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Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons

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Mathematics

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

2020

Communism

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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

“All Of These Political Questions”: Anticommunism, Racism, And The Origin Of The Notices Of The American Mathematical Society, Michael J. Barany Jul 2020

“All Of These Political Questions”: Anticommunism, Racism, And The Origin Of The Notices Of The American Mathematical Society, Michael J. Barany

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

A recent controversy involving the Notices of the American Mathematical Society and questions of politics, racism, and the appropriate role of a professional mathematical organization began with a comparison to events the American Mathematical Society confronted in 1950. A close look at the AMS’s own archives for that period shows that the controversies that vexed the society around 1950 do indeed resonate strongly with those of today, but not in the ways recently suggested. Then, as now, the AMS confronted allegations of political and viewpoint discrimination in universities, the challenges of structural racism in American education and society, and the …