https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/do-mathematics-courses-really-need-diversity-and-inclusion/"In March, the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) – an independent body which oversees standards and quality in UK universities – released new guidance on curriculum design in mathematics. This guidance states:
‘Values of EDI [Equality Diversity and Inclusion] should permeate the curriculum and every aspect of the learning experience.’‘Values of EDI [Equality Diversity and Inclusion] should permeate the curriculum and every aspect of the learning experience.’
Can saying 2+2=4 be racist? Astonishingly, there is a hardcore of postmodernists who would say that it can. One such argument is: human knowledge can never be perfect; rational argument is only one way of knowing; rational argument was promoted in the enlightenment as a means of denigrating indigenous ways of knowing and oppressing colonised peoples; therefore saying that 2+2=4 smacks of white supremacy. This is a fringe view, but it is a real one. An historian speaking at the London Mathematical Society this week sincerely proposed that we should question the claim that 2+2=4, though she did not expand on her reasons.
