MIT isn't protecting all legal speech, they're amplifying speech the MIT community wants to hear, and suppressing speech the community doesn't want to hear.

If the MIT community wants to legitimize and amplify speech about perpetuating the current hierarchy of elites, and suppress protest speech aiming to open up and overturn that hierarchy, it's up to the community.

It has nothing to do with the First Amendment.

Contrary to all the feel-good language about platforming nonconformity, the goal is not to provide an equal platform to all viewpoints, because that would be ridiculous.

Since there are infinite crackpot ideas but only one Kresge Auditorium, the MIT community must make value judgments about what speakers and ideas are worthy, and which ones are not.

No institution should be compelled to provide a platform for all speakers and ideas. Some speakers and ideas are worthy of MIT, and many are not.

MIT faculty and leadership should embrace their fiduciary duty to make these hard judgments. They should grapple with what it means for speakers and ideas to be worthy, and what speech should not receive MIT legitimacy and amplification.

Instead this statement evades all of that by pretending to support all speech as long as it's legal.

AIUI this was controversial, but not for the reasons you might think: people were concerned that the guy wasn't well and that encouraging him wasn't kind.