Editorial
Moving On
Nazli Choucri,
Christopher Cummins,
Yoel Fink,
Thomas Heldt,
Tanalís Padilla,
Nasser Rabbat,
Balakrishnan Rajagopal,
Robert Redwine,
Franz-Josef Ulm
The elections are over. The voters – the faculty – have spoken.
The Freedom of the University: A History in Eleven Quotations
“There is no drama like the drama of history,” wrote the great Trinidadian historian C.L.R. James in The Black Jacobins (1938). During the last few years, we have lived a drama in the university that seems unlike few chapters in the history of American higher education.
Faculty Travelogue
How Birding and Engineering Brought Me to Write: Birds Up Close: An Engineer Explores Their Hidden Wonders
My upcoming book, Birds Up Close: An Engineer Explores Their Hidden Wonders, will be published by MIT Press on April 28. How did I get from my research on the mechanical behavior of cellular materials . . . to writing a book about how birds work? It’s been a journey.
From The Faculty Chair
Committees, Task Forces, and Working Groups – the Ins and Outs
Not so many weeks have elapsed in academic-semester time since my first column, but the interim has been eventful.
FNL Editorial Board Election Outcome
This special election was held to fill five open seats on the Faculty Newsletter editorial board after the originally scheduled May 2025 election was postponed.
On Fiscal Balance, Entropy, and the Temperature of Knowledge
The recent announcement of the end of the 55% tuition support for research assistants has prompted many conversations across the Institute. I would like to contribute one from a narrow – and admittedly biased – engineering – perspective.
A Student Expulsion at MIT: Questions About the MIT Disciplinary Process
Dwaipayan Banerjee,
Sally Haslanger,
Nancy Kanwisher,
Ceasar McDowell,
Haynes Miller,
Margery Resnick
On October 8, 2025, Prahlad Iyengar, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, received a notice of disciplinary expulsion from MIT.
Where is Your Memory? On Historical Amnesia, Selective Moral Disengagement, and Reality-Bending
MIT Professor Yossi Sheffi’s article in the November/December issue of the MIT Faculty Newsletter is a spectacular case study in the use and mis-use of language for reality-bending mirror accusations . . .
