Have a connection for us? Drop us a line. Regular readers will recall that my DigBoston colleagues, Chris Faraone and John Loftus, and I love to pull back the curtain on our operations now and again to give our audience a look at how an alternative weekly newspaper like ours runs. The better […]
STATE WIRE: MIT STUDENTS DEMAND CHANGES AFTER EPSTEIN’S CLOSE TIES TO UNIVERSITY REVEALED
“Somebody said at the protest, ‘Money has memory.’ And, we have to think about where our money comes from, because money is not given to MIT with no strings attached, right?”
THE EPSTEIN STENCH
We can’t just hold our noses and look away from academia’s dirty money The 2018 Disobedience Award ceremony was a full MIT Media Lab spectacle. Carefully produced, lavishly catered, part of the lab itself turned into a dance club for a late-night party, this was the lab’s way of using all its prestige […]
MORE REASONS TO RESIGN FROM THE MIT MEDIA LAB
The connection to Jeffrey Epstein is just one of many questionable relationships Recently, two scholars announced their plans to cut ties with the MIT Media Lab over its longstanding relationship with Jeffrey Epstein—the New York financier who had been arrested on federal charges for the alleged sex trafficking of minors in Florida and […]
FAIR HOUSING WHACKED: TUFTS STUDENTS FIGHT ADMIN PROPOSAL TO ESTABLISH “CLASSIST” DORM SYSTEM
More than 200 Tufts University students, faculty, and allies from surrounding communities held a march and demonstration last week to protest a new campus housing policy, according to the Boston Herald. Over the summer, the Tufts administration announced that its annual lottery system for on-campus housing during each academic year would be heavily modified […]
STOP BAKER’S ‘MORE SCHOOL COPS AND SURVEILLANCE’ PLAN
Why the Mass budget surplus is better spent on infrastructure needs Having just been handed an estimated $1 billion budget surplus for the 2018 fiscal year, Gov. Charlie Baker was quick to make a proposal last week to divide up the unexpected spoils. According to MassLive, “Around half of that will be […]
GRAND SCHEME
Mass legislature helps, harms workers in “deal” with labor and business lobbies No sooner did the Supreme Judicial Court shoot down the “millionaires’ tax” referendum question last week than the Mass legislature rammed a so-called grand bargain bill (H 4640) through both chambers. A move aimed at shoring up tax revenue threatened by […]
CAPITALIST VETO
Popular “millionaires’ tax” referendum question blocked by a pro-business SJC The Fair Share Amendment—better known as the “millionaires’ tax”—that would have gone before voters this November as a statewide referendum question was shot down this week by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC). So the effort to increase taxes on people making $1 […]
URBAN MISSION
The solution to UMass Boston’s woes could start with a city-run college There was an interesting conversation recently between two people who I often criticize for being… um… insufficiently public spirited. The Boston Globe’s Shirley Leung asked Boston mayor Marty Walsh a great question: “What if the city took over the University of […]
BROKEN MEDIA, BROKEN POLITICS
If Mass journalists were doing their jobs, Baker would not be so popular It’s always funny to hear that Charlie Baker is a very popular governor… The most popular governor in the country at the moment, according to polls. Because he doesn’t do anything very differently than his predecessor Deval Patrick did. Or […]
