Well,I agree with the MIT bosses that this might be distracting. I remember a talk by Will Happer - who has some unorthodox views on climate change - where we had hundreds of people in the audience who planned to disrupt him the moment he started on climate. Except that he never really did. It was all about molecular spectroscopy and how future measurements might do a better job than the ones we have today.
MIT’s leadership definitely feels the institute is not woke enough. But they do not have nearly the control of the organization that Zimmer has. Cross Zimmer and “you sleeps with the fishes”.