The MIT Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) calls on MIT to immediately reinstate Prahlad Iyengar’s access to campus, with full rights, and for his case to be heard in a fair, rules-based disciplinary process that is based on credible evidence and facts, and that is protected by principles of freedom of speech, expression, and due process.

Prahlad Iyengar, an MIT graduate student, was charged on November 1, 2024, with policy violations for which he was immediately banned from campus before he was given a COD [Committee on Discipline] hearing. The alleged violations are serious, and they call for a proper investigation of facts found in evidence, not suspicions or hearsay. Instead, Iyengar has been pre-judged, banned, and assigned punitive consequences without due process.

The allegations against Iyengar would have us believe that (1) his article in the Written Revolution #5 is an incitement to violence by the protest movement; (2) that this call was heard by the students, and led them to protest on October 22, 2024 in front of CSAIL offices; and (3) that Prahlad was the mastermind behind it all, not only through his article, but as active planner and organizer of this unauthorized protest.

However, members of the AAUP have seen compelling evidence that Iyengar was not involved in “planning or organizing [a student] protest” in front of CSAIL at MIT on October 22. An investigation focusing on evidence would have discovered that he was only informed about the protest once it had concluded.

In another allegation, Iyengar was charged for his role as writer of an article in and editor of an MIT-recognized and student-run magazine, Written Revolution. There are two parts to this allegation. One is that issue #5, in which Iyengar’s article appears, vitiated the MIT brand by including an image of a vintage poster featuring the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) logo. The second part is that Iyengar’s article included an incitement to violence. The DSL [Division of Student Life] letter claims that “the article makes several troubling statements that could be interpreted as a call for more violent or destructive forms of protest at MIT, including stating that it is time to ‘begin wreaking havoc’ and ‘exact[ing] a cost’ at MIT and highlighting self-immolation as a form of the ‘tactical pacifism’ that is the centerpiece of the article.”

For these reasons, on November 1, 2024, the Division of Student Life sent a letter to the editors of the Written Revolution, including Iyengar, asserting that “At this time, you are directed to no longer distribute this issue [#5] of Written Revolution on MIT’s campus. You are also prohibited from distributing it elsewhere using the MIT name or that of any MIT-recognized organization.” According to DSL, “this decision [to forbid distribution of issue #5 of Written Revolution and to temporarily banish Prahlad Iyengar from campus] was made after consultation with the faculty co-chairs of the Ad Hoc Committee on Academic Freedom and Campus Expression (CAFCE), the faculty Chair of the Committee on Discipline, and MIT’s senior leadership.”

Following this line of reasoning leads down a dark path. Let’s start with the first part of the allegation concerning the PFLP logo. Though it is true that in the late 1990s, the Department of State designated the PFLP a foreign terrorist organization, we are left to ask whether MIT will ban all publications – books published by MIT Press, publications made available at MIT Libraries, etc. – that show images of any group that is or has been labeled as “terrorist” by the Department of State or the FBI? A historical study of social movements, for example, would surely require scholarly treatment of such images. In fact, scholars have recently visited campus who specialize in the work of the PFLP at MIT’s request. What distinguishes legitimate and illegitimate inclusion of problematic images in a publication? This is a well-known challenge that scholars have debated for decades. If we assume that any inclusion of such images warrants a ban, then other, plausibly valuable, publications would have to be banned. And will MIT Press and MIT Libraries be banned from campus as an interim measure pending fact-finding about these MIT Press and MIT Libraries books?

What about the second part of the allegation, that Iyengar’s article incites violence? Members of the AAUP have evidence that the DSL charges are based on IDHR [Institute Discrimination and Harassment Response] reports from anonymous students who quote Iyengar’s article out of context and go on to make erroneous conclusions about the content. A well-informed reading of the article easily situates it as rehearsing and responding to well-known debates within peace studies. The most famous of these debates is the disagreement between Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, particularly vis-a-vis the use of force to effect peace. Although Iyengar’s article describes a range of strategies towards peace, including self-immolation, many of the examples of “strategic” and “tactical” pacifism are part of a discussion of historical cases. The article also extends, though in sometimes controversial ways, basic arguments around the definition of peace: suggesting, as Johan Galtung does, that “negative peace” (or the absence of violence) does not indicate actually existing peace. Moreover, we could see the article as raising questions about the realpolitik of peace, or institutions and mechanisms of peace: for example, our present-day peace strategies include the enforcement of peace through militarized peacekeeping; more diplomatic forms of negotiation as evident in peace-making; and a range of state, international, and every day (i.e., social and mutual aid-oriented) forms of peacebuilding. The conclusion we should draw is that this article was not an incitement to violence. Those who claim it to be such are taking the nuanced and historically grounded arguments out of context. Although many of us personally would disagree with some of the claims that are made in the article, it is an attempt to articulate a reasoned point of view within a debate and is protected by Iyengar’s right of free expression.

The DSL seems to suggest that whatever we might learn from a closer reading of the text, we should be concerned about the welfare of members of the MIT community. We agree that members of our community should be able to do their jobs without threat of violence. But Iyengar’s essay is not the source of any such threats. More specifically, the article and imagery do not violate the 1969 Brandenburg test for incitement: it does not cause imminent harm, it is unlikely to produce illegal action, and it does not intend to cause imminent illegality.

We also want to point out that although the DSL claims to have consulted with CAFCE in suspending Iyengar, members of the AAUP have heard different and conflicting reports about CAFCE’s recommendation, including a report that they did not judge that the content of the article was such as to prevent it from being circulated. We call on CAFCE, as a faculty committee, to be transparent in its decisions and recommendations.

Suspending a student for their contributions (as author and editor) to a publication that does not incite violence but instead constitutes a serious engagement with an ongoing political debate is a violation of longstanding principles of free expression on American college campuses and MIT’s own endorsement of these same principles.

Without a thorough and meticulous investigation of the relevance and credibility of the alleged violations, Iyengar is being pushed through a hastily implemented expedited process: a one-stop COD committee meeting that will decide his future.

Even though Iyengar has his COD hearing scheduled in the coming days, a ban from campus may have already biased the COD committee. The disciplinary process, which is supposed to be fair, has, instead, stacked the cards against him. While we recognize the significant pressures on the Committee on Discipline and the broader disciplinary system, MIT faculty must stand together and firmly declare that we cannot sacrifice due process, academic freedom, and freedom of expression in the name of expedient discipline.

In the past few years, multiple groups have been formed in the MIT community due to a heightened awareness of the need to protect freedom of expression (the Ad Hoc Working Group on Free Expression, CAFCE, MITCAF, MIT Free Speech Alliance). Rather than punishing student expression and silencing student voices, members of the AAUP defend students’ right to publish and distribute Written Revolution, not because we endorse arguments contained therein, but precisely because our opinions vary. Our position is that these disagreements must take place in the open, as part of the core educational mission of our institution and community. As the MIT Values Statement suggests, “we strive to be transparent and worthy of each other’s trust – and we challenge ourselves to face difficult facts, speak plainly about failings in our systems, and work to overcome them.”

We call on the COD and MIT more broadly to return to a disciplinary process that supports its mission: education. Education is based on facts and evidence that are verified for relevance and credibility. A commitment to education means that we do not banish members of our own community for their ideas or their engagement in political protest.

Back to top