 There needs to be a light shot on the fact that in this university, in this department, you're not allowed to deviate from department norms. Berkeley math lecturer Dr. Alexander Coward stirred up controversy on campus when he released a letter to the public voicing opposition to the math department's termination of his contract. I was the first person to be hired as a lecturer in an international search, and I was very excited to try and bring some of the ideas that we know about education to bear at Berkeley, and unfortunately there were a lot of problems. Coward believes that the math department's focus should be as much about educating students as it is about conducting research. There's a very strong argument to get people who who've got a very strong background in teaching who know what they're doing, who are going and if they're if you're a lecturer you're going to teach a lot more students for a lot less money, and people find that very threatening because they're worried that the people who are who's focus is teaching are going to take over, and there's going to be this very rapid increase in the number of people who are focused on teaching, and then the number of people who are who are focused on research, research faculty is going to shrink. Education is the the thing upon which our success or failure as a planet relies. We've got all of these problems. Where are the solutions to these problems going to come from? And they're going to come from your generation, which is the millennia. But if you don't get an education, that potential is not going to be enough, you know, not just for the reason that it's essential for our future as a society, as a planet, if you get an education. It's also based on the moral case that if your tuition fees are going up and up and up, and the proportion of a university's budget is going up and up what the part that counts as tuition coming from the student fees, then the quality of your education should go up and up and up and up. Now, it's impossible for the quality of your education to increase if you're not allowed to deviate from department norms. His post highlighted problems he saw in the department's approach to undergraduate education. The post was met with widespread student support on social media, even spurring the student organized protests. Professor Coward really does care about every single one of his students. He gave out his personal phone number to all 800 of the kids in his lecture right now with the invitation that if any of them have any problems with like math problems or just like having struggles with life that we can reach out to him and call him and he'll help us out. I have personally utilized his phone number and called and asked for help with math problems when I really felt like I was struggling or couldn't, you know, learn the material. And not only did he help me out with the math problems that I was struggling on, he actually went on then to, you know, encourage me to not be like upset by the fact that I wasn't really understanding it or felt like I wasn't really keeping up with the class. You know, it's just, it really shocked me that he would care about his students that much because I wasn't expecting that at a school this large. He's really such a great man. Like, no other professor that I ever had has ever just called me to check up and say, hey, how are you doing? That's something that's very special and inspiring about this man. And he even offered to help me personally one-on-one to get back, to get caught up with all the stuff I missed throughout the last week. So I just wanted to say thank you to him for that and just to test the type of person he is. You know, like any person, I'm not a perfect teacher and I'm not a perfect human being. And I can think of things that I've done in my teaching certainly that are not optimal, right? And I'm thinking of things that I'm working on. And that's not the point, right? It's not the point that the question of how good of a teacher is Alexander Cowan and should he stay or should he not stay is a distracting question. The main issue is that there needs to be a very bright light shone into what the mathematics department is doing has done in regards of teaching, particularly these very large classes which prepare people for other majors. People say that sunlight is the best disinfectant and I think that's true. Let's finish the test and I was really happy. I forget why, but I decided to pick up my six-year-old.