With this post, we are amplifying a tribute to Congressman John Lewis by Karen Saxe of the AMS.
From Karen Saxe:
Karen Saxe is Associate Executive Director at the AMS and heads the Office of Government Relations in Washington, DC. There, she advocates for funding for mathematical research and education in the mathematical sciences, and for policies that broaden participation in higher education generally and in mathematics more specifically. She writes the AMS Capital Currents blog: https://blogs.ams.org/capitalcurrents/. Her July 23 post commemorates John Lewis. Congressman Lewis was very proud of the achievements of the colleges and universities in his district, including HBCUs Morehouse College, Spelman College, Clark Atlanta University, Morris Brown College, and Morehouse School of Medicine. He kept his website up-to-date with announcements about constituents who received federal funding for their research, and his staff offered grants assistance and workshops to explain the federal grants process. He was, generally, a great proponent of higher education and fought in Congress for affordable post-secondary education for all, believing “that no matter a person’s income or zip code, access to an excellent education should be a right.”
Mathematics as a discipline is not central in Saxe’s blog post (though it contains a compelling context for discussing social justice mathematics), but I think that the connections to justice and education in Lewis’s legacy make a strong connection to our goals here at inclusion/exclusion. Moreover, I draw inspiration from Lewis’s admonition to “get into good, necessary trouble” as I think about the ways we must continue to #DisruptMath.