cahn

I'm glad you got things out of your system by writing this rant!

And yes, the information I've gathered does seem to generally support your rumors: it sounds like the recent level of tension is way beyond anything I experienced with the MAA in the past. And I partly went to the lengths to write what I did because I'm aware that my younger self would not have been so willing to extend charity to the MAA, but I've changed with age and experience. (But it's still the case that I'm not going to do any work for the MAA competitions or recommend it to colleagues in anything like the current situation.)

Incidentally: one of the inherent tensions in the MAA is that they are simultaneously the organization behind the major high school math competitions and the professional society for teaching-focused math professors; and while there is some synergy between these two, there are plenty of members and volunteers who support one side of the MAA but don't think much of the other, and recent culture-war polarization has only intensified some of these differences. On top of this, the non-competition side of the MAA gets a substantial amount of its budget from NSF grants of the sort that the current administration really wants to cut. I would guess that it would be require heroic efforts for the MAA not to be a mess under the current circumstances.