Pro-Palestine student activists across the country have struggled to get their universities to respond to pressure for divestment from Israel and its military–industrial complex. So when a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology withdrew from a grant from the Israeli military after hearing feedback from students protesting the ongoing genocide in Gaza, it was especially welcome news.
“This is one of the only cases where we know that student activism and public pressure led directly to an Israeli tie being cut, let alone a collaboration with its genocidal military,” said Mila Halgren, a postdoctoral associate at MIT. (The university did not respond to a request for comment.)
MIT has come under internal and public scrutiny for conducting research on warfare technology sponsored by Israel. In July, the United Nations condemned the school for conducting “weapons and surveillance research funded by the Israeli ministry of defense — the only foreign military financing research at the institute.”
That research included projects on drone swarm control — technology which the Israeli military has used during its siege on Gaza — pursuit algorithms, and underwater surveillance.