Variations of “woke math” are unfortunately nothing new. In October 2023, Education Reporter described California’s “equity-based math” and in May 2024, we reported on a Bill Gates-backed curriculum titled “A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction,” that focuses not on math but on teaching kids that traditional math education is “white supremacy.”

For many years, Phyllis Schlafly documented the failure of the U.S. school system to adequately teach math by implementing curriculum fads such as “Feel Good Math”, new math, fuzzy math, liberal math, etc.

But the latest iteration of so-called “math” education promises to do even less to teach actual math and more to advance a radical progressivist/socialist agenda. As reported by the New York Post, the woke math movement is ominously being bankrolled by billionaire heiress and philanthropist Liz Simons, a key supporter of “socialist Zohran Mamdani’s NYC mayoral campaign.” The Post reports that Simons recently donated $250,000 to a political action committee funding Mamdani’s election bid.

The Post warns that Simons, “daughter of late hedge-fund billionaire Jim Simons, oversees a foundation with a near-billion-dollar endowment trashing traditional race-neutral math in favor of race-obsessed leftist lessons inserting social justice principles into many aspects of students’ studies.” Essentially in place in California, the fear is that socialists like Mamdani will push to install the program nationwide.

Simons’ father was “a top mathematician turned hedge-fund legend,” which may explain his daughter’s dabbling in math curriculum. Daddy’s net worth at his death in May 2024 was reportedly more than $31 billion, and the Post writes that Liz “has not been shy about spending his money.” Sadly, as acumen in factual math and science propelled the elder Simons to billionaire status, it’s questionable whether he would approve of his daughter’s promotion of math education that fails to teach math.

Through the Heising-Simons Foundation (co-founded by Liz Simons and her philanthropist husband, Mark Heising) millions are already pouring into woke math, even as student test scores in basic math skills fall to ever more troubling lows.

While he has yet to win the mayoral race, some observers in New York City are sounding the alarm about Mamdani’s potential impact on education. PLACE NYC, or Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education, is a local group that advocates for rigorous academic standards across all ethnic and cultural lines. Its co-president, Yiatin Chu, told the New York Post that she has “‘grave concerns’ about the direction of public schools under Mamdani and that Simons’ influence is ‘troubling.’”

Chu continued: “Woke math lowers the bar without helping black students. While test results show gains among black and Hispanic students, the gap with Asian and white students hasn’t closed. We hope Mamdani doesn’t undo progress.” She added that she fears “megadonor” Simons will impact Mamdani’s choice of a math curriculum and/or a chancellor.

Woke math and DEI

An extensive exposé by RealClearInvestigations paints an even more sobering picture of woke math’s inroads in education beyond California and potentially New York City.

The article asserts that Simons’ foundation and like organizations “are supercharging a movement to remake K-12 mathematics education according to social justice principles,” and that the change they are pursuing is “profound.”

For example, they consider traditional practices of math instruction, including numerical computations, to be oppressive hallmarks of white supremacy that must be scrapped. Instead, lessons are infused “with racial and gender themes.” Due to pressure from the Trump Administration, this way of thinking seems to be waning in the corporate world and, to a degree, in higher education, but it is moving full speed ahead in woke math for grades K-12.

RealClearInvestigations points out that this is because curricula in K-12 education “are locally controlled and largely insulated from the dictates of Washington.” Progressive foundations and like-minded charitable trusts, therefore, continue “to pour millions of dollars into reshaping math education for black and Latino kids, including an $800,000 grant this year from the Heising-Simons Foundation,” with no credible evidence to show that such indoctrination in lieu of real math instruction improves performance.

Of course, DEI brainwashing is not just for black and Latino students; the goal is to teach all kids woke math. Another organization promoting it is “TODOS Mathematics for All, an Arizona-based organization that calls for elevating DEI practices and anti-racist activism into all math instruction, with over $553,750 in grants in recent years.” RealClear says both the Gates and Heising-Simons foundations support TODOS.

The article points out that not only is DEI and anti-racist propaganda the basis for woke math education, but that LGBT identity propaganda must also be included. During an hour-long TODOS-sponsored webinar on “2SLGBTQIA+ identity in mathematics education,” speakers “expounded at length on various queer and indigenous identity groups while spending virtually no time on math-related curriculum or instruction.”

RealClear further observes that “deep pocket donors” like Gates, Heising-Simons, and others, also fund woke math activists such as Danny Bernard Martin, a math education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Martin has referred to math instruction as a “white supremacist construct that inflicts epistemological violence on black students.” He has even criticized DEI programs as “mere accommodations rooted in the fictions of white imaginaries and designed to appease white logics and sensibilities.” Martin and his ilk push the dangerous and divisive notion that black students must be taught by black professors at independent black institutions.

The Socialist influence

In the wake of the failed Biden presidency and the fruitless campaign of Kamala Harris, the common consensus among many is that the Democrat Party has become rudderless, lacking in strong leadership and a clear vision. This weakness has given rise to the likes of Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) Party.

At their convention in August, The Washington Free Beacon reported that DSA delegates claimed: “We’re in charge now. Zohran Mamdani’s surprise win wasn’t an anomaly, but rather the start of the DSA’s rise to power over the Democratic Party.” Indeed, other DSA candidates are running for office in various states such as Minnesota in hopes of replacing moderate, middle-of-the-road Democrats.

Approximately 1,200 DSA party members met at the Chicago Convention Center, with the purpose of “solidifying the party’s platform.” They celebrated Mamdani’s primary win and called for his campaign to be used as “a template” for other DSA campaigns around the country. Delegates made bold speeches, claiming: “We can win the Democratic primary in 2028,” and “DSA has the opportunity to seize power with the Democratic Party’s favorability ratings in the tank.”

While one might expect such posturing at a political convention, the truth is that many socialist policies are already embraced by the Democrat Party. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren has endorsed Mamdani, and he has been praised by various other Democrats, including Chuck Schumer and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries.

And although Mamdani has not formally endorsed woke math, his vehement backing of “social justice” and the LGBT agenda, as well as his campaign’s acceptance of the Heising-Simons Foundation’s financial support, strongly suggest that his position on woke math and other radical curricula will be favorable.

Mamdani’s platform pledges to “Trump-proof” New York City while making it an “LGBTQIA+ Sanctuary City” and “expanding and protecting gender-affirming care citywide.” He plans to establish an “office of LGBTQIA+ affairs,” and provide $87 million for special services and programs aimed at the LGBT community. These are but a partial list of his chilling socialist/Marxist plans.

As Claire Lehmann writes on The Dispatch.com, Mamdani’s rise marks “a mutation of progressivism,” which is not fading but has “simply shapeshifted” and may become a greater threat. She offers this interesting anecdote on Mamdani:

• In him, the aesthetic of postcolonial identity is married to the language of rent freezes and class struggle. That combination—which is new to the United States but familiar to the Global South—signals the possibility of a mass politics capable of mobilizing the downwardly mobile middle class alongside the urban poor. Mamdani’s very name points to this lineage: His middle name, Kwame, was given by his father in homage to Ghana’s first postcolonial leader, Kwame Nkrumah, who fused anticolonial identity with socialist redistribution. Despite remaining a hero to many on the postcolonial left, Nkrumah implemented Soviet-style plans which collapsed entire industries—and later the entire Ghana economy—while simultaneously locking political dissidents up in “preventative detention.”

Lehmann believes Mamdani “is not a relic of a fading era but a herald of the next....” She writes: “What comes next may not be softer or weaker, but sharper, harder, and more dangerous—and aimed squarely at our economic order itself.”

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