Allowing these sorts of questions would be a significant increase in scope for the site, and I don't think we're prepared to handle it.

The basic question for me is: what sorts of disputes are likely to arise within a given scope or set of rules, and what skills are required to resolve those disputes? For a site like this that depends a lot on community moderation, we can then ask: does the community have the skills to resolve these disputes? Right now the rules are tuned so that only two types of disputes can occur:

1. Mathematical disputes: Can X prove Y? Does a thing with property Z exist? etc.
2. Scoping disputes: Is this a question about mathematics? Is it a research question, or standard knowledge in the field?

The skillset the community needs in order to resolve these disputes is that of a mathematical researcher, and we have those in abundance. I'm sure it doesn't always go perfectly, but there's an additional layer of moderation that also has the training to deal with these sorts of issues.

If we allow questions and answers related to politics - academic or otherwise - then we're introducing a source of controversy that we do not, as a community, have the expertise and experience to deal with. A great many people here probably have informed opinions about how universities and math departments are run and so forth, but this is different from serious expertise in academic administration. (Unless there are a lot more academic administrators lurking around here than I realize.) Of course the same goes for even more controversial political matters about which we have even less built-in expertise.

So if we do want to allow this stuff, we'll either need a plan for how we will expand the community so that we have a critical mass of participants with the right skillset, or some other plan for how we will maintain high moderation standards. Otherwise we're asking for chaos.

Allowing these sorts of questions would be a significant increase in scope for the site, and I don't think we're prepared to handle it.

The basic question for me is: what sorts of disputes are likely to arise within a given scope or set of rules, and what skills are required to resolve those disputes? For a site like this that depends a lot on community moderation, we can then ask: does the community have the skills to resolve these disputes? Right now the rules are tuned so that only two types of disputes can occur:

1. Mathematical disputes: Can X prove Y? Does a thing with property Z exist? etc.
2. Scoping disputes: Is this a question about mathematics? Is it a research question, or standard knowledge in the field?

The skillset the community needs in order to resolve these disputes is that of a mathematical researcher, and we have those in abundance. I'm sure it doesn't always go perfectly, but there's an additional layer of moderators who also have the training to deal with these sorts of issues.

If we allow questions and answers related to politics - academic or otherwise - then we're introducing a source of controversy that we do not, as a community, have the expertise and experience to deal with. A great many people here probably have informed opinions about how universities and math departments are run and so forth, but this is different from serious expertise in academic administration. (Unless there are a lot more academic administrators lurking around here than I realize.) Of course the same goes for even more controversial political matters about which we have even less built-in expertise.

So if we do want to allow this stuff, we'll either need a plan for how we will expand the community so that we have a critical mass of participants with the right skillset, or some other plan for how we will maintain high moderation standards. Otherwise we're asking for chaos.