⚡ MIT: Progressions & Regressions

When I heard my friend Luke Igel was making a documentary about MIT, I was equal parts impressed and skeptical — impressed, because that sounds so incredibly difficult to do, and skeptical, because I wasn’t sure how much the history of MIT would matter to anyone who wasn’t already affiliated with the university.

My skepticism was unwarranted. MIT: REGRESSIONS, which covers the period of time between World War II and the start of covid-19, is fascinating; over these decades, the same questions come up over and over again: military involvement, student activism, (military and private) funding, career decisions, student and campus life. I got to watch an early rough-cut of the film, and today, I’m super excited to share a Q&A with the co-director Luke.

(Watch the trailer!!)

I had a TON of fun having this conversation. I’ve excerpted just a bit below, but in the full audio we talk about so much more: to what extent is MIT [history] unique, and to what extent can we extrapolate to universities in general? What is the purpose of an academic institution? What’s capital-P progress, and how do we get there? Who should pay for all of this? Why does student life matter in the context of more macro-level politics? And we talk about the making of the film as well — how do you even make a documentary?!, how to balance storytelling and argument and ~vibes~.

Luke Igel is an undergraduate at MIT and co-director with Wesley Block of the feature-length documentary, MIT: REGRESSIONS. He’s previously worked on the Mars Perseverance rover’s self-driving system at NASA JPL and the Starlink satellite constellation at SpaceX. Find him on Twitter @lukeigel.