Comment by bikenaga | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bikenaga | Hacker News Reader

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This is the "Decolonisation" statement on the Durham University math department's web site:

https://www.durham.ac.uk/departments/academic/mathematical-s...

As an example, from the section labeled "Suggestions and resources": "Consider giving short biographies of the mathematicians whose work you present in your modules. If in doing so you realise that they are almost entirely (or even completely) white and/or male, ask yourself why this is. See if you can find contributions to the field from mathematicians of other genders/ethnicities."

From some of the other comments here, maybe the original article gave the impression of coerced or repressed speech, but I don't see that in this statement. The section is labelled "Suggestions and resources". The quote above uses wording like "Consider giving", "ask yourself", "See if you can". The tone of the statement as a whole is similar.

I was a math professor for 38 years. I'm actually kind of opinionated about my teaching, and never cared for people telling me what to say or do. But there was nothing here that pushed my buttons - and in fact, some of the suggestions seemed pretty reasonable.

Called it. No imperious mandate from on high, just some reasonable suggestions on a website.

A ton of HN regulars seem unwilling to apply a microsecond of skepticism to these articles.

> just some reasonable suggestions on a website.

I'm not terribly familiar with the inner workings of Durham U but I know that in the business world a "suggestion" can mean anything from "do this if you feel like it" to "you are in serious trouble if you don't do this" depending on context.

The context here is definitely "do this if you feel like it". This is a list of suggestions posted under the "Equality, Diversity & Inclusion" header. Mandatory policies just aren't posted in that section of a university's website. Most of the concrete actions are specifically noted by the section header as "Suggestions & Resources".

pushing official policy via deniable "private" distribution channels has been the SOP in the West for a long time.

Perfectly valid assumption, especially given this verbiage in the source article, which you can verify for yourself: "Durham University is calling on professors in the math department"

The employer told employees what to do. The end.

The concrete things you're mentioning don't sound unreasonable.

Zero as we know it -- and all our numerals and base-10 system -- were developed in Hindu mathematics, used by Arab traders, and carried to Renaissance Italy by an Italian. And its sources were acknowledged at the time. That's quite a compelling story.

"The method" of Al Jabbar -- algebra -- is another important thing.

And a great deal of mathematics was developed in ancient China, (though Chinese culture has never tended to spread so much). This fact is now remembered in such phrases as the "Chinese Remainder Theorem", but to delve deeper into this history could be good.

So there's plenty that could be reasonably included in a curriculum, which would improve that curriculum.

There's also no denying that Euler and Gauss were absolute powerhouses, or that a lot of early-modern mathematics was developed in Europe.

(As you get into more advanced physics, you start to see more Japanese names, too. Things that developed a little later.)

So all that's fine.

The problem is this: This phrase "de-colonization" is so hugely and dangerously loaded that it refers to much more than all of the above.

Decolonization is Ugandans seizing Indian businesses and threatening to make concentration camps.

Decolonization is Partition, with mobs beating Muslims to death.

Decolonization is farm-killings in South Africa. It is an ANC that, far from speaking of a harmonious Rainbow Nation any more, is now openly making threats of violence on the campaign trail.

Decolonization is -- well what is it?

It means: White people leave. It means those who are not "indigenous" leave. It's a word with very strong overtones of ethnic cleansing.

It makes a certain amount of logical (if horrific) sense when applied to the Americas or Australia. Presumably all those people could be killed or sent back to Europe.

But what could it possibly mean when applied to the UK itself? Conquest?

Is it necessary to use such a violent concept to describe the creation of a rich, historically interesting, and cosmopolitan mathematics curriculum?

It isn't.

Please don't post flamewar rhetoric like this to HN. We want curious conversation. Those two things are not compatible.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I think your point about the choice of words is a good one, and perhaps verified by many of the comments people made about the original article. A poor choice of words can do more harm than good. For instance, it's a bad sign when a slogan or phrase associated with one point of view is used in political ads by people with opposing points of view.

This often happens when we get angry about injustice, or when we think someone is making a mistake. The anger leads us to responses amounting to whacking someone upside the head, rather than responses which might make things better. When you teach, you find out that people will not learn things by being shamed, guilted, or insulted. But when you're angry, it can be hard to resist the temptation to vent your anger rather than trying to make things better. (And to be sure, sometimes forceful action is the best thing.)

Maybe (to use your words) the Durham statement should have been titled "Creating a Rich, Historically Interesting, and Cosmopolitan Mathematics Curriculum".

> it's a bad sign when a slogan or phrase associated with one point of view is used in political ads by people with opposing points of view.

This is a great observation that I'm going to remember.

Incentives are an issue. Within academia or the arts, say, an individual has every incentive to be "provocative" within their ideological bubble, even if the outcome of this internal status-seeking is a left-politics that is completely unpalatable to anyone outside that bubble. Now right-parties are beating left-parties over the head with the words of their own activist wings.

I contend that the academically-trendy "anticolonialist" rhetoric is exactly such an outcome. (In fact, it's more than that; the CCP propagandists love it.)

Indeed, you can be sure that the person who posted this article had right-sympathies. Because publicizing this sort of thing benefits the mainstream right, not the mainstream left.

I think many people in mainstream political parties do understand this -- for example, in American politics, the word you'll hear from Democrats is "progressive", which (while not completely free of problematic history), is not remotely so violent a phrase.

> Maybe (to use your words) the Durham statement should have been titled "Creating a Rich, Historically Interesting, and Cosmopolitan Mathematics Curriculum".

Thank you. That's why I offered it!

This is an insightful observation. Because there’s nothing wrong with trying to correct what might be incorrect or incomplete attributions, and (in my opinion) it can be beneficial to emphasize the contributions of non-“Western” mathematicians. So why is this rhetoric so offensive? It does come down to the use of the “colonization” terminology, and you’ve identified part of the reason.

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