That article is way too long with barely a mention of what's actually pissing people off. Hard for me to get up in arms over this when you bury exactly what it is that's happening.
I've been through reorgs like this in two different research university IT groups. It's natural to evolve from the free-wheeling pre-IT-as-a-utility days to the current structures of today. There are huge liabilities that were just not important when the entire university didn't rely on IT for EVERYTHING. MIT has some cool stuff going on in IT, but you can't claw back the changes of time, especially with how IT has matured. If I was at MIT, I'd try to find that new field where I could make a mark rather than try to retain the spoils of the past.
If IS&T didn't do that, it was because they'd stopped after, when I showed up in 1979, running a 370 mainframe and a Multics, the latter explicitly designed to run as a utility. Or while I was there, moving a lot of education to the Athena service (something that part of MIT eventually took over). Or, I think after I left in the early '90s, converting the university to run on SAP.
The article and comments are quite explicit on what happened, new top dog comes in with a new vision, his most powerful direct reports sandbag the initiative while using it as an excuse to execute a massive purge. A story we've seen many times before in all sorts of contexts.
I've been through reorgs like this in two different research university IT groups. It's natural to evolve from the free-wheeling pre-IT-as-a-utility days to the current structures of today. There are huge liabilities that were just not important when the entire university didn't rely on IT for EVERYTHING. MIT has some cool stuff going on in IT, but you can't claw back the changes of time, especially with how IT has matured. If I was at MIT, I'd try to find that new field where I could make a mark rather than try to retain the spoils of the past.