In René Magritte’s famous painting The Treachery of Images, a pipe is shown with the inscription “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” – “This is not a pipe.” It’s a paradox, or so it seems. But Magritte’s point was simple and profound: the image of a thing is not the thing itself. What we see is not the object, only a representation. Reality and representation are not interchangeable.

Polarization, as it is currently experienced in academic institutions like ours, is subject to a similar confusion. We often think of polarization as the natural outcome of having different or diverging opinions or values. But this is not polarization – this is plurality, and it is vital. A healthy institution thrives on different viewpoints, provided they are heard, engaged with, and debated in good faith.

Polarization is something else entirely. It is not disagreement – it is refusal. It is the deliberate denial of the other’s opinion as legitimate. It is not divergence, but exclusion. To return to Magritte: disagreement is the pipe; polarization is the image of the pipe, forever fixed, static, immune to new light or new perspective. It replaces the living exchange of ideas with an ideological impasse.

MIT has not been immune.

As a colleague recently reminded us, the roots of the current polarization stretch back to the Epstein affair. The revelation that MIT had accepted donations from a convicted sex offender fractured the faculty. Some defended the then-president, citing a report that claimed he had no knowledge of the donations. Others believed that this was precisely the problem: a failure of accountability at the highest levels of leadership. These were not simply differing views – they became opposing camps, each unwilling to recognize the legitimacy of the other’s stance. The damage ran deep and was never repaired. When the pandemic came, it physically separated us but did not heal us. The scars remained.

Polarization occurred, more visibly and painfully, in the wake of October 7, 2023, and the subsequent response. In the face of the brutal Hamas attacks on Israel, the faculty failed – collectively – to come together in shared mourning. We failed to express human empathy for the victims. This moral lapse metastasized as the war in Gaza escalated. There was no space created for the empathy that must extend to all victims of violence – Israeli and Palestinian alike.

Instead, faculty and students who protested the war – as students have always done in moments of conscience – were met not with dialogue, but with discipline. Their protest was exposed, vilified, and then buried under layers of punitive response. An editorial in the Faculty Newsletter (FNL) defending students’ right to protest became the target of a campaign. Suddenly, the right not to hear – not to be made uncomfortable by another’s pain – was framed as a fundamental right.

But censorship masquerading as neutrality does not resolve polarization; it fossilizes it. When colleagues are told what they may or may not write about – “politics” – we are not protecting civility; we are stifling discourse. And when this occurs within the pages of the FNL, a space historically dedicated to open exchange among all faculty, it is especially dangerous. The FNL did not create this polarization. But it has become the stage on which it plays out.

Which brings us back to this piece: this is not an editorial. It cannot be. Not because the topic is not urgent – it is – but because we, the faculty, are missing a moment when we should be rallying around the very values that unite us. At a time when MIT – and US academia more broadly – is under direct assault by a federal administration barely one hundred days in power, we should be writing about how to help our colleagues most affected by this onslaught: now cut off from USAID, NIH, and other federal support. People are hurting.

We should be focused on how to make MIT more resilient – for instance, by creating a solidarity fund to support labs and programs at risk of shutting down. We should be reaffirming our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion at a time when DEI programs are being dismantled across the country, and websites are being scrubbed of the lives and research of women, LGBTQ+ scholars, and underrepresented minorities. And we should be outraged about the unlawful detainment and deportation of students and scholars, including Mahmoud Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk, and Mohsen Mahdawi for exercising their first-amendment rights.

Instead, we find ourselves here – lamenting the climate on campus where it has become acceptable to attack a member of this very editorial board, to deny that they belong here at all. Not for lack of thoughtful engagement, but apparently, for being “too political,” “too activist,” or simply “too much.”

Is this where polarization ends? First, deny someone’s opinion. Then, deny their voice. And finally, deny their very place at the table. What began as disagreement has metastasized into something corrosive – a culture of denunciation.

We do need to find a way back – a way to sit in discomfort, to disagree without delegitimizing, to argue without vilifying. Otherwise, we will continue to erode the very ideals we claim to defend: academic freedom, free inquiry, and the university as a space for thought.

It is not too late. But the longer we mistake the image for the reality – and polarization for a means to shut down plurality – the easier it becomes for powerful forces to shut down who we are: an imperfect community, yes, but one that has always aspired to celebrate the pursuit of knowledge and understanding through diversity, equity, and inclusion. If this were an Editorial, it would finish on a positive note: The FNL, we commit, will stay the course.

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