SHASS News

Since joining the faculty of MIT’s Department of Political Science in 2012, F. Daniel Hidalgo, known to many as “Danny,” has built a reputation as both a meticulous quantitative scholar and one of the department’s most generous and steadfast mentors. A member of the 2025–27 Committed to Caring cohort, Hidalgo is recognized for a style […]

When we hear about automation and artificial intelligence replacing jobs, it may seem like a tsunami of technology is going to wipe out workers broadly, in the name of greater efficiency. But a study co-authored by an MIT economist shows markedly different dynamics in the U.S. since 1980.  Rather than implement automation in pursuit of […]

On April 10, MIT marked its first official Robert R. Taylor Day with a program centered on the life and work of Robert Robinson Taylor (Class of 1892), the Institute’s first Black graduate and the first academically trained Black architect in the United States. After graduating from MIT, Taylor joined Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University), […]

“These educators are some of the finest instructors at MIT,” says SHASS Dean Agustín Rayo

In 1960, engineers at India’s Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) built what they called an “Automatic Calculator,” the country’s first working computer. It had the same type of ferrite-core memory as IBM’s world-leading machines, and at a glance, appeared to herald a new age of tech advances in India. Constructed with a fraction of […]