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The former regulator had previously won the MIT Sloan Outstanding Teacher Award for the 2018-19 academic year.
Former SEC Chairman Named MIT “Professor of the Practice”
Before Gary Gensler became the SEC Chairman, he was teaching crypto at MIT, and on Monday, the university announced that Gensler would return to “teach and conduct research on artificial intelligence, finance, financial technology, and public policy.”
Donald Trump promised to fire Gensler on his first day in office, but the former chairman pre-empted the president and announced his resignation soon after Trump won the presidential election in November.
Gensler was widely resented by the crypto community for his harsh anti-crypto stance. He was considered one of the key architects of the infamous Operation Choke Point 2.0 – the alleged effort by the Biden administration to secretly undermine and debank the crypto industry.
So deeply unpopular was the former chairman, that during Trump’s keynote at the 2024 Bitcoin Conference, the crowd erupted in a deafening chant when the now-president said, “On day one, I will fire Gary Gensler,” before expressing surprise at how that one statement electrified the crowd. “Wow, I didn’t know he was that unpopular,” Trump exclaimed.
And now as Gensler returns to academia, it will be interesting to see how his students perceive him, after all he will, in all likelihood, go down as being on the wrong side of history when it comes to crypto.
“I am honored to return to MIT, whose faculty, staff, and students have long been at the cutting edge of research and technology,” Gensler said. “I’m thrilled to once again collaborate with MIT’s distinguished team of scholars creating a better future for all through artificial intelligence, finance, and technology.”
To be fair, Gensler appears to be a skilled teacher and is well-versed in all things finance, including crypto. Interestingly, he will not be reprising his role as senior advisor to the MIT Media Lab Digital Currency Initiative. It’s unclear if his work on “financial technology and public policy” will include crypto.