#ShutDownSTEM: Reflections from AMS Publications |

On June 10^th, the AMS closed for “business as usual” in order to participate in #ShutDownSTEM. AMS Governance spent much of the day building an action plan to account for our own Society’s history of racist behavior and to address inequities in our mathematics community, while much of the staff used the day for self-education and self-reflection. There were several “office hours” with executives, as well, which I, relatively new to both the AMS and the discipline of mathematics, found very useful and informative as I learned a great deal about the history of the AMS that the organization continues to reckon with.

This blog is maintained by the Publications team here at the AMS: the marketers, editors, graphic designers, and a host of others who bring you great content and help to make it easy to find. We are content people; we love books, movies, podcasts, journals, and magazines. This is why many of us work in publishing.

Our team found June 10^th to be a valuable opportunity to engage with content and reflect on ways we can tackle systemic racism. For some of us, it sounded like a luxurious opportunity: “I will be paid to read all day? To watch that documentary I have wanted to see? To engage with my children about this content and these issues?” And while it was generous of the AMS to give us the time and space to do those things, we all found it energizing, distressing, challenging, gut-wrenching, but not definitely not luxurious.

We wanted to share the resources we found useful. We hope you will, as well.

Articles, Websites, and Podcasts:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/parenting/wp/2015/07/06/how-silence-can-breed-prejudice-a-child-development-professor-explains-how-and-why-to-talk-to-kids-about-race

https://www.aaihs.org/the-radical-democracy-of-the-movement-for-black-lives/

https://www.aaihs.org/using-mlk-to-quell-outrage-distorts-his-legacy/

https://m4bl.org/

https://janeelliott.com/

https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2018/07/19/guest-post-safiya-umoja-noble-ethics-social-justice-information-part-1/

https://medium.com/equality-includes-you/what-white-people-can-do-for-racial-justice-f2d18b0e0234

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/george-floyd-protests-bail-funds-police-brutality-black-lives-matter-1008259/

https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch

and this article from the Code Switch team: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/06/03/457251670/how-much-do-we-need-the-police