I believe that historical forces, which are still ongoing to a degree, have shaped mathematics and the people who do mathematics in a way that doesn’t take advantage of the universal presence of mathematical talent. People have been unjustly separated along gender, racial and economic lines, and suppressed from reaching their whole potential. I am committed to using my own privilege as a cisgendered white man born in the US to help break down these lines of social and mathematical stratification.
In short, I subscribe to Federico Ardila-Mantilla‘s four axioms for education and educational outreach, which he wrote about in his Notices of the AMS article Todos Cuentan: Cultivating Diversity in Combinatorics.
- Mathematical potential is distributed equally among different groups, irrespective of geographic, demographic, and economic boundaries.
- Everyone can have joyful, meaningful, and empowering mathematical experiences.
- Mathematics is a powerful, malleable tool that can be shaped and used differently by various communities to serve their needs.
- Every student deserves to be treated with dignity and respect.