{"id":14386,"date":"2025-02-25T09:25:45","date_gmt":"2025-02-25T14:25:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=14386"},"modified":"2025-02-25T12:35:58","modified_gmt":"2025-02-25T17:35:58","slug":"icm-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=14386","title":{"rendered":"ICM 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Back in 2022 at the time of the rescheduled 2022 ICM I wrote <a href=\"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=12960\">here<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>One decision already made there was that the 2026 ICM will be hosted by the US in Philadelphia. With the 2022 experience in mind, hopefully the IMU will for next time have prepared a plan for what to do in case they again end up having a host country with a collapsed democracy being run by a dangerous autocrat.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>While I&#8217;m trying to protect my sanity by avoiding the news as much as possible, what&#8217;s happening now seems to me to raise important questions that the IMU and the ICM Organizing Committee need to seriously start thinking about:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The ICM opening ceremony has often been chaired by the host country head of state. Will the Philadelphia opening ceremony be chaired by Trump or his representative?<\/li>\n<li>Given the attitude of the current administration towards foreigners, what assurances have the ICM organizers gotten that mathematicians from all countries will have no trouble getting visas and traveling to the US?<\/li>\n<li>In 2022 the St. Petersburg ICM was canceled due to the Russian military entering Ukraine and attempting to take over the country by force.  The US has threatened to do the same thing to Greenland and to Panama.  Will the Philadelphia ICM be canceled if this happens?<\/li>\n<li>The news from yesterday appears to be that the US has changed sides in the Ukraine conflict, now refusing to condemn the Russian invasion, and demanding economic reparations from the Ukrainians to compensate for past US military support.  If the Russians are able to take over Ukraine and install a puppet government with US help, would that be a reason to cancel the ICM?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Given how fast things are evolving, it&#8217;s impossible to predict what the situation will be in July 2026.  The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=12717\">ICM 2022 debacle<\/a> was caused by the decision to hold the ICM in a country governed by a dangerous dictator, then hope for the best and not make contingency plans.  The same mistake should not be made twice.<\/p>\n<p>If, as now appears all too likely, the US government decides to join forces with the expansionist Russian dictatorship, everyone who can do anything about this has a moral issue to face.  The ICM organizers need to start deciding on and making clear what their red-lines are, with a contingency plan if they get crossed.<\/p>\n<p>One problem is that with fascism on the march world-wide, it&#8217;s unclear what alternate location would be safe.  At least in this case, I&#8217;ll point out that for now France is looking pretty good, even if only through the spring of 2027.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back in 2022 at the time of the rescheduled 2022 ICM I wrote here: One decision already made there was that the 2026 ICM will be hosted by the US in Philadelphia. With the 2022 experience in mind, hopefully the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=14386\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14386"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14392,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14386\/revisions\/14392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}