Free the Blackboards — More on the Mathematical Summer School
Looking at the comments on a related post at Escape to Sanity I gleaned a little more insight into why the Mathematical Summer School in Turkey is being shut down, where Guarcan Aral writes:
The sad thing is that all this has happened because Prof. Ali Nesin is the son of Aziz Nesin, a very influential writer of his times, who gave such hard time to the governments, that they labeled him as “communist” and jailed him at every opportunity.
So, the witch hunt goes on.
You can read a bit about Aziz Nesin here. He sounds like someone I’d admire.
I guess the whole school sounds kind of communist now that I think about it: people spontaneously volunteering their time and labor to help others learn. I don’t usually label that as “communist” though. I just call it “good”. So maybe this is more about politics than local building regulations; I’d be surprised if it’s not. But I’m no expert on any of the politics here. I’m just someone who was very happy when I first read about Ali Nesin’s school and shocked at how it was shut down.
Per Prof. Borovik’s latest update, the Prime Minister’s office and the Governor of Ismir are involved in the dispute, but the prosecutor’s office is still proceeding.
Here is a picture from the scene of the crime (from Mathematics Under the Microscope):
