MathFest is the the Mathematical Association of America’s flagship annual conference, which draws in mathematics researchers, educators, students, and enthusiasts from across the US to a different US city each year. In addition to the talks, poster sessions, mini courses, town halls, and opportunities for networking that bring people to the conference, Project NExT – MAA’s professional development program for recent PhD’s focusing heavily (but not exclusively) on teaching – holds large parts of its programming in the days leading up to and during MathFest. Despite significant community outcry, the MAA has forged ahead with their decision to hold MathFest 2023 in Florida. Moreover, the MAA has failed to provide any significant measures to mitigate risk or allow for participants who are unable to attend in-person to participate in the conference virtually.
In this post we are sharing a letter we sent to the MAA MathFest 2023 organizers as a group of mathematicians who are opposed to the MAA’s decision to hold MathFest in Tampa. In particular, we are concerned about the safety of many participants in the wake of Florida’s recent wave of harmful legislation targeting trans people, reproductive health care, immigrant rights, and scholarly work related to African American history and gender studies. We discuss our concerns and what we feel are the bare minimum steps that MAA needs to take to mitigate the risks of harm for MathFest’s attendees in more detail in the letter below.
Regardless of any in-person safeguards that MAA may put in place, this year’s MathFest will not be a safe event for trans people, for undocumented immigrants, or for many other members of our community, including disabled people.
-an excerpt from our open letter
This letter was sent on June 15th (via email) to the MathFest organizers, including MAA’s president, executive director, and both the current and incoming Project NEXT directors. At the time of this posting, we have received responses from both the current Project NEXT director, Dave Kung, and MAA’s president, Hortensia Soto. However, neither of their replies substantively addressed our outlined asks (and, frustratingly, most of our asks were not even acknowledged).
We encourage the broader math community to join us in these demands by sending this letter (or using it as a resource/template) to the MAA MathFest organizers in solidarity with the mathematicians most affected by MAA’s decisions on this matter. A list of the emails we sent it to is included at the end of the letter. We also recommend sharing this blog post in your social circles including your departments and social media.
Dear MAA MathFest organizers,
We are reaching out because we feel alarmed and angered by the insistence that Tampa is a wonderful place to do math for all in the recent promotional materials arriving in our inboxes. The state of Florida is currently at the vanguard of a reactionary charge against immigrant rights, women’s rights and LGTBQIA+ rights with a particular focus against trans rights. Moreover, scholarly work is directly under attack as the teaching and learning of African American studies and Women and Gender studies is being banned from schools and libraries across the state. A few instances of these attacks include the nationally covered prohibition of books regarding fundamental parts of American History such as the enslavement of Black Americans, the banning of trans people from using the bathroom of their gender in government buildings (including convention centers), the legalization of discrimination in healthcare on the basis of gender identity and sexuality, among other attacks on LGTBQIA+ rights and the persecution of undocumented immigrants.
These policies make Tampa and the state of Florida a particularly hostile place to have a math festival that strives to include and support the participation of a racially and gender diverse group of people. We believe that the statement on the MathFest website falls short in acknowledging that while in theory these bills may not explicitly bar attendance of certain groups from MathFest, each additional hurdle will certainly prevent many people from attending in practice. Keri Ann Sather-Wagstaff’s and Spencer Bagley’s MAA Focus article contributions included many arguments for why holding MathFest in Florida would be dangerous. However, since the MAA has continued to forge ahead with their decision to hold MathFest in Florida, extra steps must be taken to mitigate these risks. Moreover, although MAA may wish for a safe and welcoming environment for all, the optimism expressed in the conference’s promotional materials is intentionally misleading and exclusionary.
Regardless of any in-person safeguards that MAA may put in place, this year’s MathFest will not be a safe event for trans people, for undocumented immigrants, or for many other members of our community, including disabled people. Therefore, our most urgent request is that you provide an online participation option. As mentioned on the MathFest website, expanding reactionary legislation may pose an insurmountable barrier to people traveling to attend, so hosting an inclusive conference requires finding ways for the participation of those who will be unable to attend in person. We understand that providing a quality online experience can be expensive and difficult, but after the last few years, we collectively have a wealth of experience in enabling remote participation, and this would be an expenditure of money that is aligned with MAA’s stated organizational values.
We also ask that you include a thorough travel advisory on your website with explicit mention of Florida’s harmful and hateful legislation targeting trans folks, undocumented immigrants, and Black and Gender studies scholars. The MAA’s recent statement on “What MAA is doing to keep you safe and welcome” falls short on this ask in several ways. It did not:
- Explicitly name the groups primarily affected by these policies. In particular, it did not once mention trans people.
- Address concerns regarding the policing of attendees’ gender expression in gendered restrooms. This should be explicitly discussed in the conference code of conduct.
- Offer any legal protections to undocumented individuals at the venue.
- Provide any detailed and concrete safety plans to address scenarios such as the police being called on somebody using the restroom or a conference attendee requiring immediate medical care that has been criminalized in Florida. Such plans would include immediate support during the emergency and continued legal support afterwards.
- Add anything to the programmed material beyond what was initially planned on how individuals and the MAA as an organization will respond and organize against these dangerous and reactionary policies.
The NAACP, the Florida Immigrant coalition, the League of United Latin American Citizens, Equality Florida, Spectra, Particles for Justice, and a collection of concerned mathematicians have all released statements that contain resources addressing different aspects of these attacks and could be useful when crafting a travel advisory for the MAA MathFest. The MAA’s travel advisory also needs to acknowledge that while these policies may attempt to mitigate the risks, they do not entirely eliminate them. Claims that MathFest will “pass this test with grace and dignity” are premature at best. Even if the MAA could ensure the conference venue was safe, Tampa being broadly more accepting does not make off-site, state-sanctioned discrimination impossible. For example, family restrooms at the airport do not replace trans people being allowed to use what restroom they choose, and everyone using a gendered restroom is at risk of having someone decide that they do not belong there.
Finally, we ask that all of your promotional materials going forward include a prominent link to the travel advisory and an announcement that there will be an online option for participation. Statements about how “Tampa loves math” along with depictions of the conference location as a perfect vacation destination are incongruent with the reality that many people will be put in immediate physical and psychological danger if they attend.
By taking these measures, MAA would be setting a strong example for other many professional organizations, both in and out of mathematics, going forward. We hope this would also have a significant impact on how the MAA plans its own future conferences. Being proactive is especially important for large conferences such as MathFest since planning starts early and decisions are costly to change. The MathFest website mentions that in 2021 MAA leadership had looked into moving MathFest 2023 but was unable to move it without incurring a significant financial risk due a contract signed in 2018 that did not include clauses for cancelation due to changes in legislation. An example of specific and actionable language such a contract could use can be found in this blog post about the 2012 APSA annual conference being scheduled in New Orleans. The MAA’s future planning will need to be more nuanced than simply classifying states as either safe for conferences or not; in a country built on genocide and enslavement, no state is safe for all marginalized communities. All locations have risks. However, the risk profiles of different locations are neither identical nor static, and every stage in planning a conference needs to address the risks associated with the conference’s location and how those risks are evolving.
Best regards,
Spencer Bagley, Westminster University
Matthew Durham, University of California Riverside
Padi Fuster, University of Colorado Boulder
Piper Harris, University of Toronto
Max Lahn, University of Michigan
Marissa Loving, University of Wisconsin-Madison, MAA AWM Section Lecturer
Seppo Niemi-Colvin, Indiana University
Florencia Orosz Hunziker, University of Denver
Ben Stucky, Beloit College
We sent this letter to the following people:
MAA Meetings & Events: meetings@maa.org
Hortensia Soto (MAA President): hortensia.soto@colostate.edu
Michael Pearson (MAA Executive Director): mpearson@maa.org
Matthew DeLong (MAA Chair of Meetings Committees): mdelong@marian.edu
Dave Kung (current Director of Project NeXT): david.kung@austin.utexas.edu
Christine Kelley (incoming Director of Project NeXT): ckelley2@unl.edu
Inclusion/Exclusion 