MIT Canceled a Professor's Guest Lecture Because He Opposes Race-Based Admissions

Dorian Abbot is a geophysicist at the University of Chicago. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) invited him to deliver a guest lecture on climate change, then canceled the talk due to campus outrage over his views.

Notably, it was not Abbot's views on climate change that prompted the student, staff, and alumni revolt. It was his views on affirmative action: He had publicly criticized race-based personnel decisions in higher education. His views on these issues are not outside the mainstream—a majority of the voters in California, of all places, also oppose race-based preferences. Yet MIT decided it would be better not to risk further upsetting a coterie of extremely irritated activist voices.

This happened a few weeks ago, but it recently drew the attention of The New York Times. The paper obtained comments from the head of MIT's earth sciences department, who defended the decision to cancel the lecture: