Description

Black and white cartoon of members of the MIT Review Panel on Special Laboratories (later known as the Pounds Panel) seated around a table. Text at the bottom of the cartoon reads “Now that we seem to have agreed on draft eighteen, revision thirty eight of paragraph one, perhaps we should turn to paragraph 2.” The cartoon is inscribed “To Dave— in appreciation for all those hours— Bill [Pounds]” The panel participants are identified on the reverse of the frame.

After mounting pressure from activists, MIT president Howard W. Johnson established the Review Panel on Special Laboratories in April 1969 to examine the relationship between MIT and the Instrumentation Laboratory and Lincoln Laboratory. The panel, chaired by the dean of the Sloan School of Management William “Bill" F. Pounds, was tasked with assessing the laboratories' relationship to MIT, the appropriateness of Institute sponsorship of their programs, and the laboratories’ relationship to campus research and education. As a result of that panel, the Instrumentation Laboratory became an independent, not-for-profit organization formally divested from MIT.