A member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research Board of Directors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has resigned her position, saying her concerns over the school’s relationship with the Chinese government were dismissed and deemed “racist” by colleagues.
Michelle Bethel raised the issue with the board after learning of several laws passed by the Chinese government dictating that “all institutions, including those in partnerships with Western universities, are obligated to serve the modernization of the Chinese military,” she wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.
She notes that in response, one member said her concerns about the Chinese Communist Party obtaining MIT research was “racist,” and another key member of the institute asked her to “stick to science” and not to mention China again.
“By conducting research with institutions in China, the McGovern Institute unwittingly could be aiding the country’s repressive security apparatus or its military, whose officers have published articles declaring biology a new domain of warfare,” Bethel wrote.
Bethel could not be reached for comment by The College Fix. Her op-ed notes that her stepfather, Patrick McGovern, founded the institute in 2000. She also pointed out that she lived in Shanghai from roughly 2006 to 2012, had three children there, and respected the culture at that time.
But, she cautioned, “times have changed. The Communist Party has reasserted itself in every aspect of China’s society—economic, social, cultural and, yes, scientific.”
After Bethel’s op-ed was published Dec. 10, MIT’s McGovern Institute published a response, stating it only has one active research project involving a Chinese school and that the project received authorization from the U.S. National Institutes of Health in 2019.
The project, created in conjunction with the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, “involves better identifying and ultimately developing treatments for severe forms of...
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