Introductions

Prof Katrin is ...

… often represented by bitmojis such as

… the author of oppression-informed, inquiry-based-learning oriented WorkScripts on Linear Algebra and Differential Equations — whose use was banned at UC Berkeley in the middle of the Spring ‘23 semester. This ban from teaching — and the desire to start a conversation far beyond their own struggles — led them to start this space.

… the counter-oppressive educator born from combining two parts of a split identity:

• Prof. Dr. Wehrheim is a researcher of mathematics — in particular questions about shapes of spaces in 3 and 4 dimensions, and degenerations of partial differential equations — with a wikipedia-level research record. Inspired by Marie Curie, they ask the big questions and give zero flux about prestige or numbers of publications. Thus only one hardly accessible introduction to their research can be found in Floer Field Philosophy. While using they/them pronouns — especially when gender shouldn’t be relevant to the math wisdom they’re cited for — they do identify as a woman in math. They’ve studied and taught at Uni Hamburg, Imperial College London, ETH Zürich, Princeton University, IAS Princeton, and MIT — where they were denied tenure in 2013 after detecting bs in the foundations of symplectic geometry. They then joined the math department of UC Berkeley — as the first woman to do so with tenure.

• Katrina is an antifascist by birth. Inspired by the Fall of the Berlin Wall, they’re always looking for the next small mindful beginning that might spark a collective action of a thousand, and then grow exponentially to change the world within a few months. They’ve found and lost and found and … that kind of hope in 1990s german student organizing, women-in-math circles (when inclusive of all gender minorities), antiracist community organizing, indigenous solidarity, mutual aid relationships with unhoused communities, and a few direct actions in between. They facilitated workshops on reparations before it got mainstream, offer anti-capitalist fundraising training, and have at least coached themselves into divesting surplus wealth and income from the stock market into black and indigenous-led projects aimed at system change. Recently they’re finding more surplus wealth and income by bs-detecting financial planning software.