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, economic and geopolitical 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.