Rise of the Gnurds
MIT’s century between 1876 and 1976 saw countless inventions and ideas come out of the Institute, from condensed soup to spreadsheets. MIT’s greatest invention however could never be patented. What in 1876 and 1926 was called “the Technology Man” had in 1976 outgrown its narrow definition to become something more universal: The Gnurd had been born.
While the word “nerd” did not originate at MIT, the “gnurd” is everything that earlier generations of MIT students had been evolving towards. Intensely smart, driven, and self consciously a little different from the main-stream, MIT’s proud gnurds have been instrumental in changing what was once an insult into a badge of honor by embodying the “Technology Spirit” their predecessors worked so hard to discover.
Although Gnurds then and today revel in their uniqueness, MIT students have always shared the same social and political concerns as university students everywhere. In 1976, like every other college and university in the nation, MIT was still reckoning with the wave of anti-war protests and popular resistance to segregation that had galvanized students in the previous decade (you can read more about MIT's March 4th movement here).
MIT students cared deeply not only about the Institute's place in and influence on the world, but also about their own place in and influence on the Institute. Some issues that drove debate on campus in 1976 included nuclear power, DNA editing, how to increase the enrollment of Black students, and the Technology Training Program. The TTP was a cooperative initiative between MIT and National Taiwan University that brought 15 Taiwanese students to MIT to study inertial navigation technology. Concerns about the military application of this technology as well as the influence of foreign governments on campus eventually led to the termination of the program after widespread student-led backlash.
