@Mom2Melcs , I can only add this practical addendum to Ben Schwarz’s analysis: If MIT had hoped to cancel Dorian Abbot in the wider world they have failed spectacularly, given the extensive coverage (most of it negative) that this action received and given the even greater audience Abbot achieved (4,000 were reported) when he delivered the same lecture courtesy of Princeton. MIT has been embarrassed, the cancellation has created blowback within the institution itself, and Abbot has had a triumph handed to him. If the reason for his cancellation was avoidance of controversy it has achieved the reverse of this.
@MITPhysicsAlum , the content of Abbot’s proposed MIT lecture was entirely unrelated to his thoughts about admissions policy, so that should have put him in the same position as the lecturer you mention. What made Abbot’s situation so different? In the Princeton-facilitated version of his lecture he not only didn’t make any remarks on that issue, he did not even refer to his cancellation by MIT. However, revenge is a dish best eaten cold.
@JBStillFlying , I believe we are going to see in Paul Alivasatos an interesting and possibly transformational President of the University of Chicago. His remarks make it clear that he intends to build on the University’s legacies of “learning for its own sake”, independent inquiry, free speech, the Core, and all the things we traditionalists love about it. But he also suggested some points of departure from the past - greater engagement with the neighborhood, the city of Chicago, and the wider world; a greater emphasis on co-operation and co-ordination within the University itself; and an ever-greater expansion of inclusiveness. In short he seems to me to be striking a balance between the “hard” virtues and the “soft” ones. I am especially hopeful that as a grad of the College himself he will be simpatico with students and will find the means of circulating informally among them. He would have a credibility with them that few previous Presidents have had. As an alumnus myself I can’t help envying him the fun of running a place where he himself was once no more than a powerless kid trying to figure out the meaning of life and what he was to do with his own. Every inch of that campus must be freighted with memories and emotions. They must be raining down on him now, returning after all these years with all his accomplishments in the life he went on to live. I believe he will be true to the spirit of the place.