Over the years, I've told colleagues and friends about things I have seen or experienced. Many times, people have said that I should write them down so that they won't be lost and forgotten, since some of them might be useful parts of our history. I've been writing them down, without being sure what I would do with them. I decided to gradually post them on this website, and see what reactions I get. I suggest reading from the bottom up (starting with the August 2017 post "The Meritocracy"). Thoughtful and kind feedback would be useful for me, and would help me to revise the exposition to make it as useful as possible. I hope that while you read my stories you will ask yourself "What can I learn from this?" I'm particularly interested in knowing what you see as the point of the story, or what you take away from it. Please send feedback to asilverb@gmail.com. Thanks for taking the time to read and hopefully reflect on them!

I often run the stories past the people I mention, even when they are anonymized, to get their feedback and give them a chance to correct the record or ask for changes. When they tell me they're happy to be named, I sometimes do so. When I give letters as pseudonyms, there is no correlation between those letters and the names of the real people.

Saturday, December 7, 2019

A Tribute to George Mackey

I believe that people should be judged by what they do, rather than by what they say.

When I tell people who knew George Mackey that I felt that he was the Harvard math professor who was the most supportive of women, they think I'm being sarcastic.

Mackey espoused off-the-wall beliefs about women being, on average, genetically less suited than men to do mathematics. His abstract ideas about gender differences were definitely not "politically correct". But he was very helpful to women on an individual level.

Mackey showed interest in my mathematical career, and respect for me and my opinions. When I visited Harvard, I enjoyed stopping by Mackey's office. He and I would spar about issues on which we disagreed. I always found him fun to talk to and argue with. I considered his abstract (non-mathematical) theories to be amusing, and I didn't take them seriously.

(I eventually heard about a female student who did take Mackey's theories on gender differences seriously, and was discouraged enough by them to decide not to go into mathematics. So I will qualify my praise by saying that Mackey's influence wasn't always positive. I'm saying he was one of the best. I'm not saying he was great, or even good on balance.)

In my experience, the mathematicians who do the most harm to women are often the ones who publicly espouse the most "politically correct" views, but privately undermine people on an individual level. They're often viewed highly by people with insufficient information. I encourage you to pay attention to whether people are really doing the right thing, or just saying what they think reflects well on them. Be wary of the silver-tongued bullshit artist!