Two years ago, the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ended a research partnership in Russia after the country’s invasion of Ukraine, he said, provoked “terrible consequences” for civilians.
Now MIT students who are protesting Israel’s war in Gaza are demanding that MIT respond similarly by severing ties with Israel itself and companies that are advancing its military efforts in Gaza as the death toll grows and the humanitarian crisis deepens. Protesters on other campuses are voicing similar demands.
MIT students have made some specific allegations, including that the school receives money from the Israeli Ministry of Defense for research, and have urged the university to be more transparent about its Israeli ties. A spokesperson for MIT, Kimberly Allen, declined to provide specifics, saying that the school’s faculty and researchers work with scientists and entities across the globe, including in Israel.
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Publicly available documents provide some clues: MIT reported receiving $2.8 million in grants, gifts, and contracts from Israeli entities between 2020 and 2024, according to data from the US Department of Education. The department does not specify whether the funds come from individual, academic, or public sources, or how they are spent.
“MIT strongly supports the principles of academic freedom that enable our faculty to engage with a wide array of partners in the pursuit of knowledge,” Allen said. “Sponsored research projects on campus involve work that is open and publishable and that contributes to knowledge that is freely available to scientists worldwide.”
There are differences between the Russian invasion and the Israeli campaign. Russia invaded Ukraine unprovoked; Israel is waging a war against Hamas after the militant group-led an attack on Israel last year that killed about 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, while another 250 were taken hostage.
Student protestors at MIT and other campuses who set up encampments in recent days, and are refusing to move until their demands are met, are focused on the toll of the Israel-Hamas war rather than its cause. The Israeli campaign has killed more than 30,000 Gazans, according to the local Ministry of Health, reduced entire neighborhoods to rubble, and displaced the vast majority of the territory’s residents.
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When MIT took a position on the Russian invasion, there was little pushback. Russia, unlike Israel, is a US adversary. And the conflict did not create intense divisions on campus, where today some Jewish students allege the pro-Palestinian movement contains antisemitism within its ranks, and some pro-Palestinian students allege discrimination and suppression of their speech.
“Ending our connection to this academic community comes with considerable sadness, but the actions of the Russian government made our choice clear,” former MIT President L. Rafael Reif wrote in a news release days after Russia’s invasion began.
MIT’s project in Russia, aimed at creating a tech hub and graduate university on the outskirts of Moscow, is not the only time MIT has reconsidered some of its foreign research relationships. The Cambridge institute reassessed its ties to Saudi Arabia after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post columnist killed by Saudi operatives in 2018. After an internal review, however, the university determined that professors should be able to continue research projects with students, researchers, and sponsors in Saudi Arabia.
MIT reported it received more than $20 million in grants, contracts, and gifts from sources in Saudi Arabia between 2020 and 2024, according to the Department of Education.
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Nancy Kanwisher, a professor of neuroscience at MIT, said she was not surprised to hear that some research at the school is funded by Israeli sources. She said there should be an open, public discussion among faculty members, staff, and students about support for research.
“There are lots of questionable sources of funding on campus,” Kanwisher said.
The school’s graduate student union and undergraduate student association recently passed referendums calling on MIT to end research ties to Israel. Students hope the protest encampments will motivate administrators to stop accepting research dollars from Israeli sources, said Safiyyah Ogundipe, a senior at MIT studying chemical engineering.
“MIT does have the ability if it wants to cut these ties,” Ogundipe said.
In response to the referendum, which passed earlier this semester with 64 percent of the votes, chancellor Melissa Nobles wrote to the school community that MIT “relies on rigorous processes to ensure that all funded research complies with MIT policies and US law.”
“Within those standards, MIT faculty have the fundamental academic freedom to pursue funding for research of interest in their fields,” Nobles said. She added that undergraduate resolutions do not have binding power and “should not be construed by anyone as representing the MIT administration.”
Daniel Shen, a PhD candidate in electrical engineering and computer science who helped write the referendum for the graduate student union, said it is a “strong example of the collective democratic process our union is all about.”
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Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, holds two degrees from MIT. Allen declined to comment on Netanyahu’s engagement with the university.
Some student protesters at MIT and elsewhere are also calling on institutions to divest their endowments from Israeli companies, efforts they say are inspired by boycotts used to help end apartheid in South Africa. Israeli officials have rejected comparisons to apartheid. Many Jewish leaders say the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, a decades-old campaign against Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians, is antisemitic because it villainizes and singles out the Jewish state.
Luis M. Viceira, a Harvard Business School professor, said divesting from Israeli companies does not make sense from an investment perspective, and would unfairly punish Israeli companies and individuals.
“It is completely legitimate to agree or to disagree with the policies of the current Israeli government . . . but a divesting program from Israel is akin to a hurtful slap on the face to the entire country, an established democracy, not just their government,” Viceira said.
Charles A. Skorina, managing partner of an executive search firm for investment professionals, said investment officers should not be swayed by student calls to divest.
“Most chief investment officers are agnostic, because they’re supposed to be,” Skorina said. “Their assignment is: Please make money for the school. Period.”
At MIT, student organizers said they are more focused on calling on administrators to end research ties with Israel, citing the university’s history as a federal contractor and work with the Department of Defense.
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“Israel is enacting war crimes,” Ogundipe said. “What does it mean for MIT to continue to take their money?”
Hilary Burns can be reached at hilary.burns@globe.com. Follow her @Hilarysburns.