Media

❧ INTERNATIONAL MATHEMATICIANS PROTEST TO MOVE MATH’S BIGGEST CONFERENCE OUTSIDE OF THE U.S.  (Current Affairs, USA)

The numbers aren’t adding up for some of the world’s preeminent mathematicians. The U.S. has built a paramilitary force to brutally harass and expel non-Americans from within the country's borders … and meanwhile, the International Congress of Mathematicians wants its global members to convene in Philadelphia? Mathematicians Tarik Aougab and Ila Varma have spearheaded a petition calling for the boycott of the conference unless it is moved to a less openly fascist country. The ICM, which takes place every four years, is math’s most consequential event. It awards the Fields Medal, tantamount to a Nobel Prize in Math, and has hosted speeches that changed the discipline. Still, over 1900 people who signed the petition—among them a previous Fields Medal recipient and the head of the mathematical society—attendance isn’t worth the risk of being thrown in a jail cell. The petition asserts that travel to the U.S. would subject all international travelers to the Trump administration's ludicrous border and immigration policies. Indeed, last year, a mathematician was denied entry to the U.S. after officials found messages criticizing Trump on her phone. “There is simply no sound argument one could make that claims international participants are more safe at this iteration of the ICM than they would have been in Russia in 2022,” the petition states, referring to the time the conference was relocated after Russia invaded Ukraine. “The current American government has demonstrated in no uncertain terms its unbridled hatred of immigrants.”