By Carrie Diaz Eaton

I recently attended an Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics (ICERM) Hot Topics Workshop on Mathematical and Computational Approaches to Social Justice Research co-organized by Veronica Ciocanel, Nancy Rodriguez, and Chad Higdon-Topaz. There was an amazing speaker line-up with superstars like Tawana Petty, of Data for Black Lives, and Moon Duchin, PI of the Metric Geometry and Gerrymandering Group. This comes on the heels of a similarly amazing Joint Mathematics Meetings (JMM) 2021 American Mathematical Society (AMS) Short Course Mathematical and Computational Methods for Complex Social Systems, and I just learned about an upcoming Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) workshop on Mathematics and Racial Justice (registration now open!). The ICERM hot topics workshop was amazingly invigorating, enough to kick my research and writing brain out of pandemic dormancy.

At one point, I was credited for the acronym JEDI to describe the work Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion and the moniker JEDI Warriors for those of us engaged in this work. I’m glad to have introduced these to my particular circle, developing it as language for the Sustainability Challenges for Open Resources to promote an Equitable Undergraduate Biology Education (SCORE) Summit I hosted in mid-October 2019. However, others in the math community have converged on the same term without me. For example, Theron Hitchman tweeted about it in November 2019 when Sandy Hauk used this term at a conference for professional development leaders. 

By the next spring, I was using JEDI and S-JEDI (for social justice) for grants. In June 2020, I ran an S-JEDI learning community for SCORE in response to rising interest from members who are in leadership roles in which they had to respond to community calls for anti-racist action. I have seen even more uptake of this term beyond my circles lately. In October 2020, UCLA Health released a job ad for a Vice Dean of JEDI. My favorite, however, is the American Statistical Association’s working Data Science JEDI Outreach group, chaired by Kim Flagg Sellers.

I am certain that my use of the acronym at the SCORE Summit was not the only source of JEDI’s creation and use in this way in the STEM community. Indeed, I suspect the idea was out there long before me in networks with which I didn’t interact, and I just independently “rediscovered it.” In evolutionary theory (which is my grounding research area), we call this convergent evolution. The National Science Foundation uses the term convergence research to describe:

• “Research driven by a specific and compelling problem. Convergence Research is generally inspired by the need to address a specific challenge or opportunity, whether it arises from deep scientific questions or pressing societal needs.

• Deep integration across disciplines. As experts from different disciplines pursue common research challenges, their knowledge, theories, methods, data, research communities and languages become increasingly intermingled or integrated. New frameworks, paradigms or even disciplines can form sustained interactions across multiple communities.”

The evolutionary linguistic convergence of the term JEDI could be considered a signal of emergent convergence research in STEM and STEM Education communities. At the same time, the National Science Foundation (NSF) focuses on convergence research because it calls attention to the fact that solving compelling complex problems, such as those JEDI Warriors investigate, will require the nurturing of spaces where transdisciplinary research can thrive. We have seen short workshops hosted by ICERM, AMS, and soon MSRI, which have alerted us to specific challenges and opportunities for mathematics to contribute research insights in racial justice and social justice, more broadly. From the organizers of the MSRI workshop, which include Robin Wilson and Omayra Ortega: 

“With increasing frequency, the inequities faced by the communities of color are becoming more difficult to ignore, and mathematicians have increasingly been answering the call to engage with issues of social justice within their research, their teaching, within their institutions, and in the broader mathematical sciences community.  This workshop is a part of that movement and makes the distinct contribution of centering issues of mathematics and racial justice.”

The organizers of these workshops have begun to make space for the deep integration across disciplines necessary for JEDI work. However, this is only the beginning, and it is a difficult challenge for those of us that have particularly narrowed or siloed definitions of what mathematics research is or what mathematics research requires. We know from evolutionary ecology that ecosystem productivity depends on the spaces that support life and the varieties of life that fill them. Being JEDI Warriors in our research will require seeking and nurturing new niches and relationships, even when it is uncomfortable, so that mathematical JEDI research and praxis can thrive.