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In December, NASA is expected to launch the new James Webb Space Telescope into orbit on an Ariane 5 rocket. If you have even a fleeting interest in science and astronomy, you must be very excited about this development. The $ 10 billion, 14,000 pound giant should put the Hubble Telescope’s performance to shame. It will scan the universe deeply across a wide range of frequencies, including infrared. Using new filtering technology, the instrument is believed to be able to filter out bright light from distant stars, allowing us our first direct look at the exoplanets around them, perhaps even offering details of their atmospheres and potentially signs of extraterrestrial life. It is an extremely exciting time.
But not everyone is happy with this event. A small group of astronomers and a much larger collection of social justice activists demanded that NASA change the name of the project. James Webb was a Marine Corps fighter pilot and successful businessman who became Under Secretary of State under Harry Truman and Second Director of NASA under Kennedy and Johnson. He oversaw the growth of NASA and led the Gemini and Appolo programs, preparing the agency for the first moon landing which took place about a year after he ended his time at NASA. But campaigners calling for the telescope’s name to be changed are not affected by all of this. They claim that Webb “was involved in the persecution of gays and lesbians in the 1950s and 1960s. ” (Nature)
NASA has decided not to rename its soon-to-launch flagship observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), after investigating whether its namesake, former NASA administrator James Webb, was involved in the persecution of gays and lesbians in the 1950s and 1960s. The agency says it found no evidence to support these claims.
The decision and the lack of transparency with which it was announced – NASA has not released any report on the scope of the investigation – angered a number of astronomers.
“I’m disappointed,” says Johanna Teske, astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC. “Without knowing what factors were taken into account, it is difficult for me to respect the decision to keep the current name.
To their credit, when activists launched a petition demanding the name change, NASA launched an investigation led by Administrator Bill Nelson and Acting Chief Historian Brian Odom. They spent months going through historical documents, finally concluding in September that there was no evidence to justify the name change on that basis.
One of the four astronomers who originally organized the petition described the move as a “punch” and “the categorical refusal to hear the voices of queer astronomers. The problem is that none of them produced any evidence that Webb was ever directly involved in the persecution of anyone, gay or otherwise. They managed to cite a specific case where a NASA employee was fired in 1963 after he was “suspected of being gay.” But this guy was way down the food chain at the agency and Webb was the manager. Are we really supposed to believe he was that deeply involved in every human resources decision made at the agency or that he spent his time personally stalking gays and lesbians across the organization to fire them?
Activists are also pointing fingers at his time as Under Secretary of State, “when firing homosexuals was considered acceptable and even encouraged. “But again, they don’t report any specific instances of State Department individuals being fired for being gay, let alone showing that Webb was somehow directly involved if they were. Nelson and Odom both said they scoured the archives for any sort of reference showing Webb was directly involved in the NASA shooting in 1963, “but it just wasn’t there.” Maybe something will eventually appear in other documents of the time that could prove the veracity of the claims about Webb in this context. If so, we can come back to the matter. But at least for now, there is no there.
It really sounds like another case of activists trying to blame everyone in history who is perceived to be a “cisgender, heterosexual white man” for the alleged sins of an entire generation. (I admit I don’t know anything about James Webb’s sexual orientation or gender identity ideas at all, and frankly, I can’t bother to check it out.) it is necessary that a historical figure has been in charge of – or even simply involved in – an organization or an activity in the past which is considered insufficiently awakened by today’s standards and their statutes must be demolished. Or, in that case, their name must be erased from one of the biggest breakthroughs ever at an agency that they helped develop and put on a path to the future. Thankfully, Bill Nelson has a little more common sense than that and was willing to do the research work before simply bowing to the crowd and agreeing to their requests.
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