A professor’s speech canceled due to outrage from academics on Twitter may have benefited from the anger — thousands of people have overwhelmed the registration limit on the lecture’s new event.
Professor Dorian Abbot’s lecture, which will be hosted by Princeton University via Zoom on Oct. 21, has expanded its availability after the event reached its registration limit last week. The lecture was intended to be hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before it was canceled in September, but it was later picked up by Princeton University on Oct. 4, according to Princeton professor Robert George.
MIT canceled Abbot’s lecture on Sept. 30 after what Abbot calls “a small group of ideologues” complained about a Newsweek op-ed Abbot and Stanford University professor Ivan Marinovic wrote in mid-August. In the op-ed, Abbot and Marinovic argued for a framework in university enrollment in which applicants are treated as individuals and evaluated on their “merit and qualifications alone.”
A group of graduate students and educators from Abbot’s department at the University of Chicago signed a letter denouncing the professor for the views expressed in his writing and videos.
“The contents of Professor Dorian Abbot’s videos threaten the safety and belonging of all underrepresented groups within the department and serve to undermine Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion initiatives driven by the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Coordination Team (EDICT),” the letter read.
The scheduled lecture, however, is not related to Abbot’s political views or philosophy of education — it is a lecture on the study of extrasolar planets.
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“I’m delighted to report that we’ve expanded the Zoom quota for Dr Dorian Abbot’s Princeton lecture — the one shockingly and shamefully canceled by MIT — and literally thousands of people have registered,” George tweeted. “It’s October 21st (the day it had been scheduled at MIT) at 4:30 Eastern time.”
I’m delighted to report that we’ve expanded the Zoom quota for Dr Dorian Abbot’s Princeton lecture–the one shockingly and shamefully canceled by MIT–and literally thousands of people have registered. It’s October 21st (the day it had been scheduled at MIT) at 4:30 Eastern time. https://t.co/sFOPTOxDOZ
— Robert P. George (@McCormickProf) October 10, 2021
Abbot wrote a separate op-ed on Oct. 5, criticizing MIT’s decision to react so quickly to the demands.
“On September 22, a new Twitter mob, composed of a group of MIT students, postdocs, and recent alumni, demanded that I be uninvited. It worked. And quickly,” Abbot wrote in an op-ed for Common Sense with Bari Weiss, linking to a collage of Twitter criticism. “On September 30 the department chair at MIT called to tell me that they would be canceling the Carlson lecture this year in order to avoid controversy.”
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Abbot argued that people claim “cancel culture is just holding people accountable” but challenged people to look more into his situation to find anything that would require holding him “accountable.”
“What you will find instead is the writing of a man who takes his moral duty seriously and is trying to express his concerns strongly, but respectfully,” Abbot wrote. “You may agree with some of my positions and disagree with others, but in a free society they cannot be considered beyond the pale.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that MIT staff claimed Abbot’s views “threaten” students’ “safety.” Those words were used by University of Chicago graduate students and staff, not MIT. The piece has been updated to fix this error.
