The Israeli Ministry of Defense has poured more than $3.7 million into developing warfare technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 2015, according to a recent report from students and faculty organizing against the war in Gaza.
The report was published last month by the MIT Coalition for Palestine, which represents 19 student and faculty groups on campus, including MIT Divest, MIT Jews for Collective Liberation, and MIT Faculty and Staff for Palestine.
After the student organizers began further probing grant information, the school took down the grant software used for the coalition’s research, said Rich Solomon, a member and MIT graduate student who worked on the report. “MIT has engaged in a sustained and organized campaign of disinformation and propaganda in order to silence and suppress this information,” Solomon told The Intercept.
By hiding their ties, they can deny, delay, and depose anyone who prints statements to the contrary.
Shutting the door on public inquiry is a long term play that involves a little short term pain. But nobody is going to remember this headline in another news cycle or three.
Admins are banking on BDS falling down the memory hole like so many other failed civil rights initiatives.