[Maths-Education] Jo Boaler

[Peter Gates]

Dear Mathematics Educators and Friends,
On November 1, Dr Jo Boaler addressed the PME-NA community to discuss the importance of communicating our research with broader audiences and recognizing and facing the challenging political climates in which we work.  However, she also shared a disturbing story of the unrelenting and unfair attacks she has been subjected to from a few individuals in the "mathematically correct" community.  In bravely sharing this story, she made it evident that there have been serious breaches of academic rules (keeping sources of data private) and of ethical behavior (harassment and vindictive personal attacks on Jo Boaler). In threatening her academic freedom-i.e., her freedom to conduct research without harassment-and in insisting on posting in a public space an article that breaks confidentiality and is inaccurate, these actions also threaten our fundamental values.  Jo Boaler is a valued and respected member of our community, and we should not stand by and see such activity without lodging a protest. Furthermore, we see the attacks on the work of Professor Boaler as an attack on the work of the whole mathematics education community toward the improvement of the teaching and learning of mathematics, and lack of action on the part of Stanford continues to harm our community and our work.
For these reasons, we request that you:
a)    Make your own judgment by reading Jo Boaler's personal statement, posted at http://www.stanford.edu/~joboaler/<https://mail.lsbu.ac.uk/owa/redir.aspx?C=HabvE9Q6JUKADB59yEUhWUSIzsdXkM8IJT7Gj4swWa4BAWAoKPQ0UQpVCt_ExBfRvlxy1PJ8JYg.&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.stanford.edu%2f%7ejoboaler%2f> outlining the events and the article in question posted at ftp://math.stanford.edu/pub/papers/milgram/combined-evaluations-version3.pdf
b)    Then we hope you choose to act by either or both:
i.      Signing the petition found at http://www.change.org/petitions/the-community-of-mathematics-educators-join-in-defending-fundamental-values
ii.    Sending a personal letter to the president and provost of Stanford.  If you could email those (President Hennessy,(president at stanford.edu<mailto:president at stanford.edu>), Provost Etchemendy (etch at stanford.edu<mailto:etch at stanford.edu>), and blind copy Jo Boaler (joboaler at stanford.edu<mailto:joboaler at stanford.edu>), that would be ideal.
Please join the PME-NA community in responding to this unfair and unacceptable circumstance as soon as possible.  We believe that Stanford University is currently reviewing the situation and tends to underestimate its potential negative effects on our colleague and on our community of scholars as a whole.  Academic freedom is the basis of all of our scholarly work.


Thanks,
Steve

Professor Stephen Lerman
Department of Education
London South Bank University
103 Borough Road
LONDON SE1 0AA
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)20 7815 7440
Fax: +44 (0)20 7815 8160
url: https://sites.google.com/site/lermansteve/home