Between 1992 and 1993, an ad hoc group of faculty, staff, and students, in collaboration with Dr. Clarence G. Williams, Special Assistant to the President, produced a video entitled It’s Intuitively Obvious. The video recorded African-American students discussing their experiences with race at MIT.

After the production of that video, an invitation was extended to the larger MIT community to make similar recordings, and Dr. Williams’ office went on to produce four more videos in which students of different racial backgrounds discussed issues of race on the MIT campus. In the spring of 1996, the Committee on Campus Race Relations took responsibility for preparing, funding, and producing a fifth It’s Intuitively Obvious video that brought together, prior to their graduations, many of the students who had participated in the first four tapes.

The five It’s Intuitively Obvious videos have since been used successfully to initiate facilitated discussions of racial issues for various student, staff, and faculty groups on campus. The MIT Office of Minority Education (OME), with additional funding from the Institute Community & Equity Office, is currently producing a new set of It’s Intuitively Obvious videos, forthcoming in 2023.