For the last week, we have been hearing (at least on CBS and Fox; for some reason NBC and ABC have not noticed) the various tapes of M.I.T. professor Jonathan Gruber explaining how the Obama Administration successfully tried to dupe both the American people and the Congressional Budget Office to believe that Obamacare was actually an economically sound idea.
Following the initial "stupidity of the American voter" video was a series of subsequent ones:
(1) More videos of Gruber with comparable offensive words about our intelligence (and touting his)
(2) Videos of Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama denying they knew him or that he was part of the team
(3) Immediate response videos showing both Pelosi and Obama having been quoting Gruber all over the place for years.
This piece is brief.
On behalf of all alumni of M.I.T., of which I am one, I express my sincere apology for my alma mater having engaged, employed and presumably granted tenure, to a man who lied to the American people so blatantly and held you in such contempt that he would work to deceive the CBO into mis-scoring the bill.
I will at least tepidly defend the principle of academic freedom, that tenured faculty should be allowed to teach what they want. But that doesn't excuse their performance and actions outside campus, for which they are accountable. I've never been a really big contributor to my university before, but even that small amount will end. As long as Jonathan Gruber is employed by M.I.T., the school's telephone solicitors will hear the same message from me: No contributions while he is still on the faculty.
Other alumni are invited to take their own stands.
Copyright 2014 by Robert Sutton
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