DECOLONISE M.I.T.: STUDENTS SPEAK OUT

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a new generation of student activists is forcing the storied institution to address its entanglements with various international systems of oppression, from its use of enslaved people to Cold War-era defence contracts and its recent partnerships with the Israeli arms industry.

In this video, we hear from an anonymous student who claims to be part of a group called 'Ethical Scientists.' They recently tore down a painting of Emma Savage Rogers (1824-1911), who enslaved Africans. Rogers was married to MIT founder William Barton Rogers (1804-82). The group replaced it with a photo of nurse, teacher and abolitionist Isabella Gibbons (circa 1836-90), an African whom Emma Savage Rogers owned. The other photo they included was of 11-year-old Palestinian social media influencer Yaqeen Hammad (2013-25), k*lled in an Israeli drone strike on 23 May. The group is trying to make the connection between MIT's oppressive past and its current research that aids Israel's military.

Over several months, MIT students have organised walkouts, sit-ins, and teach-ins against the university's research partnerships with companies that are supplying weapons to Israel during its military onslaught in Gaza. These protests are part of a broader movement on US campuses, in which students are demanding that universities divest from entities that profit from military campaigns and occupations.

MIT has a close relationship with the US Department of Defense and multiple defence contractors, particularly through its Lincoln Laboratory. During the apartheid era, students demanded the university divest from South Africa. Today, students draw parallels between the institution's past complicity and its current role in supporting settler-colonial systems, like Israel's and the United States.' Students are not only demanding divestment from firms associated with military activities but redirecting funds to decolonial scholarship, reparative justice and siding with liberation movements.

Video credit: @j.anthony.depice (IG)