By Dave Kung [LinkedIn]

Around the time my daughter Ellie turned 10, she and her friends started dipping their toes into the enticing water that is cursing. A discussion over dinner led to our house rule: It’s fine to swear – as long as you know when not to. The same word or phrase can have a very different impact depending on who hears it. Find out that we got Taylor Swift tickets for our European vacation? Let the f-bombs roll. But if Grandpa’s around, keep it PG. Giving her this sort of contingent freedom would, we hoped, help build situational awareness for when something is appropriate – and when it’s not. 

While I’m pretty good about knowing where and when to swear, some therapy-induced self-reflection has made me realize that my situational awareness for other things hasn’t always been so good. Unfortunately, the consequences have been more serious than the mild offense of a little blue language.

When I arrived at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, I loved the laid back atmosphere engendered by the faculty. I greeted students on the first day, “Call me Dave – ‘Dr. Kung’ sounds too formal!” We hired a bunch of new faculty and I pushed them to adopt the same norms.

It never occurred to me that, for my women colleagues, being called by their first name reduced the level of respect students gave them. Part of my male, Asian privilege, invisible to me at the time, was that students gave me a high level of respect no matter what they called me. I was lacking a certain form of situational awareness that would have made me a better colleague and would have made the department more welcoming for others.

Around the same time, I was getting used to the rhythms of academia. I submitted papers and received reviews that felt nit-picky and overly critical to me – seemingly never giving me the benefit of the doubt. It was frustrating, disheartening, and made me feel small. And those reviews also made my papers better.

Despite efforts to avoid being “reviewer #2,” I’m sure some of my own reviews of others’ work landed the same way. Critiquing each others’ work is, after all, part of the model. It’s part of what makes academia, and the scientific endeavor, so successful. Yes, we could humanize the process (as some have suggested) so that it’s more about education and less about poking at others while shielded by anonymity. Still, the heart of the model will remain: part of our jobs as academics is to critique others.

While my skills at identifying and pointing out the flaws in others’ work have served me well in my professional life, my awareness of when not to use these skills has sometimes been lacking. Whether with colleagues, partners, friends, or Ellie, I too frequently slide into the role of reviewer #2. I’ve inappropriately kept my reviewer hat on while thinking about how someone teaches their calculus class, loads the dishwasher, makes financial choices, or plans outings with their friends. Sure, I hoped that those around me would find such interactions helpful, but no matter how well-intentioned, the impact was more frequently one of annoyance, exhaustion, or even toxicity.

As I advanced through my career, I made a name for myself saying what needed to be said, even when it felt uncomfortable. I called out soaring salaries for college presidents, mathematics movements that celebrated racist founders, and countless people (OK, men) who have dominated sessions at MAA Project NExT and elsewhere. Repeatedly speaking truth to power, getting in good trouble, saying what someone needed to hear – and encouraging others to do the same – have, I hope, helped bend the arc of the mathematical universe a little bit more toward justice.

Sadly, I haven’t always known when to hold my tongue, when speaking out wasn’t appropriate or productive. I’ve lost friends by saying what I felt they needed to hear. I’ve pissed off colleagues with my unsolicited advice. I’ve alienated loved ones with well-meaning observations that came off as insulting or downright hurtful – or as Ellie might quote her idol, “casually cruel in the name of being honest.”

Again and again, the same traits that have made me very successful in my professional life have been harmful to my personal relationships, in part because I’ve lacked situational awareness. I’ve been dropping f-bombs while grandpa was standing right there.

While I need to take responsibility for my own actions, and apologize for the harm I have caused, dozens of conversations suggest to me that I am not alone. For many of us these issues are professional hazards – for academics in general but especially for mathematicians.

There’s an intellectual elitism underpinning the way we think about our field. Purity. Truth with a capital “T”. Proofs from the book. The natural world, written in the language of mathematics.

When the subject we study brings a feeling of intellectual superiority, that we see the world more clearly than others, isn’t a natural consequence that we transfer those feelings to other aspects of our lives – even when they aren’t appropriate?

While I am not willing to give up a Platonic sense of mathematics as special – I will always believe that prime numbers would still have a special primeness even if humans never existed – I can certainly improve my situational awareness. I can learn to distinguish the abstract contexts where a sense of mathematical certainty is appropriate from those where humility and empathy are called for.

And if more of us would join our colleagues and friends in knowing when not to be so mathy, maybe that too would bend the arc of the mathematical universe a little bit more toward justice.

Acknowledgement: This post originated as a story told on stage at MathFest at the Storytelling Event: Please pay attention to the person behind the curtain, organized by Allison Henrich and Matthew Pons.

Author’s Note: Have thoughts about this post? Join a dialogue about this topic on MAA Connect.

Dr. Dave Kung serves as a mathematician without borders and as Director of Programs for Transforming Post-Secondary Education in Math (TPSE-Math). He has worked in the intersection of mathematics and equity as the Director of Policy at the Charles A. Dana Center at The University of Texas at Austin, and as Director of  MAA Project NExT. He also works closely with K-12 and higher ed organizations, especially concentrating on equity issues in mathematics. Kung was awarded the Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo Award, the MAA’s highest award in college math teaching, for his work at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. He resides in the DC area, playing violin and running–never simultaneously, but sometimes alongside his partner and daughter.