its closely-related focuson excellence) is largely responsible forthis. It notes that admissions processes

seek individual stars, not empathetic, sup-portive, and highly collaborative people.We asked faculty whether they agreedwith these concerns, what are the appro-priate venues for such discussions, andwhether they thought MIT shoulddescribe itself as a meritocracy. Faculty said they are not ready to giveup on meritocracy, but it needs to be rede-fined. Comments such as “you got herebecause [of your gender or race]” rein-force exceptionalism and distort meritoc-racy. In practice, the concept ofmeritocracy is most strongly espoused bythe dominant group, who tend to be whitemales. When women faculty are threetimes more likely to feel they have to workharder than men to be taken seriously, andwhen faculty of color are treated differ-ently than white faculty, as some haveshared with me privately, meritocracy hasnot been achieved.

Free speech, civil rights, and politicaldiscourseFaculty were given the text of the FirstAmendment to the U.S. Constitution; astatement of MIT tradition to maximizefreedom of speech and expression as foun-dations for scholarly inquiry; and a notethat some universities have made formalstatements on the place of free speechwithin their university communities(notably Chicago and Princeton). Duringthe last two years, free speech has comeinto tension with civil rights on manycollege campuses, in some cases eruptinginto violence. Faculty were asked whatMIT could contribute to the nationaldebate about freedom of speech andwhether they thought different academicdisciplines offered distinct perspectives. Faculty members broadly advocatedpluralism while recognizing that MITmay be most effective when its statementsfocus in areas of domain expertise such asclimate change and energy policy. Theyexpressed concerns about use of socialmedia for propaganda and the loss ofcivility in society. However, faculty hadmore questions than answers about thistopic. After the dinner, we shared withattendees an excellent, thoughtful, and

balanced analysis of the tension betweenfree speech and civil rights on collegecampuses, the PEN America Principles onCampus Free Speech. Like the others, thistopic merits further conversation.

Civic engagement: What is the facultyrole?MIT’s mission statement calls for us “todevelop in each member of the MIT com-munity the ability and passion to workwisely, creatively, and effectively for thebetterment of humankind.” Currently,national political decisions and debates ontopics like the status of undocumentedstudents, travel from some countries,funding for basic research, and the declin-ing respect for higher education, createconcern on college campuses. For somecommunity members, these issues aredeeply personal. Many of us are con-cerned whether people can be heard andvalued at MIT regardless where they fallon the political spectrum. Faculty weregiven a note from a student requestingMIT’s senior leadership to accept her helpto enhance civic engagement at MIT. Thisstudent had attended an event inWashington, DC about the need for civiceducation especially for STEM students.Faculty were asked to draft a response tothe student. Faculty pointed out some ways inwhich MIT currently engages in theseissues. Examples were shared from theSchool of Humanities, Arts, and SocialSciences (SHASS). Also, last spring, MITfaculty and others organized a Day ofEngagement/Day of Action event April 18devoted to civic engagement. Somefaculty have participated in protests andmany attended the March for Science andthe Women’s Marches of 2017. Theystruggled with how to respond to disin-formation (“fake news”) and anti-sciencepolitical rhetoric. Many faculty agreedthat this topic was a responsibility for allof MIT and not only SHASS.

Conclusions, concerns, and two invitationsThe dinners had several goals. First was toshare experiences and ideas about what

Inclusive Community Faculty DinnersBertschinger, from preceding page

MIT Faculty NewsletterJanuary/February 2018

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inclusive community means and how tostrengthen it at MIT. Additionally wehoped to identify faculty who care aboutcommunity and who might contributeideas and action in the future. This was abeginning, not an end. Did we succeed? Feedback suggests that we did. Wereceived dozens of inspiring emails aboutthe dinners and their topics, includingmany from faculty who could not attend.Faculty and students in one departmentwere inspired to try a similar approach intheir departmental community. Manyfaculty members shared their experiencewith colleagues. All of us present at thedinners made connections with wonderfulcolleagues we had not met before. Oursense of community was enhanced by thesegatherings. This feels like a good beginning. At the same time, some important con-cerns were raised by faculty who feel mar-ginalized. At the conclusion of the firstdinner we asked participants to describetheir overall impression in one word. Mostof the anonymous responses were positive(e.g., “Stimulating,” “Thought-provoking,”“Fun!”) but some were neutral (e.g.,“Unfinished,” “Curious,” “Surprising”) ornegative (e.g., “Frustrating,” “Way-too-easy,” “Self-congratulatory”). Conversations with faculty afterwardshelped clarify the disappointment, as twogroups stood out in their reactions:

women and faculty from SHASS. Even ifno one intended to exclude others, manyof us, myself included, can be blind tobehaviors such as talking over women ordevaluing certain disciplines in ways thathave exclusionary effect. These effects canbe subtle but they are still with us at MITin 2018. In fact, there are elements of MITculture that promote unequal treatment(see the discussions of climate data andmeritocracy above). It is not only stu-dents who can feel excluded from teams.The numbers of underrepresented peopleof color attending the dinners were toosmall (due to their underrepresentationat MIT) to provide statistical significance,but other studies such as the 2010Hammond Report show concerns aboutexclusion. We made some adjustments in thesecond dinner to try to reduce theseeffects of unconscious bias. Table assign-ments were made with the aim of havingmore gender balance, even though thismeant that one table was all male. Wehighlighted the role of humanities andsocial sciences for each of the topics wediscussed. While I believe these helped,they did not create a fully equitableexperience for all faculty, not even in thecarefully organized dinner. The chal-lenges of equity and inclusion are MIT-hard problems!

The topic of gender equity is highlyvisible in society at this time owing to the#MeToo movement. But it is not only amatter of ending sexual assault. Genderequity – without which there can be notrue meritocracy – requires that all of us,especially white men – learn how to inter-rupt and change behaviors that have theeffect of making others feel excluded.Although confronting gender inequitywas not a goal of the faculty dinners, it is anecessary outcome. In response, this spring we are startinga discussion group for male faculty andstaff members who want to promotegender equity at MIT and would like tolearn together to be better allies forwomen. We plan to meet monthly for 90minutes and will share experiences in asafe and supportive environment. If youare interested or curious, please contactme at edbert@mit.edu. Many more faculty expressed interestin these dinners than could attend.Additionally, the first dinner group rec-ommended broadening participation toinclude staff and students. In response, weheld an Inclusive Community LuncheonFebruary 12, which was modeled after thesecond faculty dinner. Faculty, staff, post-docs, and students were invited.

Edmund Bertschinger is Institute Communityand Equity Officer (edbert@mit.edu).

To The Faculty Newsletter:

A S A N M I T S TA F F P E R S O N I’malways extremely uncomfortable seeingissues of MIT’s student humor magazineVoo Doo on campus. The magazine’s titleis tacky at best, insulting no doubt, anddangerously close to hate speech.

Prof. DeGraff ’s message (“‘Voo Doo’Science at MIT?”, MIT Faculty Newsletter,Vol. XXX No. 2) is important. MIT is nota community that denigrates or insultssomeone’s religion. That is not who weare. The editors of MIT’s humor maga-zine need to change its title.

Thank you.

Molly RugglesSenior Educational Technology ConsultantOffice of the Vice President for Open Learning

lettersNo More MIT Voo Doo

MIT Faculty NewsletterVol. XXX No. 3

18

Eduardo KauselTeach TalkComment on “How Deeply Are OurStudents Learning?”

I E NJOYE D TH E E SSAY ON studentlearning (“How Deeply Are Our StudentsLearning?”, MIT Faculty Newsletter, Vol.XXX No. 1), and generally agree with itsfindings. And I can also confirm that theconcept of free-body diagrams is one ofthe most difficult for students to master,despite it being “simple” and “obvious.”But it is also “subtle.”

What do you mean?There exists a common difficulty that maycomplicate life to students during anexam: It is the way in which a question isactually phrased. If the wording leavesroom for interpretation, then chances aregood that Murphy’s dictum will comeinto full force: if something can be misun-derstood, then it will be! This is especiallytrue when the question uses everydayconcepts and language that leave room forinterpretation. As they say, if you correctlyunderstand a question, then you alreadyhave solved half of that problem. So whenI have given exams at MIT – for a goodmany years I taught a graduate course inStructural Dynamics within the School ofEngineering – I made sure that the ques-tions were clear by testing these on the TAfirst. Professors very often make themistake of believing that what is clear tothem will be clear to the students, espe-cially after having taught a subject for awhile. For example, consider the concepts ofvelocity and speed of a particle in motionon a semi-circular path as used in the firstexample in the FNL article. Now, velocityis a vector that has both magnitude anddirection. So is speed the same as veloc-ity? Or is speed= abs(velocity)? If yes, then

that ought to have been explained explic-itly in the question. And then, of course, isthe added complication that “speed” hasno sign, but tangential velocity does, evenif it shares the magnitude with the speed.So even if in that first example the speedhad been specified as being constant – butin what sense? – the velocity would nothave been so, because of the change indirection. But here comes also into play theeveryday life experience: say you driveyour car on a curved highway using cruisecontrol, and that you set the speed at 55mph. Is that a “constant” velocity? Not inthe sense described previously, but cer-tainly acceptable in the context of drivingon the road, especially if at some pointyou are stopped by the police stating thatyou were going too fast, that you exceededthe local maximum velocity. In thiscontext, the change in direction is irrele-vant and velocity is the same as speed.From the perspective of the driver, he iscertainly not accelerating, the centripetalacceleration notwithstanding! But in theexample given, and even if the studentswere fully aware that velocity is a vector,then what is meant by “average velocity”?(the question specifically asked “what isthe average velocity” and not what is theaverage speed). If the speed had been con-stant instead of rising slowly, does thatmean that the average velocity equals theconstant speed? Or is the horizontal com-ponent zero, since the particle fullyreversed direction from the upperentrance point to the exit point verticallybelow, so there is no net lateral motionduring the travel time? And what aboutthe average vertical velocity? My sense is

that it is these ambiguities that cause mostof the troubles observed. Another example comes from thenatural sciences: Suppose you were askedin an entrance exam (or in the SAT) aboutfigs and tomatoes, and you had to decideif these were fruits or vegetables. In every-day life, a fig is a fruit and a tomato is avegetable. But in botany, the fig is not afruit and the tomato is not a vegetable.Instead, a fig is an enclosed inflorescence(or syconium) and a tomato is a berry, i.e.,a fruit. So which is the correct answer? I’dsay that the everyday meaning came first,and that botanists’ definition came later.So how does the student decide in a testwhat the examiner actually meant?

If it is obvious to me it should beobvious to you too, or shouldn’t it?Consider also the elastic steel marbledropped onto a table. Yes, the kineticenergy in the ball is mgh, and the elasticenergy stored in the table when the ballcomes to a full stop is ½ F*u, soF=mg(2h/u), and since (2h/u)>>1, it isnow clear that F>>mg. But is this reallytrivial or obvious, especially so if youhaven’t solved problems like this before,i.e., have no training? This brings me tothe second observation: There exist manyproblems that may be quite obvious to anexperienced person with deep knowledge,but it isn’t so for an undergraduatestudent who must drink water from a fire-hose while applying the principle of selec-tive neglect. That is, chances are good thatthe instructor overestimates the “obvious-ness” of most questions. As C.E. Inglis(FRS, James Forrest Lecture, 1944) oncestated:

MIT Faculty NewsletterJanuary/February 2018

19

In problems relating to vibrations,nature has provided us with a range of mys-teries which for their elucidation require theexercise of a certain amount of mathemati-cal dexterity. In many directions of engi-neering practice, that vague commodityknown as common sense will carry one along way, but no ordinary mortal isendowed with an inborn instinct for vibra-tions; mechanical vibrations in general aretoo rapid for the utilization of our sense ofsight, and common sense applied to thesephenomena is too common to be other thana source of danger.

MotivationThen there are strong differences betweenundergraduate and graduate students.The former are there to get an educationand a degree to move on in life, while thelatter wish to specialize and acquire depthin some area. Thus, they have differentmotivations. Most undergraduate stu-dents warm up for exams, enough tomaster – or even excel in – the quizzes, but

by the time that they enroll in next semes-ter’s continuation, they may have com-pletely forgotten a good part of what theyhad learned before – and I know this for afact! This is because to them the first pri-ority is to learn enough to do well andpass the exams and then in due time grad-uate. But deep learning comes only withrepetition and training, not to mentionmotivation.

Manipulation without understandingMany students become quite proficient inthe use of mathematical tools, but that byitself does not in any way make themexperts in physical model building.Mathematics is a tool that is very useful toevaluate physical phenomena, butmastery of math it is not per se an enablerof model building. These are two whollyseparate “intelligences.” For example,without having seen an example of appli-cation of the convolution integral, thevast majority of students will simply failto see the connection between some phe-

nomenon that could be described by aconvolution and the mathematical opera-tion they learned in calculus or signalprocessing – or at least they would do soin a quiz. Why should they see the con-nection? Model building is not an intu-itive, natural process, but an art that islearned in part from mentors, instructors,and experience. My own sense is that most undergrad-uate students learn about many differenttechnical disciplines, and in so doingdevelop mental muscle – not unlike thosewho lift weights. They also learn how tothink and acquire tools so that they canlater continue learning on their own. Afterleaving school, many (or most) of themwill have largely forgotten what theylearned, including how to integrate or dif-ferentiate. But they will keep the mentalmass that will allow them to be successfulengineers and scientists.

Eduardo Kausel is a Professor Emeritus in theDepartment of Civil and EnvironmentalEngineering (kausel@mit.edu).

To The Faculty Newsletter:

re: “How Deeply Are Our StudentsLearning,” MIT Faculty Newsletter, Vol. XXX No. 1

A MOST EXCE LLE NT, THOUG HTFU L

commentary. Bravo! Now the goal will befor us to think and act in accordance withthe courage and vision that made MITgreat in the first place: Mens et Manus: dowe practice what we preach? From thedata presented, it seems not. Yet howmany faculty could answer these seem-ingly simple applied questions? Does thisreflect an issue with not only the way weteach but also the way we hire andpromote faculty? Do we have a goodbalance in our faculty’s ability and senseof Mens et Manus?

Consider in our design classes: Do weencourage and reward students to coupleanalysis with design so they experiencethe endorphin rush of creative determin-istic design? In our analysis classes do wecouple the real world to the practicalworld to not just illustrate but motivatestudents to experience the practical side ofthe force? Or do we merely encourage“hacking” as an excuse so we are not both-ered with having to spend the one-on-onetime needed to truly catalyze students tothink, experience, and really learn deeplessons for life?

Why might we be in such a rush thatwe do not have the time to spend actuallyteaching students to think…? How muchtime do we spend writing reports andproposals and justifications, and in com-

mittees to study how to make thingsbetter and then issue a report?

Indeed in the past three decades I havebeen at MIT as a prof, I have seen our pen-dulum swing from leading to benchmark-ing as we join the scramble to followothers who strive to kneel before the greatranking gods h-index and US News &World Report. MIT swing free of bench-marking and herd consensus and take offto once again become the true leader itonce was and should be.

Ever the optimist I will be, becauseMIT long ago trained and set my mindfree,

Alex SlocumProfessor of Mechanical Engineering

lettersDeep Learning or Deep Ratings?

MIT Faculty NewsletterVol. XXX No. 3

20

Chris BourgHal Abelson

Update on the Task Force on Open Access to MIT Research

I N J U LY 2 0 17, P R OVO S T MartinSchmidt, in consultation with the VicePresident for Research, the Chair of theFaculty, and the Director of the Libraries,appointed an ad hoc task force on openaccess to MIT’s research. Convening thetask force was one of the 10 recommenda-tions presented in the 2016 preliminaryreport of the Future of Libraries TaskForce [https://www.pubpub.org/pub/future-of-libraries]. In addition, The 2013Report to the President on MIT and theProsecution of Aaron Swartz raised thequestion as to whether MIT shouldstrengthen its activities in support of pro-viding open access to the research andeducational contributions of the MITcommunity. As a result of subsequent dis-cussions held with the faculty and relevantcommittees, this task force has beencharged to take up this question. The open access task force is co-chaired by Class of 1922 Professor ofElectrical Engineering and ComputerScience Hal Abelson and Director ofLibraries Chris Bourg, and is composed ofa diverse and multi-disciplinary group offaculty, staff, postdocs, graduate students,and undergraduates. The task force hasestablished the following working groupsto develop recommendations in specificareas:

Research Data Christopher Cummins, Henry DreyfusProfessor of Chemistry Eric von Hippel, T Wilson (1953)Professor in Management (chair) Tom Pollard, Postdoctoral Associate,Institute for Medical Engineering andScience

Matthew Vander Heiden, AssociateProfessor, Department of Biology

Educational Materials and Computer Code Herng Yi Cheng ’18, Department ofMathematics Isaac Chuang, Professor of ElectricalEngineering and Computer Science;Senior Associate Dean of Digital Learning Mark Jarzombek, Professor,Department of Architecture Hal Abelson, Class of 1922 Professor,Department of Electrical Engineering andComputer Science (chair) Karen Shirer, Director of ResearchDevelopment, Office of the Provost

Scholarly Publications Chris Bourg, Director of Libraries Deborah Fitzgerald, Leverett Howelland William King Cutten Professor of theHistory of Technology (chair) Nick Lindsay, Journals Director, MITPress Jack Reid G ’18, Technology and Policyand Aeronautics and Astronautics Jay Wilcoxson, Counsel, Office of theGeneral Counsel

Contracts and Licensing Peter Bebergal, Technology LicensingOfficer, Technology Licensing Office Robert Bond, Chief TechnologyOfficer, Lincoln Laboratory (chair) Bernhardt Trout, Professor,Department of Chemical Engineering

In addition to considering whetherand how MIT might expand the 2009Faculty Open Access Policy to cover addi-tional MIT authors and/or additional

scholarly output beyond faculty journalarticles, the task force is coordinating arenewed Institute-wide discussion of abroad range of ways in which policies andpractices might be updated or revised tofurther the Institute’s mission of dissemi-nating the fruits of its research and schol-arship as widely as possible. Sample topicsto be considered by the task force include:

• How should MIT respond to publish-ers that require MIT authors to opt out ofthe MIT Faculty Open Access Policy inorder to publish?

• Should MIT develop policies and/orrecommended best practices for tenureand promotion committees that wouldencourage and reward open scholarship?

• Should MIT consider an open accesspolicy for data, or if not a policy, a state-ment of commitment to open access toresearch data?

• Are there actions we could take insupport of data citation/credentialing,and alternative metrics for articles, thatwould assist in promoting open access?

• Should MIT develop policies to encour-age the open sharing of computer code?

• What policy revisions might MITconsider in the area of open access to edu-cational materials?

• Are there ways that MIT might lever-age our research contracts and licenses topromote and encourage the open dissem-ination of research where appropriate?

MIT Faculty NewsletterJanuary/February 2018

21

In considering these topics and devel-oping a set of recommendations, the taskforce will continue to consult withdomain experts and will facilitate a set ofconversations across the Institute. Open

forums to solicit input from MIT com-munity members will be scheduled laterthis spring. More information about thetask force can be found on our Website atlibraries.mit.edu/open-access.

Article Downloads:01 - 1920 - 362363 - 69006901 - 131378131379 - 2501247

0

500,000

1,000,000

1,500,000

2,000,000

2,500,000

3,000,000

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

582 98,809 225,043

474,836

848,726 1,083,108

1,474,692

1,971,875

MIT Open Access Articles Downloads 2009 – 2016

The size and use of the DSpace@MIT collection, which houses the articles made available as a result of the MIT Faculty Open Access Policy, continues to grow.

Downloads continue to come from nearly every country in the world, as seen through the oastats service (data through May 2017).

Chris Bourg is Director of Libraries(cbourg@mit.edu);Hal Abelson is the Class of 1922 Professorof Electrical Engineering and Computer Science(hal@mit.edu).

MIT Faculty NewsletterVol. XXX No. 3

22

Teaching this spring? You should know . . .

. . . the Faculty regulates examinations and assignments for all subjects.

View the complete regulations at https://facultygovernance.mit.edu/rules-and-regulations#term-regulations-and-examination-policies. Select requirements are provided below for reference. Contact Faculty Chair Susan Silbey at exam-termregs@mit.edu with questions or requests for exceptions.

No required classes, examinations, oral presentations, exercises, or assignments of any kind may be scheduled after the last

regularly scheduled class in a subject – whether full-term or half-term – except for final examinations scheduled through the

Schedules Office. The last class day for all subjects is Thursday, May 17, 2018.

Undergraduate SubjectsIn both full-term subjects and half-term subjects, faculty must provide by the end of the first week of classes:

• a clear and complete description of the required work, including the number and kinds of assignments

• the approximate schedule of tests and due dates for major projects

• an indication of whether or not there will be a final examination, and

• the grading criteria and procedures to be used

In full-term subjects, by the end of the third week, faculty must provide a precise schedule of tests and major assignments.

In half-term subjects, this information must be provided by the end of the second week.

Regularly scheduled academic activity between 7 pm and 10 pm always takes precedence over evening review sessions or

exams/quizzes. Hence:

Evening review sessions should be optional, and should be described as such. It is good practice to announce them explicitly

as being for those students who do not have classes on the evening in question; some instructors schedule two review ses-

sions to provide alternate times.

In the case of an evening exam/quiz, you must make available an alternate time for any students with such a conflict. (Note:

Evening exams/quizzes may be scheduled only on a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday.)

When held outside scheduled class times, tests must:

• not exceed two hours in length

• begin no earlier than 7:30 p.m. when held in the evening, and

• be scheduled through the Schedules Office

In addition, during the same calendar week, either a regularly scheduled class session must be cancelled or no assignment will

be due.

MIT Faculty NewsletterJanuary/February 2018

23

In all full-term and H4 half-term undergraduate subjects, there may be no tests after Friday, May 11, 2018. Unit tests may be

scheduled during the final examination period. For each undergraduate subject with a final examination, no other test may be

given and no assignment may fall due after Friday, May 11, 2018. For each subject without a final examination, at most one

assignment may fall due between May 11 and the end of the last regularly scheduled class in the subject.

For H3 half-term undergraduate subjects, the final week of the class is considered to be the Half-Term Final Examination

Period. There may be at most one assignment due or one exam held during this final week of the class.

Graduate Subjects In full-term subjects, faculty must provide by the end of the third week:

• a clear and complete description of the required work, including the number and kinds of assignments

• the schedule of tests and due dates for major projects

• an indication of whether or not there will be a final examination, and

• the grading criteria and procedures to be used

In half-term subjects, faculty must provide this information by the end of the second week.

For each full-term and H4 half-term graduate subject with a final examination, no other test may be given and no assignment,

term paper, or oral presentation may fall due after Friday, May 11, 2018. For each full-term and H2 half-term graduate sub-

ject without a final examination, no more than one of the following may be given or fall due between May 11 and the end of the

last regularly scheduled class in the subject: in-class test, assignment, term paper, or oral presentation.

For all H3 half-term graduate subjects, with or without a final examination, the final week of the class is considered to be the

Half-Term Final Examination Period. There may be at most one exam held or one assignment, term paper, or oral presentation

due during this final week of the class.

Student HolidaysThere are no classes on the following dates: Monday, February 19 (Presidents Day); Monday, March 26 through Friday,

March 30 (Spring Vacation); Monday, April 16 (Patriots Day) and Tuesday, April 17.

Collaboration Policy and Expectations for Academic Conduct

Due to varying faculty attitudes towards collaboration and diverse cultural values and priorities regarding academic honesty,

students are often confused about expectations regarding permissible academic conduct. It is important to clarify, in writing,

expectations regarding collaboration and academic conduct at the beginning of each semester. This could include a reference

to the MIT Academic Integrity Handbook (integrity.mit.edu).

MIT Faculty NewsletterVol. XXX No. 3

M.I.T. NumbersMIT Faculty By Gender (AY 2018)

Source: Office of the Provost/Institutional Research

0

200

400

600

800

1,000

1,200

1983

19

84

1985

19

86

1987

19

88

1989

19

90

1991

19

92

1993

19

94

1995

19

96

1997

19

98

1999

20

00

2001

20

02

2003

20

04

2005

20

06

2007

20

08

2009

20

10

2011

20

12

2013

20

14

2015

20

16

2017

20

18

Female Male

9.42% 15.28%

22.8%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

1983

19

84

1985

19

86

1987

19

88

1989

19

90

1991

19

92

1993

19

94

1995

19

96

1997

19

98

1999

20

00

2001

20

02

2003

20

04

2005

20

06

2007

20

08

2009

20

10

2011

20

12

2013

20

14

2015

20

16

2017

20

18

Percent of Faculty Who Are Women

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

Professor Associate with Tenure

Associate No Tenure

Assistant

Female Male