My time at MIT was one of the highlights of my life. In many ways, MIT has been etched into my DNA, forever a piece of my identity. I was always so proud of that place as a beacon of meritocracy, open-mindedness, and engineering rigor.
But some of the accounts of Jewish and anti-Israeli harassment on campus have been quite disappointing. I have spoken to MISTI officers who were scared and locked themselves in their rooms as the CAA was harassing them and banging on the doors. I have read about Hillel requesting armed guards on campus to ensure Jewish student safety. I have seen videos of protests at the student center with chants for “intifada,” a word that technically means “uprising,” but in reality connotes violent suicide bombings that took over 2000 Israeli civilian lives. Similarly, I have read MIT faculty newsletters purporting the slogan “from the river to the sea Palestine will be free,” invoking its similarity to Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream.” The truth is that while that statement is entirely agreeable on paper, it in practice has (actual) genocidal origins and is used by Hamas as a call for the elimination of the Jews.