The day after the election, I found myself struggling with how to approach the complex analysis class I was teaching. Could I ignore the (almost literal) elephant in the room? Would my students be in the right mental state to learn math? Would I be in the right mental state to teach it? I opened with the statement that usually in math we have the luxury of working in abstractions far removed from the real world. We are familiar with addressing mathematical problems with the (inessential) connections to the real world stripped away, leaving only the essential features to focus one’s attention. An election, for instance, might be treated as the outcome of 
people, each of which has a probability 
of voting for one candidate, and 
for another…and one can then try to analyze the problem from a dispassionate mathematical perspective. This type of mindset can be illuminating in many contexts. Real world events have real consequences, however, and in light of an event as consequential as the last election, a math lecture on contour integration or the central limit theorem may seem meaningless. But there is one precious thing mathematics have, that almost no other field currently enjoys: a consensus on what the ground truth is, and how to reach it. Because of this, even the strongest differences of opinion in mathematics can eventually be resolved, and mistakes realized and corrected. This consensus is so strong, we simply take it for granted: a solution is correct or incorrect, a theorem is proved or not proved, and when a problem is solved, we simply move on to the next one. This is, sadly, not a state of affairs elsewhere. But if my students can learn from this and carry these skills— such as distinguishing an overly simple but mathematically flawed “solution” from a more complex, but accurate actual solution—to other spheres that have more contact with the real world, then my math lectures have consequence. Even—or perhaps, especially—in times like these.