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In March, the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) released a benchmark statement for mathematics, statistics and operations research (MSOR) which states:
"Values of EDI [Equality Diversity and Inclusion] should permeate the curriculum and every aspect of the learning experience."
However, the QAA do not explain whose interpretation of the "values of EDI" should permeate the curriculum. This is a significant omission because the "values of EDI" are a topic of fierce academic and political debate. Even basic concepts such as the definitions of racism and antisemitism are contested. Moreover, Great Britain’s Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and LGBT rights charity Stonewall disagree so significantly in their understanding of the values of EDI that Stonewall took legal action seeking to strip the EHRC of its "A Status" from the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (though this was unsuccessful).
Any serious discussion of EDI in higher education should acknowledge the existence of these debates. Any approach that fails to do so will inevitably be partisan. One can see this in the QAA’s more detailed advice on how these "values of EDI" can be embedded in our teaching. They suggest mathematicians highlight that "some early ideas in statistics were motivated by their proposers’ support for eugenics, some astronomical data were collected on plantations by enslaved people, and, historically, some mathematicians have recorded racist or fascist views or connections to groups such as the Nazis." However, the QAA do not suggest that we teach about the universality of mathematical truth, the use of statistics to disprove historical racial theories or about the Jewish mathematicians persecuted by Nazis. The QAA are advocating teaching a skewed view of the history of mathematics designed to bolster their thesis that there are "historical and ongoing issues around power dynamics and gatekeeping in both access to and generation of MSOR knowledge."
The history of mathematics has not traditionally been seen as an essential part of the mathematics curriculum. If it is taught, it should be taught by academics in line with their own expertise and academic judgement. A lecturer who wishes to focus on, say, the development of the concept of proof rather than racial politics should be welcome to do so.
We reject the QAAs insistence on politicising the mathematical curriculum. We believe the only thing that should permeate the mathematics curriculum is mathematics. Academics should teach from a perspective informed by their academic experience, not from a political perspective determined by the QAA. Students should be able to study mathematics without also being required to pay for their own political indoctrination.
Dr John Armstrong
Reader in Financial Mathematics, King's College London
Professor Abhishek Saha
Professor of Mathematics, Queen Mary University of London
Professor Martin Widmer
Professor of Mathematics, Royal Holloway University of London
Prof Miles Reid FRS
Math Institute, University of Warwick
Professor Martin Anthony
Department of Mathematics, London School of Economics
Professor Geoffrey Grimmett
Professor Emeritus of Mathematical Statistics, Cambridge University
Professor Johannes Ruf
Department of Mathematics, London School of Economics
Professor Sir Bernard Silverman FRS
Emeritus Professor, Universities of Bristol and Oxford
Professor Saul Jacka
Department of Statistics, Warwick University
Matteo Mucciconi
University of Warwick
Damiano Testa
University of Warwick
Dr Martin Herdegen
Associate Professor, University of Warwick
Emeritus Professor David Mond
Mathematics Institute, University of Warwick
Dr Alexey A. Koloydenko
Senior Lecturer in Statistics, Royal Holloway, University of London
Dr. Paul P. Cook
Senior Teaching Fellow, Department of Mathematics, King's College London
Timothy Magee
Postdoctoral Researcher, King's College London
Prof Nicholas Shepherd-Barron FRS
King's College London
Joel Moreira
University of Warwick
Emeritus Professor John Cremona
University of Warwick
Professor Philip Dawid FRS
Emeritus Professor of Statistics, University of Cambridge
Professor Yan Fyodorov
King's College London
Professor Victor Goryunov
Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Liverpool
Professor Jane L Hutton
Professor of Statistics, The University of Warwick
Professor John Rawnsley
Professor Emeritus in Mathematics, University of Warwick
Professor Peter Giblin OBE
University of Liverpool
Professor Sir John Ball FRS FRSE
Professor of Mathematics, Heriot-Watt University
Dr Ben Jones
Cardiff University
Professor Pavel Berloff
Professor in Applied Mathematics, Imperial College London
Dr Andreas Stergiou
King's College London
Professor Terry Lyons FLSW FRSE FRS
University of Oxford
Professor Charles Taylor
Professor of Statistics, University of Leeds
Dr Yuri Bazlov
University of Manchester
Professor Caroline Series FRS
Emeritus Professor of Mathematics, University of Warwick
Professor John Toland FRS FRSE
University of Bath
Dr Ivan Tomasic
Reader in Pure Mathematics, Queen Mary University of London
Professor Thomas Prellberg
Queen Mary University of London
Prof. Misha Feigin
University of Glasgow
Professor Takis Konstantopoulos
Professor of Mathematics, University of Liverpool
Dr. Guangqu Zheng
Lecturer in Stochastics, University of Liverpool
Dr. Apostolos Papaioannou
Senior lecturer in Actuarial maths, University of Liverpool
Professor Alan Sokal
Professor of Mathematics, University College London
Dr Simon Salamon
King's College London
Dr David Hewett
Associate Professor, University College London
Leonid Parnovski
Professor in mathematics, UCL
Andrei Yafaev
University College London
Dr Iain Smears
Associate Professor in Applied Mathematics, University College London
Professor Francis Johnson
University College London
Professor Erik Burman
Professor of Computational Mathematics, University College London
Nazar Miheisi
King's College London
Dr Ian Petrow
Associate Professor, University College London
Behrang Noohi
Queen Mary University of London
Professor Alexander Sobolev
University College London
Anna Maltsev
Queen Mary University of London
Dr. Camilo García Trillos
University College London
Dr David Solomon
University College London
Professor Samuel Falle
Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Leeds
Professor David Hughes
Professor of Applied Mathematics, University of Leeds
Professor Marco Marletta
Cardiff University
Dr Andi Q. Wang
Assistant Professor, University of Warwick
Professor Alexander Pushnitski
Department of Mathematics, King's College London
Rainer Dietmann
Professor in Mathematics, Royal Holloway
Professor James Norris
Professor of Stochastic Analysis, University of Cambridge
Michael Levitin
Professor of Mathematics, University of Reading
Martin Lotz
Associate Professor, University of Warwick
Nigel Burroughs
University of Warwick
Professor Martin Dindos
Professor of Mathematics, University of Edinburgh
Domenico Marinucci
Full Professor, Department of Mathematics, University of Rome Tor Vergata
Professor Tim Cole FMedSci MAE
Professor of Medical Statistics, University College London
Dr. Marijus Radavicius
Professor in Statistics, Vilnius University
Dr Theo Pepler
Statistician, University of Glasgow
Prof. Agelos Georgakopoulos
University of Warwick
Dr David King
Lecturer in Mathematics, University of Glasgow
Professor Stanislav Volkov
Lund University, formerly professor of University of Bristol
Serguei Popov
University of Porto
Professor Richard D. Gill
Emeritus professor of mathematical statistics, Leiden University
Dr Vladislav Vysotsky
Reader in Statistics and Probability, University of Sussex
Dr Marton Balazs
University of Bristol
Chris Lloyd
Professor of Business Statistics, University of Melbourne
78 signatories so far.
Once sufficient signatures have been collected, the letter will be sent to the QAA and we will seek publication in a newspaper or mathematical periodical.
If you would like to invite other mathematicians to sign, please do so. The page can be accessed using the short URL https://tinyurl.com/yckmph2z
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