(The Center Square) – The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the world’s most prestigious universities, officially recognizes a group that urges students to sign a pledge not to work in “apartheid” Israel.
MIT Coalition Against Apartheid (CAA) organizes demonstrations on the university’s campus, protesting the supposed treatment of Palestinians by Israel and demanding that the university cut all ties to the Jewish state. On their official website, the organization urges all MIT students and faculty to reject opportunities to work with corporations that collaborate with the Israeli regime.
“We call on all students and workers to withhold their labor from companies and research projects that are complicit in Israeli apartheid and the occupation, ethnic cleansing, and genocide of the Palestinian people,” CAA writes on their pledge.
“There will be no more science for genocide, no more technology for apartheid, and no more research for occupation. We will not work for or with any entity that is complicit in these crimes against humanity until they fully boycott and divest from Israeli apartheid,” the pledge continues.
The CAA encourages MIT students to “withhold their labor” from companies participating in Israeli “atrocities,” including Lockheed Martin, HP, Boeing, and Dell.
The pro-Palestinian organization also urges MIT researchers to sign a pledge acknowledging that their efforts can be weaponized as “tools of apartheid” and vowing to avoid “research with ties to Israeli occupation.” The pledge requests MIT researchers “refuse research projects that advance military interests of the occupation.”
Nearly 800 MIT students, faculty and researchers signed the pledge as of Feb. 16, 2024.
On Oct. 8, 2023, the day following Hamas’ terror attack on Israel, CAA posted an official statement placing blame on Israel and voicing support for the massacre.
“Palestine@MIT and the MIT Coalition Against Apartheid hold the Israeli regime responsible for all unfolding violence,” the group wrote.
“Colonization is inherently violent, aimed at erasing and replacing indigenous peoples. We affirm the right of all occupied peoples to resist oppression and colonization,” the group added.
In the months following the beginning of the Israel-Hamas War, the group hosted “teach-ins” that feature lectures by anti-Israel speakers and a series of protests condemning the Israel’s actions in Gaza as “genocide.”
Following an unauthorized protest on Feb. 12, MIT issued a statement announcing the group’s immediate suspension from campus. MIT President Sally Kornbluth released a video statement explaining the decision to suspend CAA, citing its refusal to go through the “normal permission processes” that other campus groups are expected to abide by.
MIT, along with other elite universities, has faced criticism from alumni and donors following the attacks against Israel. In early January, MIT Jewish Alumni Alliance urged Jewish graduates to refuse to donate to the university until they sufficiently punish antisemitic demonstrators.
MIT President Sally Kornbluth faced condemnation over her performance in a congressional hearing on campus antisemitism, arguing she was not forceful enough in her defense of Jewish students. Unlike former Harvard President Claudine Gay and former University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill, Kornbluth managed to evade a firing.
