MFSA's 2025 Annual Conference

Thursday, September 25, 2025 • Le Meridien Boston Cambridge 

The MIT Free Speech Alliance's third annual conference was held in Cambridge, MA on Thursday, September 25, 2025. On this page you'll find a copy of our conference's program, as well as photos and videos from the conference. All sessions were recorded, and can be found on MFSA's YouTube Page.

Our 2025 conference was built on the theme of “A Community Advancing Open Discourse,” presenting sessions exploring how the different participants in the MIT community can each play a role and work together to strengthen open discourse at MIT. Conference panels explored this theme from the perspectives of MIT faculty, students, trustees, and alumni. The panel also included a debate on the role of federal government intervention in higher education. 

Speakers and Program

Speakers and panelists at MFSA's 2025 conference included: 

• Mariam Abdelbarr ’27, Vice President, MIT Undergraduate Association

• Steve Baker ’84, MARch ’88, MIT Corporation

• John Chisholm ’75, CEO, John Chisholm Ventures; MIT Corporation 2016-21

• Jeffrey Flier, Distinguished Service Professor and Higginson Professor of Physiology and Medicine, Harvard Medical School

• Omar Sultan Haque, Harvard University T.H. Chan School of Public Health

• Anette (Peko) Hosoi, Pappalardo Professor of Mechanical Engineering, MIT, and Co-Chair, Committee on Academic Freedom and Campus Expression

• Ian Hutchinson, Professor Emeritus of Nuclear Science and Engineering and Co-President, MIT Council on Academic Freedom

• Daniel Jackson, Professor of Computer Science and Associate Director, MIT CSAIL

• Deepa Javeri ‘00

• Frank Laukien ’84, Board of Directors, MIT Free Speech Alliance and Heterodox Academy

• Roger Levy, Professor of Brain and Cognitive Science and Chair of the MIT Faculty

• Siddhu Pachipala ‘27

• Michael Poliakoff, President, American Council of Trustees & Alumni

• Kevin Przybocki ’86, SM ‘87

• Linda Rabieh, Senior Lecturer, MIT Concourse

• Spencer Sindhusen ’27, President, MIT Open Discourse Society

• John Tomasi, President, Heterodox Academy

• Collin Vierra ‘16

• Peter Wood, President, National Association of Scholars

Conference Photos

Keynote Speaker: Jonathan Rauch

Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution and Contributing Writer, The Atlantic

Jonathan Rauch is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, a contributing writer for The Atlantic, and the author of eight books including Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought and The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth. He has also received the magazine industry’s two leading prizes — the National Magazine Award (the industry’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize) and the National Headliner Award. Major topics of his writing and speeches include freedom of speech and its particular importance to the LGBT community and other minorities as well as fighting trolling, disinformation, canceling, and other cutting-edge propaganda tactics that seek to unmoor our country from reality. 

Rauch is the author, most recently, of Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain With Democracy, published in 2025 by Yale University Press. His other books include The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50, Government’s End: Why Washington Stopped Working, Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America, and the memoir Denial: My 25 Years Without a Soul. His writing, on everything from government and public policy to introversion to animal rights, has appeared in The Atlantic, National Journal, The New Republic, The Economist, Reason, Harper’s, Fortune, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and many other publications. He has also appeared as a guest on many radio and television shows, including NBC’s Meet the Press and NPR’s NewsHour.

Keynote Address: Can Universities be Saved (From Themselves)?