Jewish mathematician ‘too white to be diverse’ says academic

But Mr Posen said he was told by his interviewer that “she’s white and we asked for someone who is diverse”.

The interviewer said, "she's white and we asked for someone who is diverse." So I said, I don't think that a Jew in Nazi Germany in the 30s is not diverse. Her response was, "You did say Germany, which is a white country, and your pupils might not know about the holocaust."

— Izzy Posen (@PosenIzzy) July 20, 2022

Mr Posen told the JC this week: “I was very taken aback, I was very shocked. I mentioned Emmy Noether because she’s genuinely a role model, and I thought that somebody who overcame great difficulties is an inspiration for lots of women, Jews, and everyone.”

He said the interviewer had responded: “Your pupils might not know about the Holocaust, so they’ll hear Germany, they’ll hear white, so this won’t be representative for them.”

He himself overcame huge challenges to be able to study science; as a child in Stamford Hill, he was taught only in Yiddish and studied only religious texts. He secretly taught himself English and made the difficult decision to leave his Strictly Orthodox community at the age of 20 to acquire a secular education.

He said: “Why was [a question about] a diverse set of backgrounds taken to be specifically to be about ethnicity, and specifically non-white? For me, a diverse set of backgrounds meant somebody who overcame lots of odds; the system was rigged against them.

“So, Emmy Noether, a woman, who even today are very underrepresented in maths, especially then, who literally couldn’t teach under her own name, who got expelled for being a Jew, so there’s nothing more diverse than that. There’s nothing more of an inspiration for somebody who overcame lots of odds.

He said he felt that “I wouldn’t be appreciated for the odds I’ve overcome, I wouldn’t be accepted as a Jew. I’m not enough.”

From the reaction to a brief account of his experience on Twitter, he said, “Clearly this is something that many have experienced and the only way to tackle this is to call it out.”

This is awful, and not isolated. I've heard other examples from adult educational settings of the Jewish experience being excluded from discussions of racism & exclusion. https://t.co/QhYzxdIUWi

— Dave Rich (@daverich1) July 21, 2022

ABOVE: A tweet from David Rich, Head of Policy at the Community Security Trust, who says he has "heard other examples from adult educational settings of the Jewish experience being excluded from discussions of racism & exclusion"

In a statement, Rosalind Azouzi, executive director of the Institute of Mathematics, said it was “very sorry” for any pain or hurt caused.

“Please be reassured that we take this very seriously and stand with the Jewish community who have suffered and continue to suffer from persecution, prejudice and discrimination,” she said.

In a further statement, the institute explained that a key intention of the application process was to “highlight the important role that teachers can play in widening the pool of mathematical role models to inspire young people in the classroom”.

Many hidden achievements in mathematical history had gone unrecognised “particularly the achievements of women and people of black and Asian heritage.

“We hope that as more stories are uncovered, the next generation of teachers will be able to identify these and share with pupils.”

She added, “The stories of Jewish mathematicians, and particularly those identified by Izzy were fantastic examples of diversity in mathematics. ”

The concern, it said, had been “whether it would be challenging to tackle this subject in a maths lesson, particularly if pupils had not yet been taught about the Holocaust.”