[jm_collective] Just Mathematics Collective Newsletter, No. 2

[Just Mathematics Collective newsletter]

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/
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