"Your daughter will burn in Hell"

At a parent-teacher conference when I was in first grade, my teacher told my mother that I would burn in Hell since I didn't believe in Jesus Christ. 

At least, that's what my mother told me years later, when I was in high school or junior high.

That explained a lot. Such as why it had seemed as if my first grade teacher hated most of the class.

When I was in first grade, I hadn't even heard of Jesus Christ. I'm sure I never discussed him with the teacher. She must have been making assumptions about me based on my last name.

What did my mother do about it at the time? 

Nothing. She felt powerless. She was afraid I'd be retaliated against if she complained. She didn't see any path that would make things better.

My mother waited to tell me so as not to traumatize me. I was already traumatized enough by that teacher. When I complained to my mother back then, my mother told me that the teacher was mean because she was a frustrated spinster. I thought that was an odd and uncharacteristically bitter comment, but it makes more sense now in light of what the teacher said at the parent-teacher conference.

By the time I was in high school, my mother began to push back when she saw injustices against me. It's possible she felt more comfortable with the high school's powers-that-be than with my grade school's principal, whom she didn't trust.

After I graduated from Ivy League schools and became a professor, I noticed that my colleagues refused to put up with bad behavior from their kids' teachers. They raised a fuss and got things changed. My parents' striving for upward mobility paid off, moving me into a socioeconomic class with higher expectations. 

Nowadays, anyone can complain about anything on social media and get teachers in trouble, whether or not they deserve it.

To this day, thinking of my first grade teacher still conjures up visions of Satan and me amidst crackling flames.

The Statue of Jakob Herz

It looked a bit like a large tombstone. Each time I passed it as I biked down a side street during my stay in Erlangen, Germany, I wondered why it was there. One day, I stopped to find out.

I propped my bike against a nearby fence and walked around the obelisk, looking for clues. One side had German text that translates to "We remember Jakob Herz, to whom citizens of this city erected and destroyed a monument." Another side seemed undecided as to whether it was the curriculum vitae of a person or of a monument.

According to German Wikipedia, the stele was erected in 1983 "to represent `a monument to a monument' and to commemorate the original statue."

The original statue of Jakob Herz (1816-1871) was erected in his honor in Erlangen's main town square on May 5, 1875, and was a larger-than-life statue depicting the man himself. It was torn down on September 15, 1933, the day after a decision to do so was unanimously passed by the Erlangen city council.

Herz was a much-loved surgeon and teacher who was named an Ehrenbürger of the city of Erlangen in 1867 and became the first Jewish professor in Bavaria in 1869, two years before he died of sequela from health problems incurred from his service as a physician in the Franco-Prussian War. The 1875 statue was funded by public subscription, and seems to have been the first monument in Germany to honor someone Jewish.

The 1875 statue of course had a face and a body (presumably an accurate depiction of Herz). The much smaller 1983 obelisk contained no images.

From what I saw during my stays in Erlangen between 1988 and 2000, I thought that Germany generally did an impressive job of trying to come to terms with the Nazi period. Much better than what I would expect from the U.S., which seems more susceptible to historical amnesia. But the contrast between the statue of Jakob Herz and the "monument to a monument" stuck in my head.

Thanks to Jakob Herz, I'm now much more likely to notice the many reminders of the anonymity of the "other", faceless and often nameless, perhaps relegated to a number (as in "six million Jews"), while members of one's own "tribe" are humanized and treated as individuals with faces and bodies. Once one learns to see such disparities, one sees them everywhere.

Don't Label Me!

I went to a short-lived writing group on Zoom early in the pandemic. I think it only lasted the one session. Our facilitator asked us to write down four words that describe ourselves. 

My immediate reaction was that I hate being labeled by others, and it's only slightly less distasteful to apply labels to myself. Then I wrote down "label-averse". On further reflection, I added "mathematician", "beach-loving", and "fairness-obsessed".

When we went around the Zoom room giving our labels, someone asked me, "Why do you consider yourself a mathematician?" 

It hadn't occurred to her that I might actually be one.

I laughed and explained why (PhD in mathematics, math professor for more than 35 years, many research papers published in mathematics journals).

Why am I averse to labels?

Labels can sometimes be helpful. But labels are what we use to stereotype people, to put them in boxes so we can treat them a certain way. Nearly every time someone has told me, "I knew what you'd think about that," based on some stereotype they had about me, they were wrong.

I already regret the term "fairness-obsessed". That's what people call it when they want to sneer at concerns for fairness.

If you insist on labeling me, I guess I won't cringe at "beach-loving" and "mathematician". As far as I know, no one has questioned my "beach-loving" label, or sneered at me because of it, but there's always a first time.

My Bluff

As I told a colleague afterwards: 

"The committee meeting was a total waste of time, though perhaps somewhat amusing. It consisted of B and C yelling at each other, and interrupting me whenever I tried to speak. I raised my hand for awhile and eventually gave up. When I was finally given an opportunity to speak, I said:

(1) Robert's Rules of Order are there for a reason,

(2) I think it would be helpful if one person (C, who was the committee chair) ran the meeting and were in charge, and called on people fairly and equitably, and everyone were given fair opportunities to speak and not be interrupted. 

C said that she's not very good at running a meeting. I said I'd be happy to do it.

W once told me that what helped her most as Chair of her department was being the mother of middle school boys---she dealt with her colleagues the way she dealt with her sons. I felt as if today's meeting was like a playground argument."

Before the next meeting, I asked C why she didn't simply bring the contentious issue to a vote, rather than engage in endless argument meeting after meeting. "You have the votes on your side. Let's just vote on it and move on." Both B and C had grown up in communist countries, and they might have been struggling to figure out how to function in a democracy.

C asked me to run the next meeting. I constructed an agenda that we sent out to the committee in advance. That was not a standard practice in my department.

When I was on the Council of the American Mathematical Society (AMS), someone told me that the people who have power are the people who know Robert's Rules of Order. I walked across campus to the library in search of Robert's Rules of Order. I checked out several large old dusty volumes, along with one thin pamphlet that was basically a cheat sheet. Back at my office, I read the cheat sheet. I realized I was never going to get through the large tomes before the meeting.

I took them to the meeting anyway. It was at least a good

weight-bearing exercise. I dropped the high stack of books down on the desk. They made a satisfying thump. I welcomed everyone, said we'll follow Robert's Rules of Order, and pointed to the impressive-looking stack of thick black books. I didn't point out that I hadn't read them. My colleagues looked cowed.

I had been on enough AMS committees to know how to run a meeting. As a stickler for fairness, I tried hard to make sure everyone who wanted to had a chance to speak and feel heard. I probably came close to obeying Robert's Rules of Order, in spirit if not in the details.

Someone made a motion and we discussed it. When it looked as if the discussion had run its course and B was getting ready for a fight, I asked: 

"Is there any more discussion on the motion ...," 

B opened his mouth to speak, and I continued: 

"... that hasn't already been said?" 

B froze for a moment, then his mouth closed. We voted, B's side lost, and we moved on to the next agenda item.

I wrote up minutes after the meeting, and C forwarded them to the committee. Again, something not normally practiced in my department.

I'll amend the advice that the way to have power is to know Robert's Rules of Order by adding "or make it look as if you do."

Likely Weekend

When I applied to some Ivy League colleges, applicants received postcards in the mail, sometime before the final decisions, stating whether their admission was likely, possible, or unlikely.

Brown University invited those who got "likely" postcards (at least the reasonably local ones, such as the New Yorkers) to visit for a couple of days, so Brown could try to convince us to go there. They brought the New Yorkers there on buses.

When we 16- and 17-year-old high school kids got off the buses, we were met by students who had promised to put us up in their dorm rooms. The host for a friend of mine didn't show up. My host wanted to take me and leave, but my friend (whom I'll call Jane) didn't want to be left alone, and convinced me to stay while she waited for her host.

After everyone else was gone, and Jane's host still hadn't appeared, at Jane's insistence my host grudgingly took the two of us back to her dorm room.

My host had a bad cold. It was long ago that she had agreed to take in a prospective student, thinking it might be fun and she'd be doing a good deed. Now that she was ill it no longer sounded like fun, but it was too late to back out of it. After some small talk with my host, Jane and I figured out we weren't wanted and went off to wander the campus.

That evening my host sent us to a party in the dorm. The music was much too loud, and there was way too much beer. The party-goers got drunker and wilder, and someone threw a beer bottle through a window. Broken glass swam in the pond of beer that covered the floor.

A Brown undergrad took Jane aside to chat with her. Eventually Jane returned to inform me that the undergrad had invited her to his dorm room with the excuse that the party's music was too loud to talk over, and I had to go with them. Assuming she wanted to go but was wary enough to want a chaparone, I followed along behind Jane and the undergrad. I was happy to escape the rapidly rising beer pond.

The Brown student had a friend from Bowdoin visiting for the weekend, so there were four of us.

The dorm room had exactly two chairs. Jane ran over to one of the chairs and sat down. The Brown guy plopped into the other chair. That left just the bed. The bed was in a corner of the room, so its head and right side were up against walls. I sat near the corner between the two free sides. The Bowdoin boy sat next to me.

Eventually, he put his arm over my shoulder. I moved away, to disengage. A few minutes later he moved closer. Shortly after that, he again tried to put his arm around me, and I moved further away. This continued, as we gradually moved from the free corner of the bed towards a wall. Jane watched our slow motion pantomime in amusement, and had trouble stifling her laughter.

I worried about what I'd do when we got to the wall and he had me trapped. 

The one good thing about the guys being amazingly drunk was how frequently they had to run down the hall to pee. 

Each time the Bowdoin boy left to pee, I stood up, walked back to the corner of the bed (to maximize how long it would take for him to push me to a wall), and sat down. When the Bowdoin boy returned, the cycle started all over again.

I stayed because I assumed Jane (inexplicably) wanted to be there. Finally, both guys left to pee at the same time, leaving Jane and me alone. I quickly asked her, "Do you want to be here?" She replied, "No!" 

I grabbed her hand, pulled her out the door, and ran down the hall. Just before we disappeared down the stairs, I heard the guys call out to us as they exited the men's room.

Perhaps our Thank You cards to Brown University for its kind hospitality should have consisted of the one word "unlikely".

I was glad I hadn't drunk anything at the party and was clear-headed. After a few parties at still-largely-male Ivy League schools, I quickly learned not to drink alcohol at college parties. 

I also abandoned the ideas, ingrained in American girls of my generation, that women mustn't hurt men's feelings and have to help men save face. I think male classmates appreciated when my rejections of their advances were clear and direct, so they didn't needlessly waste their time with someone who wasn't interested in them.

Conflicts of Interest --- Say what you mean, mean what you say, and don't change the rules of the game

My main advice on Conflict of Interest policies is: 

Say what you mean, and mean what you say.

My main advice on enforcing Conflict of Interest policies is: 

Don't change the rules in the middle of the game.

Someone I'll call Y was on a panel to evaluate proposals. He had followed the Conflict of Interest policy to the letter, reporting in advance, in writing, all the conflicts of interest he was supposed to report.

However, in the presence of the entire panel, the Program Officer who ran the panel claimed that Y needed to recuse himself from the discussion about a proposal written by someone I'll call Q. According to the Program Officer, Y had a conflict of interest with Q, because Q was a co-author of X, and X was Y's wife.

Due to her many experiences with discrimination based on marital status, X kept her personal and professional lives separate, and did not discuss her personal life in professional settings. Neither X nor Y had ever told the Program Officer about any personal relationship between them. Anything the Program Officer thought he knew came from gossip. The Program Officer's discussion, in front of the panel, of his assumptions about X's and Y's personal lives violated their privacy. 

The official Conflict of Interest policy did not state that being a relative of someone's co-author constituted a conflict of interest. Y pointed this out to the Program Officer, who still insisted on recusal.

Curiously, for a later panel, that same Program Officer decided not to recuse himself when he expressed support for a proposal submitted by the husband of his own collaborator.

The last people to realize they have a conflict of interest are the people who have a conflict of interest. That's why it's important to have a clear, unambiguous algorithm for recusal, rather than letting people decide for themselves.

Similarly, the last people to realize that it's not OK to deviate from the official policy or make ad hoc decisions on a case-by-case basis are the enforcers of the policy. Many cases I saw personally where someone was held to a more stringent Conflict of Interest policy than the official one involved a woman, and the attitude of the male enforcers was, "This doesn't smell right to me. It feels like she's trying to get away with something."

Don't change the policy in midstream, and especially, don't change it in midstream based on a particular case; it's easy for the enforcers' prejudices to override fairness. When something doesn't technically violate the policy but "just doesn't smell right" to you, that doesn't justify making new rules on the fly. If it's not right, your Conflict of Interest policy should have covered it. If an objective party determines that the policy needs changing, change it after the current round; don't enforce a different policy than the one that's in place at the time.

Conflict of Interest policies often include personal, financial, professional, and other types of conflicts. Some policies require giving out much more information than is necessary, and sometimes that information gets circulated to co-PIs or others who don't need to know it. It should suffice to recuse oneself and say that one has a conflict of interest that falls under the policy, without being forced to divulge details about the conflict (e.g., one's marital status, or who one is married to).

To summarize, conflict of Interest policies should:

    (1) be clear, unambiguous, and sensible;

    (2) not require people to divulge irrelevant or unnecessary information;

    (3) be sent to everyone who needs to abide by it, early enough to give them a chance to refuse to take part in the activity to which it applies.

A one-to-one correspondence

"The proportion of female mathematicians who are married to male mathematicians is much higher than the proportion of male mathematicians who are married to female mathematicians. So women must be going into mathematics to find a husband, while men do math because they're interested in it," male mathematicians have told me over the years, in all seriousness. 

Nowadays, some might call this "boy math". Whenever I hear this logic I reply, "Do you agree that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the set of female mathematicians married to male mathematicians and the set of male mathematicians married to female mathematicians?" 

They agree. 

I continue, "So the number of female mathematicians married to male mathematicians is exactly the same as the number of male mathematicians married to female mathematicians. The large difference in percentages is simply because mathematics is a male-dominated field."

They're astonished to realize that the numbers are exactly the same. There's something counterintuitive about it and it takes awhile to sink in, even for mathematicians.

Flirting with students

Lolita (probably not her real name) waltzed into the last class of the semester, just as the class was ending. Her blouse was so low-cut that it would now be called a wardrobe malfunction, her skirt was short and tight, and she twirled her hair and smiled seductively as she spoke to the professor in a soft, husky voice.

Professor Q smiled broadly. He was totally smitten. It wasn't just her hair that she was wrapping around her little finger.

As she continued to twirl her hair, smile, and bat her eyelashes at him, Lolita asked Professor Q for course notes so she could study for the final exam. Professor Q flirted back at Lolita, and then turned to me and asked me to lend Lolita my notes. He knew I was a good student, and had (strangely) complimented me on my handwriting---he knew that I would have good notes.

I had never seen Lolita before. She hadn't come to a single class. I didn't know her name. 

I had worked hard in the course and taken good notes. I wrote them in a three-subject notebook, so when I gave Lolita my notes, I gave her all my notes for three math courses I was taking that semester. Notes that I needed myself to study for the final exams. While I didn't think that Professor Q's request was reasonable, I didn't think I could say no to him.

Another student told me later that Lolita was a senior who had already submitted her applications to med school. Lolita majored in math since it was a major with very few requirements. For this course, she just needed to get by. She didn't bother going to class since she could use her sex appeal to get what she wanted.

I did somehow manage to get her to give back my notes before my final exams---late enough to make me anxious, but early enough that Lolita was miffed.

Why do I remember this story? Because it was one of several episodes that taught me how women were viewed at some of the top universities. These stories had an impact on how I view Harvard, the mathematics community, and academia. The faculty gave the female students incentive to flirt with them. But it was the job of the faculty to treat students fairly and equitably, and not be influenced by flirting or by how the students dressed. If the faculty were showing favoritism to students who flirted with them, they weren't doing their jobs.

Years later I tried to talk to Professor Q about discrimination at Harvard and some of his unfair or problematic treatment of women, including his more recent behavior towards young female mathematicians. I felt that I was in a better position to talk to him about it than were more junior colleagues or students, and I hoped that by talking with him I could help them. Professor Q treated it like a joke and exclaimed, "but Alice, I LOVE women!" as he pretended to leer at me. 

Whenever I try to talk to him about it, he evades, dodges, or acts uncomfortable. The information is not welcome.

Sometimes, it's more than cluelessness.

Advice on Advice

She generally gave herself very good advice (though she very seldom followed it)

                                        —Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll

I've given advice elsewhere. Here, I'll give some advice about advice.

My most important advice on advice is to value advice from those who have experience and expertise more than advice from those who don't.

When I arrived at the University of California at Irvine as a professor, I was told that the math department had a program where math majors could request a mentor to advise them on applying to grad school, and faculty could volunteer to mentor students. 

Over the years, students and colleagues had sought my advice and seemed to value it. So I volunteered to be a mentor, and was assigned a senior.

The senior wanted to get a PhD in mathematics, but insisted on only applying to Masters degree programs. She thought that a Masters degree was a prerequisite for applying to a PhD program.

I advised her to apply to PhD programs, for several reasons. Such programs would provide funding, while Masters programs were more likely to make students pay. At my previous university, Ohio State, the bar was higher for students who already had Masters degrees than for those who didn't, so a Masters degree could be a disadvantage when applying for a PhD program. If she got a Masters degree and then decided to go elsewhere for the PhD, she could still do so. Plus, graduate admissions committees that felt she wasn't ready for the PhD program could decide to admit her to the Masters program.

The senior told me I was wrong. Why? Because some first year grad students told her that one doesn't get into a PhD program without having a Masters degree. She believed that they knew more than I did about getting into grad school, even though I had served on graduate admissions committees and the students hadn't.

Other professors gave the senior the same advice that I had. I hoped that by getting the same advice from other faculty, she'd learn to trust me and find my mentoring more useful. But the senior only applied to Masters programs, and didn't come to see me again.

Sometimes the right people to ask for advice are the people who know you well. (Knowing you well also counts as experience or expertise.) I occasionally get emails from students I don't know, in various parts of the world, asking me for advice specific to their situations. While I can sometimes give them very general advice, I emphasize that for specific advice, much more valuable is the advice they should get from professors who know them well and the people from whom they've taken courses. 

My advice to advisors is to make clear the limits of your relevant expertise and experience, and state your best guess as to how much confidence the advisee should or shouldn't have in your advice. If appropriate, suggest who else might be able to give more reliable advice.

I'll end by emphasizing the limits of my experience and expertise to advise on advice. Don't just listen to me. Be open to advice from anyone, paying special attention to those with expertise and experience, and to those who know you or your situation well.

An All-Star Cast

The first mathematics talk I ever gave was a job talk at Brown University on February 1, 1984, and my second talk was in the Harvard Number Theory seminar exactly a week later. It had an all-star cast, including Harvard Professors Barry Mazur and John Tate and Yale Professor Serge Lang.

Right before the talk, I noticed that some of my friends, who were sitting in the front row, were giggling. It was a bit disconcerting when they refused to tell me what they were giggling about; they said they'd tell me afterwards.

I began my talk, and started to write on the blackboard. 

Serge Lang screamed, "Stop! Stop! I can't stand it any more!" 

I stopped. I had barely said anything. Could I have already said something wrong? What could I have said that would upset Serge Lang so terribly?

"The chalk is screeching on the blackboard!" he explained. 

Tate told me to break the chalk in half so it wouldn't screech. I pointed out that all the chalk was tiny---too small to break in two.

We all waited while Barry Mazur ran out of the room, and ran up and down the fifth floor hallway, looking for an open office with chalk. 

Eventually, Barry came back with the report "No chalk". What was I to do? 

Tate handed me a chalk holder into which I could insert the tiny chalk and use it in a way that wouldn't screech. 

Serge calmed down. (He probably went to sleep; I didn't hear from him again.) My talk proceeded uneventfully. But I learned how many Harvard professors it takes to calm down Serge Lang.

What were my friends in the front row giggling about? They were trying to decide whether to tell me that the newly-famous mathematician Gerd Faltings was in my audience. I hadn't yet met or seen him, so I didn't know he was there. That's just as well. There were enough stars to worry about.

How I got John Nash to stop smoking in the Princeton math department

Russell Crowe, who played John Nash in the 2001 film "A Beautiful Mind", said that Nash claimed he never smoked. But Crowe and I knew otherwise; Crowe had seen photos of Nash with a cigarette, and I saw and smelled the smoke when I was a Princeton grad student in the early 1980s. 

I shared an office that was across the hall from the Fine Hall Common Room, where tea and cookies were served on weekday afternoons. Nash often paced up and down the hallway in front of my office, chain smoking cigarettes and flicking ashes into the ashtrays that were bolted to the walls. 

While I was there, local laws changed and the university was forced to come up with a no smoking policy. After that, smoking was allowed only in the Common Room, but Nash continued to smoke in the hallway. 

I phoned the officer in charge of smoking, and asked that either a "No Smoking" sign be posted or the ashtrays removed. After all, who would believe there was a no smoking rule, if there were still ashtrays affixed to the walls? 

"There's a sign at the building entrance," she coughed back at me. 

I, Nash, and the rest of the world hadn't noticed the small "SMOKING PERMITTED only in designated areas" sign hidden in an unlit alcove near one of the many entrances to Fine Hall. 

"But people continue to smoke."  

"That's not my problem," she rasped, hanging up. I suspected she was a smoker. 

It must have been in one of my last years, after I'd been there long enough to know how to beat Princeton at its own game. By hook or by crook, I was going to stop John Nash from smoking outside my office.

I had overheard a faculty member mention that the department stationery was kept in the faculty mailroom --- the room behind the graduate secretary's desk, with a "FACULTY ONLY" sign at the entrance. When no one was looking I snuck in and stole one sheet of department letterhead. I was afraid that taking two sheets might double the penalty for my crime. At home, I cut the sheet in half, and on both the top and bottom halves typed: 

"SMOKING IS PROHIBITED IN THE HALLWAY IN FRONT OF THE COMMON ROOM".

The next day I Scotch-taped a sign to each of the two sets of doors that led from the hallway to the Common Room. The top half with letterhead, the bottom half without. Pretty amateurish. Would it fool anyone? Or would I be expelled for improperly posting stolen paper?

With my office door ajar, I watched and waited. Nash, cigarette in hand, walked up to one of the notes. His eyes were so close to it that he had to move his head from side to side to read the words. Then he walked over to one of the ashtrays that was bolted to the wall. To drop his ashes? No, to put out his cigarette. I never again saw Nash smoke in the hallway.

"No One's here"

During my later, more assertive stage of trying to create a community of friends who care about me in Orange County, I asked nearly everyone I met for advice. Sometimes I would tell my sad story about how no one would bring me casseroles because I had no one to tell about my cancer diagnosis.

Taking pity on me, one kind soul said to another, "Should we tell Alice about the lunch and Starbucks groups?"

That's how I ended up joining one group that met at a campus cafeteria for lunch, and another group that met one morning a week at Starbucks.

These were on-again, off-again relationships. I never did figure out the power dynamics. 

One morning at Starbucks, B told the group something that I thought might be incorrect. Since it was a medical fact for which misinformation could be harmful, I looked it up on my phone and learned that B had told us something that wasn't true. I let the group know what I had found. I expected B to thank me, but he was furious and told me I was rude. He claimed the group had a rule not to use electronic gadgets while we met.

Sometime within the next half hour, C showed up. The group wondered about something, so C pulled out his iPad, looked it up, and shared the information. B's face lit up in a wide smile. He profusely praised C for being so helpful and having the useful iPad handy. I looked at B in amazement, but the irony went completely past everyone who had heard B rebuke me.

For both the lunch and Starbucks groups, I think that almost everyone was individually a nice person. Put them together, and something went wrong.

Whenever I was shut down, or elicited an angry reaction, I promised myself to hold my tongue and take the opportunity to observe and study the social interactions, and learn from my colleagues about the university and how it operated. That would last a few weeks, until something factually incorrect was said that seemed sufficiently harmful that I felt an ethical obligation to speak up, only to be shut down again.

One day, one of the nicer guys in the lunch group walked past me while I was paying at the cash register and, without breaking stride, said "no one's here" to explain why he was leaving with take-out. Startled, I merely agreed with him. Only after I carried my tray to a table where I ate alone did I think to myself, "since when is my name No One?"

I think of myself as a problem-solver. Here were smart, good people who sometimes behaved poorly (by most reasonable standards). Surely this was a problem that could be solved. At a lunch with some of the people who had been nicer to me, I expressed my concern about the group dynamics, ready to give suggestions for improvement. They said they liked it as it is, and anyone who didn't could stop going. 

Like others who felt the groups were dysfunctional, I eventually stopped attending the lunch and Starbucks groups. In my last visit to Starbucks, a retired professor claimed he wanted to understand one particular aspect of the #metoo movement. When I tried to explain it by giving an example of something that happened to me, he blew up, said I might be lying, and left the table.

I occasionally run into B and other people from one group or the other, who kindly encourage me to rejoin. I thank them and remind them that while I'm very happy when people challenge my ideas, I left because I felt unwelcome; the personal hostility towards me by some people at some times eventually reached an unacceptable level.

Never once is their reaction, "I'd like to understand. Could you explain what you mean or give an example?" 

B was surprised and shocked that his own behavior was among the reasons I left, and he seemed quite offended. I was prepared to remind him of the stark contrast between how he treated C and his angry outburst at me, but he never gave me an opening.

What I find most striking in Orange County is a lack of curiosity. (I've learned the hard way that saying "be curious, not furious" doesn't help people who are already angry.)

The Silent Undergrad and The Reluctant Student

The Undergrad walked into my office during office hours and sat on a chair in the corner, rather than one of the chairs at my desk. I said "hello," and waited.

I looked at the Undergrad expectingly, while the Undergrad looked down at the floor in silence. We sat like that for awhile. 

Eventually I asked, "what can I do for you?"

This confused the Undergrad, who didn't know how to answer. 

Trying to be helpful, I said "there must be some reason you came to see me. What was it?"

"The counselors told me to go to office hours and get to know my professors."

"Why did they want you to do that?"

"So the professors will write me letters of recommendation for grad school."

I asked some gentle questions that eventually led the Undergrad to realize that sitting silently in a professor's office with nothing to say might not be a good use of either the student's or the professor's time, and might not make the best impression or lead to a helpful letter of recommendation.

Perhaps the counselors should have given clearer advice, or the Undergrad should have thought about the consequences.

A different student came to my office to discuss doing a reading course with me, having gotten the advice to take reading courses as a way to get letters of recommendation for grad school. 

It turned out that the Student had only taken one or two of the standard algebra and number theory courses. I advised the Student to take more of the basic courses, before taking a specialized reading course in number theory or algebra. 

The Student wanted to know about other things students could do to impress professors. I explained about Research Experiences for Undergraduates at various sites throughout the country. Upon hearing that these took place over the summer, the Student exclaimed in disgust, "Why would I want to do math over the summer?"

I was surprised and amused. "If you don't love math enough to want to do it over the summer, why do you want to get a math PhD?" I asked. "That's a big commitment."

The Student's desire to go to grad school wasn't from a love of math; it was from a lack of anything better to do. 

We discussed career possibilities and courses to consider. I pointed out that mathematics opens doors in many fields of endeavor. I hope the Reluctant Student and The Silent Undergrad eventually found fulfilling paths.

Nickel and Dime

When I was a little kid, I had a lemonade stand for a day. An early brush with capitalism. My mother made the lemonade, we put a table and chair at the sidewalk, and placed the pitcher and a small sign on the table. 

I set the price at two cents a cup. 

My brother was my first customer. He handed me a dime and asked for his change. I wasn't sure what to do. My brother looked at the change I had, and picked up a nickel and three pennies.

I knew that wasn't right. He's giving me one very small lightweight coin and taking away four larger heavier ones? I told him I wasn't born yesterday, and I knew that wasn't fair.

My brother was quite amused. He explained the arithmetic, but I wasn't buying it. He was clearly trying to cheat me. No one would create a currency in which a small coin was worth ten times as much as a heavier larger coin. That doesn't make sense.

Perhaps that's why my brother is a physicist-turned-economist and I'm a (too logical) mathematician.

When I ran the above story past my brother, he replied (bemusedly, according to him, which led to a bemusing discussion about what "bemused" actually means):

Logically, though, the conclusion should be the other way around. Your little kid self argued in terms of size, i.e., in physical terms, while my teenage self argued in symbolic, i.e., mathematical terms. And I didn't try to cheat you, which my present economist self finds surprising.

Diversity Theater

Call me cynical, but as someone who has spent a lot of time thinking about issues of discrimination, prejudice, fairness, and community, I am no longer amused by performative acts of diversity theater.

After the Hiring Committee began to review the applications, the department Chair sent the faculty "Selection Criteria". It turned out to be an algorithm for choosing a long list and then a short list of candidates. It was newly created by the Hiring Committee, in a rush because they weren't allowed to look at the applications until they formulated an algorithm. I was told that the purpose of the criteria was to create a fair and uniform process and prevent disadvantaging underrepresented minorities. The Selection Criteria weren't made available to the applicants.

While the people who wrote the Selection Criteria were well-intentioned, I've found that non-public hiring criteria often give an unfair advantage to applicants in the in-group, who are more likely to know what's expected. Any lack of transparency in hiring criteria generally disadvantages marginalized communities. As I've said elsewhere: The ad should give the true criteria on which you'll base your decision. Make the criteria and hiring procedures public and clear, and stick to them. 

The algorithm's first filter was the Diversity Statement:

I. Diversity statements will be evaluated according to the following criteria:

(a) Does the applicant demonstrate an understanding of the problem?

(b) What has the applicant done for diversity?

(c) What are the candidates [sic] plans to promote diversity?

Only include candidates whose diversity statements demonstrate awareness of inequities and challenges, a specific plan to contribute to inclusive excellence activities, and/or a track record and measures of success.

I spent three years on a campus committee that during that time scutinized the hiring, promotion, tenure, or "merit review" files of nearly everyone on campus, so I had a lot of experience reviewing personnel files.

When I looked at the applications, it was a matter of only a couple of minutes before I found a blatantly plagiarized Diversity Statement. It was cobbled together nearly verbatim from Diversity Statements other people had posted on their websites, sample Diversity Statements posted by UC Berkeley and UC San Diego, and canned sentences on websites whose stated purpose was to create Diversity Statements.

I might have been tipped off by the non-Latino applicant's reference to "fellow Latino faculty" (the sentence was the same as one in Example 3 of this UCSD sample), but the essay had plenty of evidence that didn't pass the smell test.

Nonetheless, it did pass the diversity filter of members of the Hiring Committee, who claimed that the applicant's diversity statement addressed all the questions and passed the test (until I pointed out the plagiarism; of course the applicant's only penalty was not being offered that one job). Chatbots now make it even easier to fake Diversity Statements and harder to catch plagiarism.

How many applicants are getting positions using plagiarized Diversity Statements? How many with legitimate statements are passed over in favor of applicants with more impressive-looking plagiarized Diversity Statements? We seem to have created a system that rewards dishonesty.

I think that plagiarized Diversity Statements are not rare, and are usually not caught. The people who evaluate the statements are often untrained and unqualified to do so. In some cases, they themselves engage in discrimination, inequity, or unfairness, and are completely the wrong people to evaluate Diversity Statements.

Some of the Diversity Statements that are positively evaluated do more harm than good, by reinforcing the stereotype that women and minorities are underrepresented because they're not good enough to succeed without additional help. 

One could argue that allowing only a small hiring committee to have any say in determining the Selection Criteria and hiring rubric violated the university's commitment to the principle of shared governance.

Based on my experience reading files, I think that hiring and promotion decisions should not rely on self-reporting by the candidate that is not independently verifiable. Doing so encourages not only BS, but also outright lying. We shouldn't reward people for bad behavior, and punish those who do the right thing.