Shaped By & Shaping the World

Global Responsibility

With students from 90 countries, MIT is very much plugged in to the wider world. The Institute sees global engagement as a core element of its commitment to improve life on Earth. For generations, MIT students and faculty have collaborated with educators, governments, and marketplace partners across the globe to develop solutions to issues thwarting the advancement of civilization. In MIT’s earliest days in Cambridge, Institute scientists and engineers focused on technological innovation—like the invention of the wind tunnel. During World War II and the Cold War, considerable focus shifted to defense work.

For the last half century, increasing effort has been invested in projects that aid the betterment of the human condition. The MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) links science, innovation, and policy to transform the world’s energy systems. MIT President Susan Hockfield commissioned the report by the Energy Research Council that led to the founding of MITEI, which is now one of the world’s leading research centers for work on climate change and smart energy. In another sphere, the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) has mobilized 131 professors from 40+ universities to combat poverty. In fact, at this point in time, there’s at least one group at MIT dedicated to most global dilemmas.

More

• Find out about the MIT Energy Initiative

• Visit the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab

• Read about MIT’s global activities

Anti-War Protests

DOW_Protest.jpg

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, anti-war demonstrators frequently protested the Institute’s ongoing defense research. In 1968, a student group offered sanctuary to AWOL soldier Mike O’Conner, creating a sleep-in in the Sala de Puerto Rico as they waited for federal authorities to apprehend him. Many faculty and administrators welcomed O’Conner, offering him a dorm room at MIT. Noam Chomsky and Sylvain Bromberger even talked about creating a “Mike Scholarship” for AWOL soldiers. O’Conner was arrested without violence nearly two weeks after students took him in.

President Howard Johnson, a mediator by profession, was skilled in his dealings with protesters—in part, because he was sympathetic to their concerns. MIT actually had more names on Nixon’s “enemies list” (including Jerome Wiesner, Johnson’s successor) than any other organization. In 1969, Johnson convened a cross-Institute panel of students, faculty, alumni, and administrators to review MIT’s defense activities. The committee met for 36 days straight. A few months later, the Institute divested itself of the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, where missile guidance systems were being developed (Draper Labs was also developing guidance systems for the Apollo missions). Another significant outcome of anti-war tumult was the cofounding of the Union of Concerned Scientists at MIT by professor and Nobel laureate Henry Kendall.

More

• Listen to interviews with MIT academic and administrative leaders as they reflect upon the Vietnam War years

• Dennis Hevesi, “Howard W. Johnson, President of MIT During Vietnam War Protests, Dies at 88,” The New York Times (December 18, 2009)

• Kathryn Jeffreys, “This week in MIT History,” The Tech (November 2, 1999)

_{Photo: Over 100 students gathered to protest Dow Chemical Co. in 1967; Tech File photo}