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The MIT community takes pride in celebrating its legends, people such as Henry Kendall and Philip and Phylis Morrison. These people will be honored and remembered forever not simply because of their contributions to the Institute, but because they devoted their lives to peace and the society by using their knowledge and skills responsibly and generously. Yet, although their values and contributions are highly esteemed, few faculty members today are following in their footsteps.
Technology has been responsible for bringing almost as much bad as good to humanity. And many scientists, including MIT greats, have taken great time and effort to manage the use of technology they sometimes helped to create, such as nuclear weapons. The work of the Union of Concerned Scientists, for example, spans numerous issues and has been an invaluable benefit for society.
Issues of demilitarization, nonproliferation, and nuclear arsenal reduction persist in our society today, despite a time of supposed peace and prosperity, despite the end of the Cold War. Our government continues to increase military spending, subsidize defense contractors, export military "aid," and seek inane programs such as Star Wars. A talk about the resource waste and foreign policy dangers of the missile defense program last semester by Congressman Barney Frank and UCS and MIT Security Studies Professor Lisbeth Gronlund, with expert testimony from former TRW Senior Engineer Dr. Nira Schwartz, was sparsely attended by both MIT students and faculty.
Regardless of field of research, engineers and scientists, like all fellow citizens and human beings, have a responsibility to the common society, especially in a participatory democracy. Furthermore, as academics and intellectuals, we believe you are in a position to lead public discourse and peace campaigns, a role Kendall and the Morrisons have accepted and at which they have excelled. By solely focusing on your respective laboratory, you are in essence giving away your power to make decisions to politicians and economists, who present us today with a world of over-consumption/pollution and concentrated wealth, and a country armed to the teeth to defend that polarity. Such an abdication of responsibility is unworthy of the best minds of humanity. If MIT researchers have world class laboratories and do world class research, you must also make sure that your guidance in technology application and distribution is equally world class.
Everyone who respects life and desires a just society has a part in creating that peace, students and faculty included. Otherwise, Congressman Jesse Helms will continue to make declarations such as "not on my watch," (referring to his recent commitment to block any White House attempts to negotiate nonproliferation and disarmament treaties) and Institute economist Paul Krugman will continue to write articles proclaiming that "as long as you have no realistic alternative to industrialization based on low wages, to oppose it means that you are willing to deny desperately poor people the best chance they have of progress…" ("In Praise of Cheap Labor: Bad jobs at bad wages are better than no jobs at all,” Slate Magazine, March 20, 1997). Dare we stand aside and allow self-centered and unimaginative people to answer unchallenged such important questions that affect us all?
It is our hope that you, the faculty, will continue the positive legacies at MIT and confront fully our common contemporary problems, offering both service to people and ingenuity for change where they are lacking. We implore you to get more involved with social issues, to participate more actively in peace movements, and to encourage your students as well to engage themselves in civil society.
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