We Can’t Ignore the Political
By Michael Pearson, MAA Executive Director
Thomas Jefferson Memorial
"I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as a civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."
— Quote from the Thomas Jefferson Memorial
Admonitions for mathematicians to stick to mathematics, and avoid political issues, are not new. And certainly, the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) does not and will not take overtly partisan stances. But if our work is to remain relevant, we can’t ignore the political context in which our profession exists. When mathematical models suggest, for example, that climate change will disrupt the lives of our fellow citizens, and that these disruptions are almost certain to disproportionately affect historically marginalized populations, that has political and moral implications that are complicated and uncomfortable to face.
I remain deeply connected to the Louisiana Mississippi Section of the MAA. I attended my first meeting in Lafayette, LA, in the spring of 1982. The friendships I have made over the years through the Section have sustained me throughout my professional and personal life.
What, then, am I to think of the recently-proposed legislation in Louisiana and a number of other states that limits the ways in which racism, sexism, and inequity are discussed in schools, often using language mirroring that in the now-reversed Executive Order on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping issued by the White House in September 2020? The proposed laws specifically target “divisive concepts.”
The proposals offer a number of “divisive concepts” that would be prohibited, including
That the United States of America is institutionally, or systemically racist or sexist.
That the concept of meritocracy or traits such as a strong work ethic are racist or sexist or were created by a particular race or sex to oppress another race or sex.
That the concepts of capitalism, free markets, or working for a private party in exchange for wages are racist and sexist or oppress a given race or sex.
Well, where to start? With the challenging historical fact that slavery was enshrined in our nation’s constitution, and heartily embraced for most of its history? The disparities in the treatment of citizens depending on race are certainly not limited to the deep South. As this article from Inside Higher Ed on the funding disparities between Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and white-majority institutions points out, there are 50 white-majority institutions with endowments that exceed the combined endowments of the HBCU sector. The dramatic disadvantages in availability of resources to support minority students serve to sustain the disadvantages these students already face.
Uncovering these patterns requires new generations of students equipped with the tools of data science — an area rooted in the mathematical, statistical, and computational sciences — and the right to analyze the data, regardless of what conclusions might be drawn, or the discomfort the conclusions might cause.
I’ll grant the second “divisive concept,” to a point. In fact, the word “meritocracy” was created by the British sociologist Michael Young for his dystopian fantasy “The Rise of the Meritocracy,” where he imagined a future where prestige and authority was no longer based on inheritance and tradition, but instead was granted through an “objective” system. As Lani Guinier noted in a 2015 interview in the NY Times,
For him, meritocracy was a negative term; his spoof was a warning about the negative consequences of assigning social status based on formal educational qualifications, and showed how excluding from leadership anyone who couldn't jump through the educational hoops would create a new form of discrimination. And that's exactly what has happened.
The kinds of measures employed under our current system are, in my opinion, deeply connected to “scientific” racism and eugenics — the wrong-headed idea that, if we look at the “right” metrics, we can justify the accumulation and maintenance of power by those who already have it. Our colleague Cathy O'Neil, in her 2016 book Weapons of Math Destruction, makes a strong case that some big data algorithms are increasingly used in ways that reinforce pre-existing inequality. The MAA presented O’Neil the 2019 Euler Book Prize for this work.
As to criticism of capitalism, the role of mathematics and quantitative analysis in developing appropriate economic policy, whether liberal or conservative, is partly illustrated simply by considering the dominance of mathematical approaches in the work of Nobel laureates in economics. Analysis and criticism of capitalism is essential for the establishment of necessary regulatory structures, and the relationship between capital and labor necessarily broaches the issues of class, caste, and race.
As members of the MAA, we are part of a community that celebrates mathematics and mathematical accomplishment. We celebrate accomplishment through publication, election and appointment to leadership roles, prizes and awards, and other (formal and informal) mechanisms. I am certainly proud of the role of the MAA within the mathematics community, and celebrate our accomplishments, even as I recognize that we don’t always live fully in our ideals and values. I embrace MAA’s vision of a society that values the power and beauty of mathematics and fully realizes its potential to promote human flourishing.
In my view, our values and vision call on us to stand strongly against those who would limit free inquiry, even or perhaps especially when that inquiry challenges the status quo. If we don’t, the next attempts to restrict our work may criminalize exploration of gerrymandering; of the analysis of race and the criminal justice system; of bias in algorithms used to assess creditworthiness; of the use of intrusive technologies to monitor our personal lives.
These are all topics that those of us with deep quantitative skills are uniquely equipped to consider, and all of them are deeply political. If we limit our use of mathematics as a critical tool for studying these issues, the next generations of students will rightly view us as irrelevant.
Count me as a political mathematician. I hope you’ll join me.