Richard Stallman leaves MIT after controversial remarks on rape
Enlarge / Richard Stallman in 2015. (credit: Michael Debets/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Free software pioneer Richard Stallman has resigned from his posts at MIT and the Free Software Foundation after leaked emails showed him quibbling over the definition of rape in a conversation related to Jeffrey Epstein.
The conversation that triggered Stallman's fall started when someone-names other than Stallman's are redacted in the leaked emails-posted about a planned protest at MIT. The email stated that famed MIT computer scientist Marvin Minsky "is accused of assaulting one of Epstein's victims."
Stallman objected, saying that the blurb "does an injustice" to Minsky because even if it's true that the then-17-year-old had sex with Minsky, "the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing." (One witness to the alleged incident says that Minsky, who died in 2016, declined to have sex with her.)
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