Thoughts and Interesting Stories---Jeff Clark

I serve as faculty ombudsperson. In that capacity people do not stop by just to chat with me; the filter is set to admit folk having conflicts. As someone who has worked at the same place for 35 years oft times I know the parties in the conflict and being an amiable person consider the folk in conflict to be friends of mine. I have the training and experience not to let the friendships affect the way I discuss options with folk along with their costs and benefits; it does mean I can't separate folk in my professional life easily into binary categories of right and wrong. I know that I have never been absolutely right or wrong so it makes sense that others haven't either. I used to be more judgmental, more simplistic, more absolute. Maybe it's learning to live with (all of) my shortcomings that's helped me to be more tolerant of others. Maybe it's leading a sheltered life and not having to be in contact with folk who have committed truly heinous acts. In any event I ...

Once when I was young I lost a library book. It was rough at first, living on the run, building a new identity. Now, years later, I'm grateful for the lessons it taught me and how it toughened me.

In both my classes this term (Multivariable Calculus and Abstract Algebra) I've had to pick and choose what to cover in the last few class meetings. There are many related topics to choose from; when I took these classes we had two semesters and the greater amount of time really broadened my understanding of the material. Ideally this is how every class should end; we should just run out of the allotted time but never out of things to talk about. One of the things that I value most about having studied math more than my students is the sense that things are simpler in a fundamental sense when you have more examples to play with. There are more commonalities than we can talk about with our undergraduates; for me Category Theory unites all of algebra, etc. I also have more confidence than my students. Sometimes that appears as confidence in myself but I think it is more confidence in the math, that the things work out if you're careful.

I and my kids have at different times been involved in protests on university campuses. I tend to work within systems; I and other faculty have in the past stood in faculty meetings and explained our disagreements in a courteous fashion with the administration. This is relatively safe protest, at least if you have tenure. Both of my kids have protested outside, holding signs. One of them used a bullhorn to lead marches. They are braver than I by far. So we have had occasion to talk about protests as they grew up. I held up Gandhi's march to the sea to make salt in defiance of a British ban as a good example: public breaking of an unjust law demonstrating how unjust it is. The protest tied directly to the doing of the thing. Hard to talk about the protest without discussing the subject of the protest. Both the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee led protests (at great personal risk) that entailed the protesters acting as full ci...