Anti-Israel flyers featuring a link to an interactive map of Jews and Zionists in Massachusetts were distributed at Monday's orientation for new Massachusetts Institute of Technology students, MIT President Sally Kornbluth said in a Wednesday statement condemning the flyers and project.
Several students had handed out flyers that said "welcome to MIT!" next to a drawing of the university's mascot, said Kornbluth. The flyers commented on conflict in Middle East and Israel with links to materials including the controversial Mapping Project.
Kornbluth wished to clarify that the flyers were not official MIT content and denounced the Mapping Project, which catalogs and maps the supposed connections of Jewish and Zionist organizations, synagogues, universities, businesses, schools, media outlets, and law enforcement agencies and their ostensible relationships to Israel and the US government.
"While I have repeatedly defended freedom of expression, I must tell you that I found some of the websites cited on the flyers deeply concerning," said Kornbluth. "I believe the Mapping Project promotes antisemitism. Like every other form of racial and religious prejudice and hate, antisemitism is totally unacceptable in our community. It cannot be justified, and it is antithetical to MIT’s values."
Feeling unwelcome on campus
Some students also reported to Kornbluth that they had been made unwelcome to MIT because of the flyers.
Kornbluth said that it was unfortunate that she had to start the academic year with such a statement, and assured that "every student, and every member of our faculty and staff, belongs here" and was welcome.
The Mapping Project was published in 2022 and was endorsed by BDS Boston.
"Our goal in pursuing this collective mapping was to reveal the local entities and networks that enact devastation, so we can dismantle them," reads the Mapping Project website. "Every entity has an address, every network can be disrupted."
The project was widely panned by Massachusetts politicians and organizations as antisemitic for blacklisting those associated with Boston Jewish groups. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said at the time that it was monitoring the project.
MIT and several of its institutions were listed in the map, because it ostensibly "supports and profits from war and imperialism, colonialism, Zionism, privatization, and gentrification."
"Throughout its history, MIT has played a central role in developing the tools used in US wars around the world, US 'counterinsurgency' efforts against social movements at home, and Israel's colonial subjugation of Palestinians and systematic theft of Palestinian land and resources," the Mapping Project claimed.