Welcome to MotherFunctor®.org - an alternative website for college activists.
During our PhD student days at Berkeley, our Mathematical Economics professor, Fields Medallist and activist Steve Smale, together with colleagues, published a short-lived departmental “counter newsletter” of relevant news and comment that “might not otherwise be heard”.
Georgia Tech colleagues have encouraged me to resurrect the fine tradition of Mathematicians Questioning Authority via an alternative source of departmental information. With a tip of the hat to those Berkeley activists of yesteryear,MotherFunctor.org intends to facilitate release and dissemination of public university records, especially those at Georgia Tech – records which the Georgia Tech community wants to see, and is entitled by law to see, but requests for which have been repeatedly obstructed by university lawyers, and which have brought swift reprisals from the university administration.
One of the key tools for obtaining public documents in Georgia, such as the documents posted on this website, is the Georgia Open Records Act (all states in the U.S. have their own open records, or “sunshine laws”, the State equivalent of the Federal Freedom of Information Act). Documents such as budgets, state audits, travel expenses, and reports of investigations of the university, e.g. by the State Attorney General (see History), which are not subject to FOIA, may often be obtained through Open Records requests. In the future, we hope to include more detailed information on use of the Open Records Act, as well as broader topics of relevant news and comment about ethics and openness in the mathematics community in general. Our sister site collegeactivists.org contains information and tips that we hope will prove useful to colleagues in various academic disciplines across the country.
MF readers in the Georgia Tech community, especially the School of Mathematics, are welcome to contact staff@motherfunctor.org for assistance in obtaining information via the Georgia Open Records Act. Readers may also submit suggestions for other documents for posting.
- Your Dedicated MF Staff
| mǒth’er : |
That which gives birth to something |
| fūnc’tǒr : |
A morphism of categories (math) |
| mǒth’er·fūnc’tǒr : |
A website that gives birth to a categorical change in access to information in public colleges and universities. |
(From the U.C. Berkeley Bancroft Library's Fall 2005 Exhibit on the Mathematical Sciences at Berkeley.)
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