Draft reports of the Suri and Fisher committees

To the members of the MIT community,

We write today to share – and seek your comments on – draft reports from two important committees:

• The Ad Hoc Faculty Committee on Guidelines for Outside Engagements, chaired by Professor Tavneet Suri
• The Ad Hoc Committee to Review MIT Gift Processes, chaired by Professor Peter Fisher

You can find the Suri report here and the Fisher report here. (Once you click on the report link, please log in via the Touchstone link in the footer.) We invite you to send us your comments on either report or both via this email address: adhoccomments@mit.edu.

The comments we receive will be shared with Professors Fisher and Suri so that they and their committees can decide if they wish to amend their reports.

The committees were formed in October 2019 following discussions about the Institute’s gift and engagement policies that were triggered by revelations about Jeffrey Epstein’s connections to MIT.

Both committees have worked with extraordinary thoughtfulness and care through a profoundly difficult period for MIT, their charge made harder still by the pressures of the pandemic. To the committee chairs: We are enormously grateful for your leadership. To all the members: Thank you for your time, your dedication and your care for MIT. We are also grateful to every member of the community who wrote a white paper, attended a forum, submitted a comment or otherwise helped the committees in their work.

The period for commenting on the reports will be open until Friday, October 9.

As soon as we have time to weigh the recommendations and the comments together, we will respond to the community with next steps.

Sincerely,

Rick Danheiser
Chair of the Faculty

Martin A. Schmidt
Provost