Thoughts and Interesting Stories---Jeff Clark

I'm a long-term David Simon fan ever since I read his book "Homicide", detailing a year-long embedding with Baltimore homicide detectives. It was clear-eyed about all of the strengths and weaknesses, good reflexes and prejudices of everyone that he met.  I enjoyed the television show that followed that he wrote for, and then of course "The Wire" on HBO and a number of his other shows---only limited by my access to streaming services.  There was a histrionic moment in a later season of "Homicide" where he just let a character vent; a homicide detective who was part-owner of a bar frequented by cops watched a particularly violent drug criminal, responsible for many unsolved homicides, come into his bar with his associates, violating the detective's territory. The detective came around the bar holding a billy club in his hand and loudly discussed his first year as a patrol officer walking a beat. His supervising officer told him that he had a corner a...

One of the core principles of mathematics is that the validity of an argument depends not on the status of the person making it but rather on its inherent worth. We have bigots as do all disciplines but we've been better about treating people the same way we treat arguments in recent years. Trump's opposition to DEI, to valuing people for what they are and not who they love or the color of their skin, is, on top of everything else, bad mathematics.

My university expects faculty to work two Saturdays each academic year. In the Fall we have Family Weekend to try to help family members have a sense of what students do. The faculty side of the programming is for us to be available to meet faculty members during a fixed window. It is usually a pretty cheerful event, although afterward I have always felt the long week and crashed a bit. In the Spring we interview scholarship candidates. The incentive is to help find the students who will be most successful here which is a win-win for everybody, but again it makes for a long week and I crash afterward. I was very nervous with my admission interviews so I go into it knowing that it is a stressful time for the students I meet and that they will not always be at their best. I enjoy engaging them in conversation and encouraging them to display the quality of their thinking processes; the worst-case scenario is when out of nerves a student just clams up, because then there's nothing to g...

Even though staying current and sharing with my professional community is part of my job description, I have always felt that attending conferences was a perk of my job.  Travel is more wearying than when I was in my twenties but I love walking around a campus (regional meetings) or a big city (national meetings). Lately my attendance has clustered in the Spring and in August. I have a regional meeting coming up next week. It is a quick meeting but it is full of people I have worked with over the decades; I'm not sure if seeing old friends qualifies as networking but I do love it. The week after that I go to a national meeting to present a talk in San Diego, one of the most beautiful cities I have ever been to.  A month later I go for Ombudsperson fundamentals refresher training (which I have done at the start of each of my three-year terms) in Miami, a city I have not yet been to. That training is intensive, centered in the hotel hosting us so I won't get out much but I will ...

Our children had service expectations when they were in school as kids. Both of them volunteered at a local food charity providing food aid to any local children that asked for it. My wife and I have paid attention to the charity, deemed them one of the best uses of our charity budget, and have supported them for many years. We love children. We don't think children in our country or specifically in our school district should go hungry. We don't use a filter on who we want to keep from going hungry, because we were raised in faith traditions that teach that our god loves everyone and does not discriminate in that love. Our nation's majority of voters have installed a leadership that does discriminate in ways loud and proud. There are many details to their cruelty. One small detail is their opposition to showing love to small children unless they have citizenship documents or at least look like they do according to some color scale similar to choosing a household paint. The ...

Colleagues, The MAA's core values include community and inclusivity. Like many of our peer organizations, we have a  code of conduct  that articulates what our values are intended to accomplish. It states that "we must pursue collective effort to speak against attitudes and behavior that continue to harm less-privileged members of our profession and our society. To do less is to diminish ourselves and our profession." We live in a diverse and pluralistic society. Many different philosophies and policy objectives exist in tension with one another. As I wrote in an earlier Math Values post,  We Can't Ignore the Political , "the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) does not and will not take overtly partisan stances. But if our work is to remain relevant, we can't ignore the political context in which our profession exists. When mathematical models suggest, for example, that climate change will disrupt the lives of our fellow citizens, and that these disrup...

If my health and the health of my wife permits I intend to work for seven more years after this one and then retire.  I have nominated myself for an elected position in a professional association with a four-year term; the ballot is due by March 6, so I should know in a month. That would last until 2029. I am finishing my second three-year term as Faculty Ombudsperson and have agreed to a third three-year term; that would last until 2028. I intend to teach until I retire and enjoy giving presentations at conferences so I hope to be doing that for the next seven years. I think after the Faculty Ombudsperson and the potential elected office end I will need to stop looking for more work and start winding down. I've had some intense work experiences that led me to wind down; both terms as Department Chair were followed by some soul-searching about how nice it would be to get enough sleep. Chairing Academic Council was more intense, as was chairing our University Curriculum Committee fo...

When I was a student (both undergraduate and graduate) I worked part-time in the university library as a cataloging assistant. This was before computerized catalogs and involved filing catalog cards into drawers. It was monotonous and also required attention to detail, a job for which I am well-equipped. During the first week of filing I clumsily knocked a box of thousands of cards, in order, off of my table, spilling them on the floor. My supervisor spotted this and came over quickly as I was about to push the scattered cards together to place back upon the table and commence to sorting them. Her speed was not from anger but rather to teach a lesson in a teachable moment. She told me to stop and look at the cards on the floor and identify how many of them were still in order. There were five to six bunches that were in order, so that I ended up sorting the bunches into my box and not individual cards, a difference between seconds and hours of work. It was a really good lesson and she ...

My wife had eye surgery this past Wednesday.  She had had some obscuring of her vision in the one eye; her optometrist (and my sister-in-law, who is also an optometrist) listed a bunch of possible causes which either would heal on their own or require retinal surgery. As of Tuesday it became clear (to the optometrist) that she was developing a small tear in her retina.  This matches the definition of urgent:  something where delay makes things significantly worse. She was immediately sent to an retinal specialist who set her up for surgery the next day to mend the tear while it was minor. I went with her which involved a lot of waiting with us being in different rooms in the same building. The surgery took about an hour; I still struggle with the idea of eye surgery being routine but they've been doing it for a while. Modern medicine being what it is they gave her an hour to recover from the anesthesia and sent her home with me. The surgeon thought that all went well and ...