MFSA's 2025 Annual Conference

Thursday, September 25, 2025 • Le Meridien Boston Cambridge 

The MIT Free Speech Alliance's third annual conference will be held in Cambridge, MA on Thursday, September 25, 2025. As with our 2024 conference, this year's conference takes place on the eve of MIT's Alumni Leadership Conference, and we encourage ALC attendees to attend our conference as well. 

A listing of the speakers and panelists at this year's conference is below, and a draft of the current conference itinerary can be downloaded at this link. For further information on our conference experience, we encourage you to check out our 2023 and 2024 conference pages and watch our previous sessions, which are available for viewing on MFSA's YouTube Page. 

Attendance at MFSA's Annual Conference is free, though spaces are limited, and early registration is encouraged. Registration may be completed by clicking the button below. 

If you have any questions regarding conference details or logistics, please email MFSA Executive Director Peter Bonilla.

Register for MFSA's 2025 Conference

Conference Details and Logistics

MFSA's Conference will take place at the Le Meridien Boston Cambridge hotel (20 Sidney St), adjacent to MIT's campus and near Cambridge's Central Square. 

Breakfast and lunch will be provided at the conference, which will run from roughly 8:00 a.m - 5:00 p.m. 

MFSA's guaranteed room rate of $329 per night has expired as of September 3, 2025. Conference attendees interested in staying at the Le Meridien are encouraged to contact the hotel directly. 

2025 Conference Theme: A Community Advancing Open Discourse

Building around the theme of “A Community Advancing Open Discourse,” the conference will present sessions exploring how the different participants in the MIT community can each play a role and work together to strengthen open discourse at MIT. This work is more important than ever today, as MIT and institutions around the country face unprecedented challenges to their legitimacy and newfound threats to their autonomy in part based on their past failures to create welcoming campus environments for students of all beliefs and opinions. Panels will explore the topic from the perspectives of MIT faculty, students, trustees, and alumni. The intimate size of our conference – with roughly 70-90 attendees – will provide opportunities for in-depth discussion and networking among MFSA’s members, members of the MIT community, and the presenters. 

The preliminary agenda consists of four sessions centered around the different perspectives and roles each group can and should play in reinforcing a culture of open discourse, tolerance of diverse viewpoints, and respectful debate. A fifth session will explore the overall topic of cultural reform of universities from a national perspective, by treating attendees to a debate on the role of federal government intervention in higher education. All sessions will allow ample time for audience Q&A.

Speakers and Program

The following speakers and panelists are confirmed for MFSA's 2025 conference (speakers listed alphabetically): 

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

• Lindsay Androski ‘98
  

• 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
  

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.