Often times outside law firms handle investigations like this. MIT clearly had some failed policies where they were laundering the reputation of a despicable person for donations, which shouldn't happen. An internal investigation would be strongly biased to find no wrong-doing. Ostensibly, an outside investigation is more neutral (even though MIT is still paying for it so they're clearly biased to be soft too...)
I found noteworthy that MIT recognized the risk of bias and attempted to control for it by retaining a second law firm (that had no history of working with MIT, whereas the first firm they retained has been used by MIT for previous tasks).
> An internal investigation would be strongly biased to find no wrong-doing.
Yes, if there is a bias, it needs to come from somewhere? If feel it is like saying "If you haven't made a crime, you don't need an attorney." This doesn't make sense for most of people on your side of Atlantic, but try to get the rationale behind that.
Similarly, if they began talking of settlement fund, then for what they set it for to begin with, if this is a complete BS?
Well, the law firm in this case is basically an extension of MIT's in-house counsel. MIT has a long, long history with them, including whistleblower intimidation and other cover-ups.
