On January 27, 2023, I appeared on the Newell Normand Show on WWL AM 870 in Louisiana.
The topic was a story we previously wrote about a lecture by Prof. Luis Antonio Leyva, Vanderbilt University-Peabody College of Education & Human Development, Vanderbilt Prof Calls College Math a ‘White, Cisheteropatriarchal Space’. Prof. Leyva’s lecture also was the subject of my appearance on Chicago’s Morning Answer, A “mania has taken over academia where every issue, including math, revolves around race and the patriarchy”.
Here is the Abstract of the lecture, Undergraduate Mathematics Education as a White, Cisheteropatriarchal Space and Opportunities for Structural Disruption to Advance Queer of Color Justice. I dare you to actually read the entire thing:
This lecture consists of two parts. For the first half of the lecture, I present findings from my research about the educational experiences of 39 undergraduate queer and trans* (QT) students of color pursuing STEM majors across historically white and minority-serving universities in the United States. Findings depict how Black, Latin*, and Asian QT students’ narratives of experience reflect forms of intersectionality, or instances of oppression and resistance at intersecting systems of white supremacy and cisheteropatriarchy (or white cisheteropatriarchy). I use my analytical framework, “STEM Education as a White, Cisheteropatriarchal Space” (Leyva et al., 2022, American Educational Research Journal), to capture how intersectional oppression among QT students of color unfolds across three interconnected levels of influence in undergraduate STEM: ideological, institutional, and relational. In addition, I highlight findings that illustrate structural disruptions, defined as educational structures and practices that resist intersectional oppression in undergraduate STEM. Findings also address coping strategies among QT students of color navigating white cisheteropatriarchy in STEM for protecting their academic success and intersectional identities. During the second half of the lecture, I apply my framework and research findings to argue how undergraduate mathematics education operates as a white, cisheteropatriarchal space that limits learning opportunities affirming of queer of color identities and experiences. I conclude by re-imagining undergraduate mathematics education with structural disruptions that advance justice for learners marginalized across intersections of race, gender, and sexuality. This re-imagining accounts for ideological, institutional, and relational forms of disruption that interrogate dominant forms of knowledge production as well as expand access to learning opportunities and departmental support that affirm queer of color identities.
What a woke word salad. That word salad and more was the subject of my almost 20 minute interview (opens in new window)
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(emphasis added)
Newell Normand (01:51): So, I mean, math has been called racist. It’s been called all kinds of different things. How did we get to this point?
WAJ (02:01): Well, as you indicated, math is hard. Okay, <laugh>, I struggled. I barely got through high school trigonometry, and I said I’ve had enough. The only thing I thought at the time was maybe I’m not smart enough to do advanced math. I can do other things. I didn’t think I was a victim. Okay, <laugh>, because in this 1970s, not everybody was a victim. Now everybody’s a victim. So if you’re bad at math, it’s not your fault. It’s society that has wronged you. The structure has wronged you. And that’s really what’s taken over. It’s a victim mentality that permeates higher education, increasingly K through 12, but higher education and everything has to be put in a context. There’s always a race connection. There’s always a gender and sex connection. There’s always a capitalist connection. There’s always something other than the fact that you just are not good at math. And that’s what’s happening. That’s what permeates. It’s really hard to overstate for your listeners how absurd it has become throughout higher education.
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… there’s so many areas of academia that have turned into absurd word salads…. I do think it has to do with what’s commonly called woke ideology …. I read the abstract of his lecture. It’s literally word salad. It’s repeating the same things over and over again. It’s the sort of nonsense you see throughout academia, particularly in the humanities. What makes this so interesting is that it’s actually in math. This is the sort of nonsense you expect to see in the humanities.
NN (04:27):
Well, I read an article a while back about an organization called Teaching Works, and, I think the Gates Foundation provides a lot of the funding for it. And the founder said that math is a harbor for whiteness and the very nature of the knowledge and who produced it and what is counted as mathematics is itself dominated by whiteness and racism. But if you go back through history as it relates to math, it never really was dominated by whiteness, was it?
WAJ (05:04):
Well, I’m not a historian of math, but I think there were other civilizations, so-called non-white, non-European civilizations, which were quite advanced in mathematical concepts…. So, no, math is not a white thing, it’s just math. And the fact that it’s now being portrayed that way is One, historically wrong. Two, it’s presently wrong because everybody on a math test is treated equally. They’re dealing with the same playing field. And, it’s also very insulting. It’s suggesting that if you are not white, you can’t be doing math. And we know that that’s not true also. So, at every level, this attempt to portray mathematics as a white thing is just wrong.
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NN (05:57): So, you know, I’ve read, and I’m sure you have too, that identifying incorrect answers as being wrong is demeaning to students. And therefore, this quest for being right is a white dominated aspect of life as well.
WAJ (06:21):
Yeah, you see that all the time. You see that sort of thing in trainings. You see that anecdotally in videos that are released or somebody secretly records something. You see that everywhere and again, what message is that sending to non-white children that if you’re punctual, if you turn in your work on time, if you are correct in your mathematics and you’re able to show your proof, and you’re able to do all these things that make you successful in life and in this society, and then they tell them, but if you’re doing that, that’s a sign of whiteness. What message is that sending? There’s something has gone so fundamentally wrong with our education system and teachers and book publishers and foundations who view education as a method of activism of social activism. And that’s how you get into these ridiculous, insulting concepts, which are demeaning to people they pretend to be helping.
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NN (09:16):You know, in my educational life, the classes that I enjoyed the most was the Socratic method of teaching Challenging thought. That’s dead. Right?
WAJ (09:38):
Well, I attended law school in the early 1980s. The Socratic method was how the classes were taught. The professor pressing you, calling on you, you didn’t know you were going to be called on. So you had to be ready for every class because you didn’t know, is this the day I’m going to get called on and challenge you and probe you? And so that’s an uncomfortable sort of thing, but it was really good as a learning methodology because One, it required you to be ready. You had to be ready at every moment. But Two, I think it was teaching people to get to an answer on their own, teaching people how to self-critically examine what they’re saying. Now I think the Socratic method, even in law schools where it really started, is probably out the window in most places. And instead, because the concept is that you want people to be comfortable, you want them to feel safe in the classroom, intellectually safe in the classroom, you don’t want to stress them, you don’t want to embarrass them. But, you know, real life is a series of stresses and embarrassments and being prepared. So I think that the old Socratic method was great. Frankly, it was a lot more work for the professor, much easier to just get up there and lecture for an hour than to actually interrogate students.
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NN (11:59):
So when I read this word salad as you referred to it, and I think appropriately so, I never am able to pull out what it is that they’re actually the conclusion of what, what it is that they’re saying and, and how that translates into what they would change relative to the course of instruction of math.
WAJ (12:23):
It’s funny you say that because that’s what I thought when I read it. Like it’s completely circular. He even cites to himself as authority for some of his points. And it never really tells you, at least what’s online here, it never really tells you how is this going to improve student’s ability to learn math. Maybe that’s not the purpose of it. Maybe the purpose of it is to tear down various structures in the university system and in society. And I suspect that really is what the purpose is because that’s what gets rewarded in academia. But there’s nothing in here…. it literally makes no sense. It’s circular, it’s just a bunch of words thrown together, but this is what gets rewarded in academia….
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NN (14:22):
And how do we connect as to, you know, the perpetuation of STEM education that we’ve really fallen behind when we compare ourselves to other industrialized countries as it relates to STEM that we think we’re gonna end up in a better place.
WAJ (14:40):
Nobody who looks at this thinks this is actually good for our country. I always try to emphasize, because I speak to a lot of groups, I speak to a lot of legislators, and I say, you know, this is actually, this stuff is, it’s funny at one level and when we can sit here and we can kind of laugh at how stupid it is. But when you think that we are raising generations who don’t know how to do math, who think that there’s something wrong with showing your proof in math, and this is perpetuated throughout the other STEM subjects. We are really damaging ourselves as the nation. If you wanted to, if you had a long-term generational view to undermine the United States, how would you do it any differently than they’re doing it now? You would create a nation of students who can’t read, write, or do arithmetic. We’re not there yet. There are many bright students and there are many students who perform, but we are creating systems which seek to punish high achievement and seek to denigrate high achievement in racial and other terms that is extremely damaging to our country. So this is not just about some kooky professor at Vanderbilt who writes the word salad. This is really a symptom of a more fundamental problem.
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