I was once reading a very good Russian book about the Old Church Slavonic language, when it suddenly started praising the glorious achievements of Lenin or something along those lines. It turns out that all books, no matter how unrelated they were in subject matter, were obliged to glorify the Soviet ideology.
You didn't bother to engage with the actual examples she gave, e.g. "It’s also a problem if as an instructor you’re using language that suggests that certain arguments are trivial or that this is something that everybody learned in kindergarten. These are tropes that mathematicians like to use, and I think they’re very alienating to people who, for one reason or other, did not learn about modular arithmetic in kindergarten." - this is, in my experience, a very valid point. It doesn't have to be that way, it's merely correlated with how many mathematicians teach.
I was only responding to the comment (as I explicitly stated below).
Your example doesn’t seem related to politics or feminism at all though. Downplaying the difficulty of everything is just a quirk, one that I personally happen to love. All textbooks have titles like “Elementary X” or “Introductory Y”, no matter how complex. I’ve always found that funny.
Obliged by a authoritarian state (that could be violent, or destroy your career) is incomparable to some peer (that seems not very interested in begin violent nor career destroying) believing others should be obliged. Incomparable. Not sure what logical fallacy this is, but "incomparable" should do the trick.
Why would you want to compare the two, I ask myself?
It’s not quite mandatory to praise feminism yet, for private individuals, but what do you think would happen to the academic career of someone who openly opposed feminism!
Why you want to compare "potential punishment for lack of endorsement of the state" in the USSR with "potential punishment for opposing feminism" in modern days? Those are such different things...
Where I'm from there are plenty of people who oppose parts of feminism. And I dont see them being punished at all. Even I'm openly opposing some of what nowadays is part of feminism!
But the politics she’s talking about have always been in mathematics (and other areas of academia), even if that’s not apparent to people who aren’t negatively impacted by them.
I’ve read countless math textbooks from introductory to PhD level, from a wide timespan, and never once come across any hint of politics. So no, you are simply wrong.
Why is this exclusively limited to textbook content? Is the problematic (for you) quote from a textbook?
If you aren’t comfortable having a discussion about the impact that gender roles and politics have had on women in academia, mathematics in this case, fine. Just say that instead of likening an isolated quote to a cult of personality under an oppressive government.
Take a stab at discussing things in good faith, maybe take the time to try understanding her point, rather than insisting it’s irrelevant.
But that would just be mathematicians tackling issues in their profession, right? If she just means making education more accessible, fairer hiring, etc. that's great, but it's phrased in a pretty 'grand' way that at least to me suggests actions that just aren't really in the ballpark of mathematicians.
Naive understanding of statistics has been repeatedly used to spin data on immigrants (usually with the correlation is not causation fallacy). Real bad ass mathematicians with degrees and cool research positions could way in.
I would not go as far as saying they're obliged, but I'm no mathematician!
For applied mathematicians - especially in statistics - I could see that (though I'd assume social scientists would likely be a better fit - I imagine that an informed take would require more than just pure stats knowledge), but what are pure mathematicians like her going to do?
Huh?