Editorial
Little Lights in a Long Winter
This winter, a quiet tristesse has settled across the Institute as austerity narrows conversation. Yet renewal often begins in moments like these – when faculty take up the harder questions of governance, responsibility, and imagination.
From The Faculty Chair
Faculty Governance: From Recognition to Representation
I begin this first column as Chair of the Faculty with a brief update on the work of faculty governance during the academic year’s first three months. We have, by necessity, been off to a running start.
Faculty Travelogue
Lecturing in China
In the fall of 1987, released from teaching by a Guggenheim Fellowship and invited to China to lecture as an American feminist intellectual, I visited there for two months, lecturing in six eastern cities: Beijing, Xuzhou, Hefei, Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Guilin.
Finance, Freedom, and the Faculty Post-Compact: The Case for Independence and Inclusion
MIT has adapted its resource model whenever the world shifted around it. Post-Compact, we might do so again – exploring paced expansion over austerity to secure academic freedom, widen access, and strengthen our civic partnership.
A Primer on Decarbonizing MIT’s Campus: What Every MIT Faculty Member Should Know
When we talk about the MIT campus, we’re not only describing a collection of buildings along the Charles River. We’re describing a living laboratory – nearly 200 buildings that power, heat, cool, and sustain thousands of people every day.
Faculty Travelogue
Reflections on the Alhambra
Some years ago, I spent part of my sabbatical in Granada. I resided in the Carmen de la Victoria, the residence for visiting professors at the University of Granada.
Developing Students Who Make an Impact: Introducing the SoE Technical Leadership and Communication (TLC) Programs
In September of 2024, President Sally Kornbluth announced the MIT Presidential Initiatives, a set of collaborative efforts "to empower faculty to pursue their most innovative ideas, collaborate with others outside their field, and explore fresh approaches to teaching.”
Where Are You? On Selective Outrage and Moral Credibility
The recent videos of Hamas executing Palestinians in Gaza were horrifying. Yet anyone who witnessed the terror attacks of October 7, 2023 – when Hamas militants murdered, raped, and tortured Israeli civilians – should not have been surprised.
