4 ms·

Why I Quit My Dream Job at MIT

17 points by gnicholas 3y ago

gnicholas 3y ago
> Over 65 percent of students from each MIT undergraduate class—or around 800 students—enroll in my Introduction to Algorithms course every year. Wow, this guy isn't just some professor, sounds like he's one of the most popular ones there.
- Onavo 3y ago
  It's probably a mandatory course for the EECS track.
  - gnicholas 3y ago
    Perhaps! But it looks like other people teach it too, so if he's getting 65% of the student body, it's probably an indicator that he's a good instructor.
giraffe_lady 3y ago
> I refuse to teach students who lack basic critical thinking skills Like the skills it would take to make you realize criticism of a theocratic apartheid ethnostate isn't the same thing as condemning an ethnic group? Like the skills it would take to notice all the jews involved in these protests?
- xpl 3y ago
  I had lived in Israel for a while and never seen "apartheid" many are talking about here in the U.S. There actually were lots of Arab/Muslim people who were citizens and they were not oppressed in any way. I believe more than 20% of Israeli people are non-Jewish. P.S. I wish more people who are anti-Israel go actually visit that country...
  - Onavo 3y ago
    > I believe more than 20% of Israeli people are non-Jewish. You are giving them the benefit of the doubt. The domestic realpolitik calculus would rapidly change if e.g. they grant all Palestinians full Israeli citizenship. It's easy to be "nice" when one side is a minority.
  - scarecrowbob 3y ago
    Having lived in Texas for a long time, I know many folks who never saw any racism there. I've seen racist things happen in Texas, often, but many of my friends who live there (including many smart, kind people who I love) have not see racist things and don't think it's an issue in Texas. I can't comment on Israel, I have never lived there. I can say that living in a place doesn't guarantee that people will see oppression in a place.
    - xpl 3y ago
      Sure, but there is difference between "racist things happen" and truly systemic oppression at the state-level like it was in the U.S. when Black people didn't have equal rights, or during South African Apartheid. Israel just isn't like that. And neither is Texas. But if one truly believes that there should be no such state as Israel (i.e. it was illegal in the first place and shouldn't have happened) — and there is "only Palestine", "from the river to the sea" — then yes, I get how one can claim that Israel is an apartheid state. From this perspective, Israel would need to grant full citizenship to all Palestinians automatically (essentially becoming Palestine under Hamas rule, or something worse). And since this isn't happening, they label it apartheid. So, it ultimately becomes about the very right of Israel to exist as a state. And here, I just can't understand how one could deny the Israeli people their own country. Isn't that just rooted in hate?
      - scarecrowbob 3y ago
        For context, I am sitting on land that abuts a Mescalero reservation, and I drove through Dine and Ute lands to get to this place. Perhaps that history colors my understanding of nationalist projects in the 19th and 20th centuries. I feel that it's often the case that a group of people is given a government-in-name-only and then still ruled over by a larger and more aggressive group (who typically has more guns). This seems like an important element when you have a group of people who are heterogeneous to a ruling regime that cannot establish the kinds of linguistic and ethnic markers that 19th and 20th century powers found so important in drawing lines on maps- if you have a bunch of folks who don't speak the language that you want to call the national language, then it seems like the proper high modernist response is to declare them non-citizens, deport them, and when no one wants the surplus population, you can put them in camps and eventually liquidate them. That's what the US tried to do, at least, and it was what the Germans were doing for a while. But I don't know much of Palestine, only what I have seen where I live. Maybe it's not like that there. I've seen enough video and heard enough stories that my picture of imperial military/police forces certianly leads me to believe that folks there have it even worse than black and brown folks in Texas, and I know a great deal about how bad it is there. But I could just be mis-seeing and mis-hearing the world. To be honest, I think that there are still systematic issues of racism in Texas, but that's neither here nor there. All places are unique and different. My opinion, as a direct descendant of the racist slave holders who founded the place, is that it's got it's own unique flavor of racism, and that the issues around that have never been fully redressed. However, at some points "all" people were granted "full citizenship" in Texas, which does help. Even if the government of Texas won't use Spanish to conduct business with the 28% of folks there who speak it as their native language. Like I said, though, I don't know much about Palestine. In your comment here, you ask if I think it is necessary for full citizenship to be granted to Palestinians. I suppose, on it's face, it seems strange to me that they don't have full citizenship, because if they don'e then you'd be incorrect about your assertion that they already have full equal rights. But that's also probably just a misunderstanding I have about the situation there. I will say, though, that I find states where citizenship depends on ones' ethnic or religious identity to be very dangerous, as those identities have often shifted and people will do violence to maintain those national identities. So my guesses about the safety of a state Jewish-only state have more to do with those thoughts than a hatred for anyone. I don't believe that nationalist projects are very safe in general, for any party. That's just an opinion. I have, however, been told that it's possible to create states where ones identity isn't the basis of ones civil rights. That is the line which says that Texas isn't racist in its operation. If that is true, it seems like in a "good" state it wouldn't matter who you are, all humans have full rights and can participate democratically in the state that rules them. In the US, I think that the Movement of Black Lives makes some excellent points among which is the idea that if the state cannot abuse black people, it probably can't abuse white folks, either, so work for racial justice is a matter of solidarity for all people. I think we both know that is unlikely the case- that's a problem I see in Texas, and that belief is reflected in your assertion that if Palestinians had full rights in Israel then Jewish folks might have similar problems to minorities in other states. That's a sad outcome, but since I don't have a lot of faith in nationalist projects I am not surprised when they start to liquidate their surplus populations. It's not hate, just a sadness at having seen that done where I live by my ancestors. And I don't know if I agree that a non-Jewish state means rule by people like Hamas is a necessary outcome of ending that nationalist project. Perhaps naively, I personally think that the bloodthirstiness of folks like Hamas is only sustained by the harshness of the treatment that they were given, but that might just be my own issues with the Mescalero, who don't kill as many folks here as they did 120 or so years ago.
handoflixue 3y ago
> Students chanted “Free Palestine” (...) with fury and at times glee, like they were reciting catchy songs instead of slogans demanding the erasure of the Jewish people. It seems the author is incapable of distinguishing pro-Palestine from pro-Hamas, and equally incapable of distinguishing anti-Israel from anti-semitism. A pity from someone who is ostensibly advocating from critical thinking. I always find it fascinating how many anti-Palestinians insist it's an atrocity not to condemn Hamas, but themselves see no reason at all to condemn Israel, which has now rendered Gaza "uninhabitable": https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/05/un-warns-gaza-is-now-uninhabitable-as-war-continues https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/05/un-warns-gaza-... To be clear: Hamas is a horrific terrorist organization. The vast majority of people are not advocating for or defending them. Most Pro-Palestinian protestors are, however clumsy their wording, advocating for the right of Palestinian citizens, women and children, to have a safe place to live.
- Onavo 3y ago
  I mean what do you expect? If you ask the Native Americans two hundred years ago, or the Hawaiians a century ago, I doubt they would have anything good to say either. Ultimately when two parties claim the same piece of land and one is militarily superior, it's no wonder the other party hates their guts. I don't understand why people bend backwards trying to defend the slogan. Sure it's hate speech, but it's very justified hate speech because both parties do hate each other and want to expel their counterparts from the land they both claim. Pretending that both just secretly want to live in peace is patronizing and rob them of their agency. If they want to kill each other, let them. There's no need to appeal to moral righteousness. Yes, children and innocents are dying. Yes, the US government is picking sides. Yes, one side like to use terrorist tactics. Yes, one side likes to assassinate opponent scientists and engineers on foreign soil. Yes, the calculus of the US foreign policy does not care about morality outside of public relations. Yes, the Jewish diaspora is influential. Yes, they are being harassed by members of the other Abrahamic religion. Yes, they are being persecuted in some parts of the world. All these can be simultaneously true and still nothing will change about the situation. If the Muslim religious groups in the US truly care so much about support among US academia, perhaps they should donate more. The only reason why the Harvard presidency fiasco happened was because the board said so. If their religion and culture wasn't so insular and limit their donations to their particular in-group, then they would have a greater say in how upper class education institutions are ran. The house of Saud and the Qataris and Emirates have plenty of money. They should consider donating to the state schools instead of wasting it on stupid vanity projects. Where are the Carnegie Mellons funded by the middle East? There are plenty of donor funded US research institutes by people with the name of Schwartzs and Schmidts, where are the Islamic names? I don't see any Mohammad schools of medicine, nor any Al Aqsa hospitals on the east coast while medical facilities named after Mount Sinai are everywhere. Go to California and all the engineering and science schools have buildings named after their Asian donors, often in tech. Isn't MBS's diversification efforts supposed to be tech's greatest savior through softbank's infamous Vision Fund? Where's the MBS Fellowship? Or the Bin Salman School of Engineering? They have only themselves to blame. Influence and public relations are not free.
gnicholas 3y ago
Interesting counterpoint: https://reason.com/volokh/2024/01/11/professor-quits-because-some-students-have-bad-beliefs/ https://reason.com/volokh/2024/01/11/professor-quits-because...

17 points by gnicholas 3y ago

> Over 65 percent of students from each MIT undergraduate class—or around 800 students—enroll in my Introduction to Algorithms course every year. Wow, this guy isn't just some professor, sounds like he's one of the most popular ones there.

Onavo 3y ago
It's probably a mandatory course for the EECS track.
- gnicholas 3y ago
  Perhaps! But it looks like other people teach it too, so if he's getting 65% of the student body, it's probably an indicator that he's a good instructor.

giraffe_lady 3y ago

> I refuse to teach students who lack basic critical thinking skills Like the skills it would take to make you realize criticism of a theocratic apartheid ethnostate isn't the same thing as condemning an ethnic group? Like the skills it would take to notice all the jews involved in these protests?

xpl 3y ago
I had lived in Israel for a while and never seen "apartheid" many are talking about here in the U.S. There actually were lots of Arab/Muslim people who were citizens and they were not oppressed in any way. I believe more than 20% of Israeli people are non-Jewish. P.S. I wish more people who are anti-Israel go actually visit that country...
- Onavo 3y ago
  > I believe more than 20% of Israeli people are non-Jewish. You are giving them the benefit of the doubt. The domestic realpolitik calculus would rapidly change if e.g. they grant all Palestinians full Israeli citizenship. It's easy to be "nice" when one side is a minority.
- scarecrowbob 3y ago
  Having lived in Texas for a long time, I know many folks who never saw any racism there. I've seen racist things happen in Texas, often, but many of my friends who live there (including many smart, kind people who I love) have not see racist things and don't think it's an issue in Texas. I can't comment on Israel, I have never lived there. I can say that living in a place doesn't guarantee that people will see oppression in a place.
  - xpl 3y ago
    Sure, but there is difference between "racist things happen" and truly systemic oppression at the state-level like it was in the U.S. when Black people didn't have equal rights, or during South African Apartheid. Israel just isn't like that. And neither is Texas. But if one truly believes that there should be no such state as Israel (i.e. it was illegal in the first place and shouldn't have happened) — and there is "only Palestine", "from the river to the sea" — then yes, I get how one can claim that Israel is an apartheid state. From this perspective, Israel would need to grant full citizenship to all Palestinians automatically (essentially becoming Palestine under Hamas rule, or something worse). And since this isn't happening, they label it apartheid. So, it ultimately becomes about the very right of Israel to exist as a state. And here, I just can't understand how one could deny the Israeli people their own country. Isn't that just rooted in hate?
    - scarecrowbob 3y ago
      For context, I am sitting on land that abuts a Mescalero reservation, and I drove through Dine and Ute lands to get to this place. Perhaps that history colors my understanding of nationalist projects in the 19th and 20th centuries. I feel that it's often the case that a group of people is given a government-in-name-only and then still ruled over by a larger and more aggressive group (who typically has more guns). This seems like an important element when you have a group of people who are heterogeneous to a ruling regime that cannot establish the kinds of linguistic and ethnic markers that 19th and 20th century powers found so important in drawing lines on maps- if you have a bunch of folks who don't speak the language that you want to call the national language, then it seems like the proper high modernist response is to declare them non-citizens, deport them, and when no one wants the surplus population, you can put them in camps and eventually liquidate them. That's what the US tried to do, at least, and it was what the Germans were doing for a while. But I don't know much of Palestine, only what I have seen where I live. Maybe it's not like that there. I've seen enough video and heard enough stories that my picture of imperial military/police forces certianly leads me to believe that folks there have it even worse than black and brown folks in Texas, and I know a great deal about how bad it is there. But I could just be mis-seeing and mis-hearing the world. To be honest, I think that there are still systematic issues of racism in Texas, but that's neither here nor there. All places are unique and different. My opinion, as a direct descendant of the racist slave holders who founded the place, is that it's got it's own unique flavor of racism, and that the issues around that have never been fully redressed. However, at some points "all" people were granted "full citizenship" in Texas, which does help. Even if the government of Texas won't use Spanish to conduct business with the 28% of folks there who speak it as their native language. Like I said, though, I don't know much about Palestine. In your comment here, you ask if I think it is necessary for full citizenship to be granted to Palestinians. I suppose, on it's face, it seems strange to me that they don't have full citizenship, because if they don'e then you'd be incorrect about your assertion that they already have full equal rights. But that's also probably just a misunderstanding I have about the situation there. I will say, though, that I find states where citizenship depends on ones' ethnic or religious identity to be very dangerous, as those identities have often shifted and people will do violence to maintain those national identities. So my guesses about the safety of a state Jewish-only state have more to do with those thoughts than a hatred for anyone. I don't believe that nationalist projects are very safe in general, for any party. That's just an opinion. I have, however, been told that it's possible to create states where ones identity isn't the basis of ones civil rights. That is the line which says that Texas isn't racist in its operation. If that is true, it seems like in a "good" state it wouldn't matter who you are, all humans have full rights and can participate democratically in the state that rules them. In the US, I think that the Movement of Black Lives makes some excellent points among which is the idea that if the state cannot abuse black people, it probably can't abuse white folks, either, so work for racial justice is a matter of solidarity for all people. I think we both know that is unlikely the case- that's a problem I see in Texas, and that belief is reflected in your assertion that if Palestinians had full rights in Israel then Jewish folks might have similar problems to minorities in other states. That's a sad outcome, but since I don't have a lot of faith in nationalist projects I am not surprised when they start to liquidate their surplus populations. It's not hate, just a sadness at having seen that done where I live by my ancestors. And I don't know if I agree that a non-Jewish state means rule by people like Hamas is a necessary outcome of ending that nationalist project. Perhaps naively, I personally think that the bloodthirstiness of folks like Hamas is only sustained by the harshness of the treatment that they were given, but that might just be my own issues with the Mescalero, who don't kill as many folks here as they did 120 or so years ago.

handoflixue 3y ago

> Students chanted “Free Palestine” (...) with fury and at times glee, like they were reciting catchy songs instead of slogans demanding the erasure of the Jewish people. It seems the author is incapable of distinguishing pro-Palestine from pro-Hamas, and equally incapable of distinguishing anti-Israel from anti-semitism. A pity from someone who is ostensibly advocating from critical thinking. I always find it fascinating how many anti-Palestinians insist it's an atrocity not to condemn Hamas, but themselves see no reason at all to condemn Israel, which has now rendered Gaza "uninhabitable": https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/05/un-warns-gaza-is-now-uninhabitable-as-war-continues https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/05/un-warns-gaza-... To be clear: Hamas is a horrific terrorist organization. The vast majority of people are not advocating for or defending them. Most Pro-Palestinian protestors are, however clumsy their wording, advocating for the right of Palestinian citizens, women and children, to have a safe place to live.

Onavo 3y ago
I mean what do you expect? If you ask the Native Americans two hundred years ago, or the Hawaiians a century ago, I doubt they would have anything good to say either. Ultimately when two parties claim the same piece of land and one is militarily superior, it's no wonder the other party hates their guts. I don't understand why people bend backwards trying to defend the slogan. Sure it's hate speech, but it's very justified hate speech because both parties do hate each other and want to expel their counterparts from the land they both claim. Pretending that both just secretly want to live in peace is patronizing and rob them of their agency. If they want to kill each other, let them. There's no need to appeal to moral righteousness. Yes, children and innocents are dying. Yes, the US government is picking sides. Yes, one side like to use terrorist tactics. Yes, one side likes to assassinate opponent scientists and engineers on foreign soil. Yes, the calculus of the US foreign policy does not care about morality outside of public relations. Yes, the Jewish diaspora is influential. Yes, they are being harassed by members of the other Abrahamic religion. Yes, they are being persecuted in some parts of the world. All these can be simultaneously true and still nothing will change about the situation. If the Muslim religious groups in the US truly care so much about support among US academia, perhaps they should donate more. The only reason why the Harvard presidency fiasco happened was because the board said so. If their religion and culture wasn't so insular and limit their donations to their particular in-group, then they would have a greater say in how upper class education institutions are ran. The house of Saud and the Qataris and Emirates have plenty of money. They should consider donating to the state schools instead of wasting it on stupid vanity projects. Where are the Carnegie Mellons funded by the middle East? There are plenty of donor funded US research institutes by people with the name of Schwartzs and Schmidts, where are the Islamic names? I don't see any Mohammad schools of medicine, nor any Al Aqsa hospitals on the east coast while medical facilities named after Mount Sinai are everywhere. Go to California and all the engineering and science schools have buildings named after their Asian donors, often in tech. Isn't MBS's diversification efforts supposed to be tech's greatest savior through softbank's infamous Vision Fund? Where's the MBS Fellowship? Or the Bin Salman School of Engineering? They have only themselves to blame. Influence and public relations are not free.

gnicholas 3y ago

Interesting counterpoint: https://reason.com/volokh/2024/01/11/professor-quits-because-some-students-have-bad-beliefs/ https://reason.com/volokh/2024/01/11/professor-quits-because...