MIKE DAVIS: Shocking $6M verdict shows why DOJ must investigate MIT
MIKE DAVIS: Shocking $6M verdict shows why DOJ must investigate MIT
A Massachusetts jury recently scientist David Sabatini $6 million and rejected the sexual-misconduct claims that had ended his career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and shuttered his research laboratory at the Whitehead Institute. The jurys seven women and six men brought a measure of objectivity and decency to the facts that the leaders of MIT and Whitehead could not.
Sabatinis case is a perfect example how DEI and the rest of the lefts political crusades are so destructive to America. The verdict vindicates Sabatini, who has long maintained that his accuser, Kristin Knouse, had lied. But the legal fight took years of his life and nearly ruined him financially. And it shouldnt be the end of the story. The trial exposed how thin — and how rotten — MITs and Whiteheads case against Sabatini had been all along. MIT and Whitehead owe the public a reckoning. The Trump administration must investigate MIT and Whitehead.
Before 2021, scientists revered Sabatini as one of the greatest molecular cell biologists alive. He ran a major lab at Whitehead, held a professorship at MIT, served as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and received tens of millions of dollars in federal funding. Sabatinis " groundbreaking " research could yield new cancer and aging therapies and save countless lives. Predictions swirled that hed one day win the Nobel Prize.
It all came crashing down. Evidence at trial shows that Knouse — who led her own lab — launched a campaign she termed "covert operation dethrone" to topple Sabatini after he ended their roughly year-and-a-half-long relationship. She messaged one friend that Sabatini was going to be "Weinsteined out of science" ; another that she was "out for blood."
Knouse told colleagues that Sabatini had harassed and assaulted her, and in the fall of 2020 took her claims to Whiteheads new director, Ruth Lehmann. Lehmann proved an eager audience. After one meeting, Knouse reported that Lehmann acted "as if she wants a formal reason to fire" Sabatini. After another meeting, Lehmann
