The MIT administration’s wholly owned and operated alumni association (MITAA), pursuing its mission to keep the spirit of DEI alive, hosted separate luncheons for selected oppressed identity groups at last week’s Alumni Leadership Conference.

“It is our pleasure to welcome our aggrieved Palestinian alumni, who this year join our Black and Latino alums in our circle of preferred-identities,” gushed MIT Alumni Association Chief Diversity Officer Whitey Despich.

MIT anchored its recent rebranding on “curiosity-driven” everything — curiosity-driven science, curiosity-driven commencement speeches, and a curiosity-driven AI keynote titled “The Collision: What AI Does to Us.” Just don’t get too curious about which alumni groups get a table, and which don’t.

Missing from the seating chart: any table for MIT’s Jewish alumni, a community that has produced Nobel laureates by the fistful, given generously, yet lately sued the Institute twice over campus antisemitism. One newly formed alumni group is so incensed it is urging members to cap their annual gift at one dollar until the administration stops equivocating.

“We were indeed approached to include a luncheon for Jewish alums,” Despich admitted. “But only alumni groups approved by the MIT Alumni Association Board are eligible for special treatment. As you can see from our official communities listing, which includes everything from indigenous alumni to climate zealots to our beloved LGBTQs, no settler-colonialist groups made the cut. Perhaps they should consider joining the MIT Golfers Association.”

Asked whether the MITAA, which draws its funding from MIT’s General Institute Budget and reports directly to the president, might be less a grassroots alumni body than a donation-extraction subsidiary with a curated seating chart, Despich called the question “scurrilous fabulism” and retreated to her bunker after too many alumni started asking questions.