Antanas Mockus and the Civil Role of a Mathematician

Abstract

At a time at which liberal democracy appears under formidable pressures all across the west, practitioners across a variety of disciplinary fields may wonder what role they might play in defense of civil values. The literature has identified a number of ways mathematics and mathematicians may contribute on that front. After referring to it, I will zoom into the case of Antanas Mockus, former chancellor of the National University of Colombia and a mathematician, who in 1995 became mayor of Bogotá at a time of profound crisis in Colombian society and started out a most ambitious program of urban intervention geared to induce rapid behavioral and cultural change among his fellow-citizens. His contribution changed the course of history in his city and left a mark in the political and intellectual history of Colombia, which national and international analysts have duly noted on a variety of occasions. In this chapter I will look at how the competences that the literature has identified to be cultivated by a training in, and a practice of, mathematics may have supported his interventions into the civil life of his own community.