“M.I.T. will always follow the law, but it’s going to be critical to think about ways, regardless of what comes out of the court decision, to maintain a diverse and vibrant environment,” Dr. Kornbluth said. She added that M.I.T. does not give preferences to children of alumni and that one in five students is a first generation college student. “Those are things that we have to lean into going forward,” she said.
She also felt a responsibility as a role model, who believes, she said, that it is “the responsibility of women who have had successful careers to help the next generation coming up.”
M.I.T.’s undergraduate population, a total of 4,638 students, is 51.9 percent male and 48.1 percent female for the 2022 academic year. An internal study of gender diversity at the university in 2017 found that while the share of women had grown over the past decade in departments like electrical engineering and computer science, women were still overrepresented in introductory classes, perhaps because they lacked the confidence to skip them. M.I.T. officials said that its “general institute requirements” mean that no one — male or female — can escape taking certain science classes like organic chemistry, fluid dynamics, high-level mathematics, physics and other core courses regardless of major.
For the current academic year, 15.1 percent of undergraduates self-identified at least in part as Hispanic or Latino and 11.1 percent self-identified at least in part as Black or African American.
M.I.T. was not without controversy during Dr. Reif’s 10-year-long tenure, and Dr. Kornbluth could be facing issues similar to ones that have created waves of protest at other institutions.
Dr. Reif was on the defensive over the university’s commitment to free speech in 2021 after the cancellation of a lecture on climate change by Dorian Abbot, an associate professor of geophysics at the University of Chicago. Dr. Abbot had angered some students and alumni by writing that diversity, equity and inclusion programs treated people as a group rather than individuals, and that those programs led to a form of self-censorship among those who disagreed with them. He said the situation was reminiscent of the “ideological regime obsessed with race” that drove scholars out of German universities during the Nazi era.
Dr. Abbot gave his speech at Princeton instead. In the wake of criticism, Dr. Reif authorized a free speech working group to come up with a statement of principles, and last month asked the faculty to consider the proposed statement.
