[jm_collective] Just Mathematics Collective Newsletter, No. 2
Just Mathematics Collective newsletter
jm_collective at inventati.org
Thu Nov 17 17:31:49 CET 2022
Hello!
Welcome to the Just Mathematics Collective newsletter. This is a
round-up of news about our campaigns and activities, suggestions for how
you can help, and reading we've found useful recently.
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News/Announcements
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We are rekindling our email campaign to the AMS, and so we call on all
supporters of the NSA campaign to send an email along the lines of the
prompt below to AMS officers and ethics committee members. We deserve
transparency!
Email addresses:
Ruth Charney (AMS president): charney at brandeis.edu
Boris Hasselblatt (AMS secretary): secretary at ams.org
Committee on professional ethics:
-David M. Bressoud: bressoud at macalester.edu
-Lars Winther Christensen: lars.w.christensen at ttu.edu
-Yi-Zhi Huang: yzhuang at math.rutgers.edu
-Tasha R. Innis: tinniss at spelman.edu
-Robert E Megginson: meggin at umich.edu
-Svetlana Poznanovic: spoznan at clemson.edu
Dear ______,
I'm writing to call on the American Mathematical Society to elaborate on
its ethical stance regarding collaborations between mathematicians and
military/security agencies like the NSA. In April of 2021, the president
of the AMS responded to concerns from community members on this topic,
but the response lacked the sort of transparency the mathematics
community deserves from its representatives. Mathematics is too large
and too influential for us to be avoiding the ethical questions about
its uses, and the health of the mathematical community requires that we
face these questions head-on together.
I am therefore asking the AMS to address the following questions and
concerns:
- A 1987 AMS referendum passed a motion requiring the AMS to "direct
their efforts toward increasing the fraction of non-military funding for
mathematics research as well as towards increasing total research
support." (See p. 554, April 1988 AMS Notices.) Is this still in effect?
How has this been honored over the past 30 years? For instance, how has
the ratio of, say, NSF funding for mathematics research to DoD funding
changed over that time in response to AMS efforts?
- An email from the AMS president to concerned community members stated
that the AMS welcomes "any potential employer of mathematicians to
engage with our community". Is any attention paid to the larger social
effects of those employers' activities? For example, would the AMS offer
a recruitment booth to a company known to engage in unethical labor
practices affecting its non-mathematician employees? How would they
respond if an intelligence gathering agency affiliated with another
(non-EU or British) country asked to rent a table and do recruitment at
an AMS job fair?
- I call on the AMS to articulate an ethical stance on the relationship
between the mathematics community and intelligence agencies. This stance
should be historically-informed and should account for the actual
geopolitical role of these agencies. This should be the result of some
sort of consensus process and could perhaps take the form of a "position
statement" alongside the existing ones that can be found here:
https://www.ams.org/government/dc-collaborations.
Sincerely,
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Signal boosts: stuff by other people we've read this month and want to
share
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1. How well-intentioned white male physicists maintain ignorance of
inequity and justify inaction by Melissa Dancy and Apriel Hodari:
https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.03522
2. TIAA Faces Climate-Washing Complaint:
https://www.ciel.org/news/tiaa-faces-climate-washing-complaint-brought-by-academics/
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Ongoing JMC campaigns/how you can help:
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1. Cut ties between mathematicians and the
NSA: https://www.justmathematicscollective.net/nsa_statement.html.
Please sign the statement and take the pledges if you haven't already,
and share with your colleagues.
2. Support the USACBI academic boycott of Israeli
institutions:
https://www.justmathematicscollective.net/USACBI_statement.html.
Please register your pledge.
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As always, please feel free to contact us
at justmathematicscollective at inventati.org with any questions, comments,
or suggestions, including materials and campaigns for us to consider
including in next month's newsletter. Also, please feel free to forward
this to friends and colleagues, who can subscribe
here: https://noise.autistici.org/mailman/listinfo/jm_collective
- JMC newsletter team
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Just Mathematics Collective
https://www.justmathematicscollective.net/
https://twitter.com/jm_collective?lang=en
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