An open letter to MIT President L. Rafael Reif
An open letter to MIT President L. Rafael Reif
Shouldn't MIT be the country's leading defender of science? Today, MIT isn't asking any tough questions about the COVID vaccines and refuses to let people with dissenting views talk on campus.
Dear President Reif,
Nearly 24 years ago, I made a $2.5 million gift to MIT to aid in the construction of the Stata Center and in return, MIT named the Kirsch Auditorium in my honor.
Since that gift, I have never once requested to speak in the auditorium named after me.
Recently, however, I made such a request to speak about vaccine safety.
I was denied.
See Is science dead? and MIT does not want to entertain the possibility that they may have made a huge mistake for details.
Quite frankly, I was appalled that MIT is actively suppressing views that challenge mainstream thinking.
Science is supposed to embrace differing viewpoints from qualified individuals.
I am clearly qualified to represent the alternative viewpoint on COVID vaccine safety and efficacy. I’ve written over 300 articles on my Substack solely dedicated to the pandemic response and have been recognized by the Center for Countering Digital Hate as one of the top three authors in the US who challenge mainstream thinking. I am an MIT alumnus. I am a major donor to MIT. Or at least was a major donor.
Not allowing me to challenge the status quo thinking on the COVID vaccines is anti-science
MIT will not let me speak.
It seems that MIT will only allow students, staff, and faculty to hear only one side of the story on a topic that affects every member of the MIT community.
Is that wise? If there is a possibility that these mandated vaccines are unsafe, wouldn’t you want to know so that you can protect the members of the MIT community?
Who is defending science today?
Clearly it is not Harvard, MIT, or Stanford.
I texted Dr. Robert Malone recently to see which college campuses have invited him to speak. After all, Malone’s Joe Rogan podcast was the most listened to podcast of all time with well over 50M listeners. So clearly a lot of people are interested in his point of view.
Here’s how my conversation with Dr. Malone went:
It appears that Hillsdale College with their new Academy for Science & Freedom is taking the lead in this area.
Their web page shows that they understand exactly what is going on:
Instead of open and free discourse to seek the scientific truths underlying urgently needed solutions, the opposite way of thinking has taken hold. Scientists whose research and data interpretation differ from the desired narrative have been silenced, censored, and slandered. Academia and the research community, dominated by a single viewpoint, now actively engage in intimidation and false declarations of consensus, and they abuse the peer-review system for publishing findings. This intolerance has fostered a climate of fear and has inhibited other scientists and experts from contributing to the public discussion, effectively inducing self-censorship. This has severely damaged the environment for civil discourse, and consequently, it has become extremely difficult for the public to arrive at any objective understanding of facts.
I couldn’t agree more with this statement.
President Reif, we’d like to know whether you agree as well?
If you do agree, then why would I not be permitted to speak in my auditorium? Will you speak out publicly against this injustice?
An example
There are many examples of the corruption of science during the COVID pandemic.
The most stunning one to me is the silencing of Professor Peter Schirmacher.
Dr. Schirmacher is one of the top 100 pathologist in the world (he’s #67 on this list).
Dr. Schirmacher did a study of 40 people who died within 2 weeks after COVID vaccination and determined that at least 30% to 40% of those deaths were caused by the vaccine (see also Chief pathologist insists on more autopsies of vaccinated people). That’s a minimum. It could be far more than that, but he wasn’t able to conclusively prove that.
Other German researchers have independently replicated his findings (they found an even higher percentage of deaths that were highly likely caused by the vaccine):
When I tried to reach out to Dr. Schirmacher for more details, I was met with silence. Indeed, nothing has been heard from him since the news broken on his study.
How could that possibly be that to this day Schirmacher remains silent about his remarkable findings?
The answer to that question should be obvious. It is because he was silenced; they threatened his family if he spoke out about what he found. So he shut up like he was told.
This is not how science is supposed to work, is it? Fear and intimidation techniques should never be used to muzzle scientists, especially those scientists with information that could save hundreds of thousands of lives by revealing that the vaccines are unsafe and should be immediately stopped.
How did the scientific community react to the silencing of Dr. Schirmacher?
They ignored it of course.
Not a single member of the mainstream scientific community came to the aid of Dr. Schirmacher to condemn the fear and intimidation tactics that were used.
To this day, Dr. Schirmacher remains silent to protect his own life and the life of his family.
Is that how science is supposed to work?
Does the MIT faculty support fear and intimidation tactics against other scientists?
Did a single MIT faculty member speak out about this abuse?
Will any MIT faculty member come to his aid and say this is wrong, that no scientist should be intimidated in this manner?
Or is it my job, as a former MIT student, to denounce such abuse since MIT will not?
I have a proposal I’d like you to consider
It’s time to up the stakes.
I’d like you to invite my colleagues and me to come to MIT to challenge the mainstream narrative on the “safe and effective” vaccine and the science behind masks. We will also show that MIT’s COVID-19 policies are not supported by science.
We are happy to be challenged by members of the MIT community. That would be a refreshing change since all our attempts to have an open scientific debate on these topics have all been declined by those supporting the mainstream narrative. That’s not surprising to us since the facts don’t align with their narrative and nobody likes to be shown they are wrong in front of a live audience. Even a $1M offer just to come to the debate table was declined by members of the CDC and FDA outside committee members. Truly stunning. It shows that none of them want to be held accountable. They don’t want to answer any hard questions.
We’ll show up regardless of whether you are able to find anyone to challenge us. It’s fine if you reach out to Harvard as well.
The event should be held in Kresge Auditorium since it has nearly 4,000 seats (much larger than the 250-seat Kirsch Auditorium).
So the only question is: do you believe in open scientific debate or censorship?
I look forward to hearing your response to my proposal.
Sent via email to President Reif, Professor Robert Langer, and others. I will update this article with their response.
Steve,
"We live in a technological dark age," — when casually said by MIT Math Professor Gian-Carlo Rota during dinner in the 1970's left a deep impression on me. Unfortunately this quip metastized into today's intersection of 1984, Brave New World & Fahrenheit 451: #Faucism.
I have watched with discomfort as the Institute migrated into the politically correct,— disappointedly so with Dr Reif, who probably considers Maduro in Venezuela a dangerous idealogue, but issues statement after statement with political overtones seemingly oblivious to their one-sided narrative.
In any event, keep challenging the falsehoods and shibboleths with the methodology that MIT used to adhere to,— "quantify!"
Perhaps MIT has something to hide. Possibly MIT Corporation is embarrassed by its roles in CDC bio-research, and the project transferred to Wuhan. I recall reading in late 2019 or early 2020 in The Tech that a Harvard Prof was fired or dismissed; and lead researcher and project relocated to Wuhan. After MIT supported injections while faculty were releasing hundreds of preliminary findings on topics related to ‘the spread’ and mask efficacy, I asked my MIT Alum son ‘What’s with MIT?’. I thought it was a research institution that does real research. I was shocked by its position requiring all persons to be injected to be on campus. Then concluded MIT gets too much money from corrupt government and private corporate sources do is owned just like the rest of America. So much for the Independent stellar meritocracy MIT once was.