I Wrote About How MIT Failed Jewish Students. The Backlash Proved My Point.

I am a professor of engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who discovered, in the aftermath of the massacre of Israelis on October 7, 2023, that the university where I have taught for 48 years was rife with defenders, supporters, and celebrants of Hamas’s atrocities. I also discovered that the institution was unwilling to defend Jewish students and faculty during the months of harassment and torment that followed.

Unsafe at MIT, by Yossi Sheffi (via Transoft Inc.)

I published the book Unsafe at MIT: A Chronicle of a Campus War on the Jews not only to provide a record of what Jews have had to suffer at the university but to hold to account an administration that refused to acknowledge its failures, much less apologize for them. Though my previous work dealt with supply-chain strategy, logistics networks, and urban transport, I am no stranger to research; based on interviews and careful investigation, Unsafe at MIT received respectful attention from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, but a vindictive response from the MIT administration that has sadly reinforced my book’s central premise.

Shortly after my book was published, I was told by the dean of engineering that I was expected to work solely on operations research and supply-chain management, rather than issues of antisemitism. Academics, of course, routinely write and speak about subjects beyond their specialties; did MIT ever penalize linguistics expert Noam Chomsky when he started denouncing the war in Vietnam and other aspects of U.S. foreign policy? That’s called academic freedom. There’s a blatant double standard when such a limitation is invoked only in a case like mine—a Jewish professor telling the truth about the treatment of Jewish students.