What a great and inspiring letter from someone who is clearly under significant public and private pressure; I'm sure he was repeatedly advised not to go public in any way by friends, enemies and lawyers on both sides.
My favorite part is where he imagines the Math department is "jolly cross".
I agree. He really knows how to substantiate his grievances with choice words and data.
I don't know any of the players involved in this drama but the letter was so damning that I could not help but look up profiles of Stark, Ogus, Christ, and Evans just to get a picture of their faces.
Politically, this was an excellent play - with his popularity among students, the Math department (and in particular, named faculty) will have a really tough time getting students in their classes.
I don't know the full story and obviously his perspective is biased, but all the same, I pity the fool who has to battle his wits.
I tried to be a skeptic reading his commentary, but I definitely drank his kool aid. That being said... as a healthy dose of realism, nobody will care next year. The administration can easily just ignore this.
No, he's saying the other departments (engineering and physical science) who are supposed to be "served" by the math dept. are "jolly cross" at the mathematicians for shirking their duties. This situation is by no means limited to Berkeley. UCSB did an excellent job but other universities I have worked at I have heard exactly the same complaints.
My bad; I was just so into reading 'jolly cross' in his letter, I forgot just who was cross.
I have a mathematics degree, and I can say that most mathematicians I have known consider the math needed for most physics and engineering undergraduate degrees to be deadly boring. It's a rare math professor who enjoys teaching calculus year after year.
My university did not have this budget-grabbing approach from the theoretical math department; I think I can understand both the appeal of it, and the perils from the perspective of the department. 20 years after the choice is made to grab budget with large freshman calculus seminars, it makes sense to me you'd have a bunch of bad behavior and culture embedded.
My favorite part is where he imagines the Math department is "jolly cross".