Nationwide protests against anti-Black racism and police violence have sparked demands and reckonings in several corners of higher education and academe.

The latest to join the fray is the discipline of #mathematics.

Ten mathematicians from eight universities and one company wrote an open letter calling for mathematicians to cease collaborating with police departments. The letter also urges math scholars to publicly audit influential algorithms and to embed learning outcomes related to #ethics in #data #science curriculums.

"It's a political belief, that collaborating with police in any capacity contributes to white supremacist violence and oppression," said #Tarik #Aougab, a math professor at Haverford College and one of the letter writers, speaking personally on his motivations. "Really any collaboration between mathematics, which is something that I love and that I find extremely beautiful, and the institution of policing shouldn't happen."

The letter has 1,500 verified signatures from mathematicians, Aougab said, although that number is not limited to academic mathematicians. The letter has been submitted to and accepted by the Notices of the American Mathematical Society.

The letter writers take particular aim at "predictive policing," which involves using data and mathematics to predict where crime will happen.

"Many of our colleagues can and do work with police departments to provide modeling and data work," the letter said, noting that in 2016 the Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics (#ICERM) at Brown University held a one-week workshop on #predictive #policing.

#PredPol, a major predictive policing company, says that its technology is being used to protect one out of every 33 people in the United States.

Opposition to predictive policing is not new. Academics have raised concerns in recent years about the mathematical theory underlying the technology and its tendency to create self-reinforcing feedback loops ("It is predicting future policing, not future crime," said a 2017 paper on the subject).

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/06/24/mathematicians-urge-cutting-ties-police

Show me the money (or at least where it came from) -- NSA funding of Mathematics

By Tarik Aougab and Marissa Loving

We dedicated several weeks during one of the busiest times of the year (towards the beginning of the Fall 2022 semester) to crafting a carefully written proposal for an undergraduate #summer #research experience at the Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics (#ICERM).

After initially accepting our proposal, ICERM #rescinded their acceptance when we said that we were not comfortable with the program being partially funded by the National Security Agency (#NSA).

We don’t want others to waste the same valuable time and effort that we did and so we’re writing this as both a public service announcement and a warning.

https://inclusionexclusion.org/2023/03/27/show-me-the-money-or-at-least-where-it-came-from/

An #introduction: I'm a senior research scientist at #ICERM working in theoretical and computation number theory. I also contribute to the #LMFDB (L-function and modular form database), to #sagemath, and to a variety of other projects in open source math software. I typically write either #python or #cpp and I'm happy to talk about #math or #code.

I like #cooking, #cycling, #crosswords, and even things that don't begin with 'c'.