When the culture wars came to NASA (2023)

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From The New York Times, my name is Michael Barbara. This is the Journal. The James Webb Space Telescope has revolutionized the way we see the universe, but naming this telescope has created an unexpected storm within NASA and the wider scientific community. Today, my colleague Michael Powell tells the story of an astrophysicist whose quest to end the controversy only made matters worse.

It's Friday, May 19.

Miguel, welcome to the studio.

Thank you. The pleasure is all mine.

I want to start by discussing your beat because your beat didn't even exist five years ago, right?

GOOD.

It's a new rhythm and I think it's worth explaining what it is. It's not easy to describe.

Colloquially, I think of it as a third-way coup d'état, but...

Don't touch that rhythm on the railway.

Yes, but basically looking at free speech, free speech and intellectual debates very often about ethnicity, race and gender. So yes, all the hot buttons in our current cultural climate.

Good. Quite a thorny rhythm. For the audience to understand what kind of real stories are we talking about here?

The bigger picture is, look, we're in the midst of bitter battles over book bans, over transgender identity, over whether transgender athletes can compete. So I see stories like this on a regular basis. Some of them are broader questions, and some because they are the ones that catch our attention. What happens to a unit that gets drawn into these battles?

And you're here, Michael, to talk about how this kind of battle came about, from all over, at NASA, the nation's leading space agency.

So where does this story start?

It starts with this, quite frankly, very impressive man, Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi.

So he's a member of this elite club of black physicists. He is actually the president of the National Society of Black Physicists. And he himself comes from a background that really made it unlikely that you would ever see him as a scientist.

Explain this.

So he had such a wandering childhood. His father was a drug dealer. His mother had a very bad time. His parents divorced when he was only four years old, and he never stayed in the same place for more than a few years. New Orleans, Los Angeles, Houston. Eventually, his family settles in rural Mississippi.

And his interest in science came to him very young.

And his mother sees in her son this burning desire to learn. She does everything to encourage him.

And he just had this supernatural ability with math and physics. He graduated from high school. He then earns a PhD from Stanford University. And finally, he gets a teaching job at the Florida Institute of Technology.

And one day in 2015 you read this article online.

And you'll come across this rather amazing story related to NASA's Deep Space Telescope, the most powerful telescope ever built. And it's named after James Webb, a former NASA administrator at the full moon launch. And the article claims that he does not deserve this honor at all. In fact, the title of the article is "The Fan Observatory Naming Problem".

Wow.

The article argued that before coming to NASA, James Webb directed the purge of homosexual employees at the State Department. And I quote him saying some really inflammatory things about getting rid of gay employees. And the writer, who is a journalist and a physicist, says it's a kind of moral reckoning. That we cannot honor such a man in the 21st century by putting his name on a space telescope that will be used around the world.

For example, this journalist writes: "It is easy for white physicists like me to ignore the less sympathetic aspects of our scientific heroes, but it is high time we stopped."

So James Webb is facing some pretty serious allegations of discriminatory behavior that don't seem to make him a great candidate to put his name on NASA's main super telescope.

Yes it is. I mean, it looks very bad at first glance.

Good. And what does Hakeem Oluseyi do with these claims?

Hakeem is completely surprised. He's on a Facebook page with other black, Hispanic, and gay physicists. Everyone's worried about it.

And there is a request, because he is an eminent physicist, that Hakeem join them in calling for it and putting pressure on NASA to do something to change it.

This request essentially removes Webb's name:

Outside of the telescope, yes. And Hakeem thinks about it.

And then he says to himself, if I'm going to do this, I want to know what the real story is.

And then?

So fate would have it that he takes a job at NASA. And when he gets there, he walks into the office of one of his superiors and says: look, what are we going to do with this?

And according to Hakeem, they say, could you take a look at it?

So what started as a personal curiosity about who James Webb really was and what he did is now turning into something of an official NASA affair. Get to the heart of the matter.

Yes, at this point it's Hakeem, no doubt with the help of NASA, who opens some doors and starts really digging through the archives.

So, when he was authorized to conduct this investigation, what did Hakeem find?

Start delving into James Webb's entire life and discover the lifelong biography of a high-level technocrat. And after World War II, President Harry Truman asked Webb to go to the State Department and help in what was essentially a global fight against communism.

Webb arrives just as there is a real red panic in the United States with accusations that many people in the State Department are communist sympathizers or closet communists.

An accusation that could and has ruined the careers of thousands of people.

Thousands of people. Yes, yes, it was an absolutely toxic accusation and it destroyed many, many lives.

Moreover, the Republican senators who led the "Red Scare" also persecuted State Department officials as gay. And that was kind of a double Cain mark for anyone who worked at the State Department, the charge that at the time if you were gay, it would make you doubly vulnerable to blackmail, possibly becoming a double agent. I must say that there is no evidence that this ever happened to anyone, but it certainly was in those days:

Anxiety.

— in the late 1940s — there was anxiety. Yes, and it's known as lavender fear. And the allegation is that James Webb was a major player in this controversy, that he actually directed the prosecution from the State Department, working hand-in-hand with Republican senators to prosecute and remove homosexual State Department employees.

And what concrete evidence has been presented about Webb's role in this Lavender Scare?

Well, double. First, there's a quote he allegedly wrote in a government report that goes like this. "It is widely believed that those who engage in overt acts of perversion lack the emotional stability of normal people."

As a kind of justification for expelling gay workers.

Exactly. Second, Webb personally fired 91 homosexual State Department employees.

Serious claims.

Serious claims. And if this is true, you can very well understand why people today look on in horror.

And what does Hakeem find in all this?

So he does it systematically.

He delves into the NASA archives. He delves into the archives of Congress. And after reading all the information about Webb, he still can't find any evidence that Webb wrote this damning and bigoted quote. But finally find a date.

Webb didn't write it. Actually, from a Senate report that Webb had absolutely nothing to do with.

What about the other allegation that Webb fired gay employees?

Simply put, he didn't.

This was done by other State Department officials who were essentially responsible for working with the US Senate in prosecuting both this Red Terror and the Lavender Terror, the lavender purge. In other words, get rid of people because they may be communist sympathizers and because they are gay.

Hakeem figured out that the basic allegations that first materialized in articles he had read a few years earlier and sparked all this anger against Webb, that these basic allegations were basically untrue.

Correct. And what's especially interesting is that looking back at Webb's tenure at NASA in the 1960s, it turns out that Webb played a key role in helping the racial integration of this huge agency, especially at its famous research facility in Huntsville, Alabama.

South.

South. And here it is very important to understand the historical context. George Wallace is the arch-segregational governor of Alabama. I absolutely oppose any idea of ​​integrating federal agencies under your command in Alabama. This puts a lot of pressure on Webb and President Johnson not to do it.

And Webb says no, we're going to integrate this agency. At one point, it even threatens to move key parts of this facility outside of Alabama, which is a great opportunity for Alabama.

Right, and its most important and powerful segregationist governor.

Good. And finally George Wallace withdrew.

When you come across this and have been told about this background, how do you feel about it?

So, according to Hakeem's research, not only is Webb not a fan, he's actively working to make the US government more open.

So.

And what does Hakeem do with this information that clearly undermines everything that is being said about James Webb at the moment?

Well, first, of course, you'll go back and tell NASA what you found. And then he writes an article in which he presents all his discoveries in detail. And this piece is hard. He says: look, people in my community, that is, physicists, have made allegations that he is homophobic and that he is leading this lavender purge. And he says it's all wrong. And indeed, his article was titled "Is NASA's Historic. Is frontman James Webb a fan?

And he very clearly says no, no and no. He's very clear about what he found.

We'll be right back.

Michael, what does Hakeem mean when he says that the initial reaction to his track changes drastically?

At first, many physicists look at your work, look at your research, and feel relieved. Oh, it's okay, we don't have to worry about that. We did not name this spectacular telescope after a homophobe. Then comes the criticism, directed directly at Hakeem and his historical research.

Surely it comes down to who you are, a straight male physicist to tell us gay physicists and staff at NASA and other universities what Webb meant. Who were you to tell us our story?

This is essentially a criticism that Hakeem doesn't qualify as a non-gay or non-queer person to even lead this investigation.

Yes, not qualified due to his identity.

What about historical criticism? Because from everything you've said, your research is quite clear and convincing.

Look, the critics say you missed a few things, including something that happened in the early 1960s when Webb was NASA's chief administrator. A gay NASA employee was caught by Washington DC police and later fired by NASA. And the allegation was that Webb should have known about it, could have known about it, and should have stopped it.

Because he ran NASA.

Because he ran NASA.

And what does Hakeem say about this?

Hakeem points out a few things. First, there is no particular reason to believe that Webb knew about it. It wasn't a senior NASA employee. NASA is a very large federal agency. But even more to the point:

“There was an executive order signed by President Eisenhower and enforced for the next 20 years that stated that openly gay Americans could not work for the federal government.

The relevant context is that Webb may or may not have known about this dismissal. There is no evidence that he played a role and that the shooting was more or less legal in the country.

Yes, I would literally have to defy the executive order of the President of the United States.

And that leads to wider criticism of Hakeem's work that James Webb was responsible in various places, both at the State Department and at NASA, for standing up for the rights of gays and gay Americans. And if he didn't, he'd failed morally. That he had failed in his moral duty to history.

So that's intriguing. This criticism of Hakeem's investigation is that whether or not Webb himself did any of the things he has been accused of, and Hakeem stated that he did not, the fact that as leader he did not do more to stop him makes worthy of condemnation.

Yes exactly. In historiography, there is a word "presenteeism" which denotes the idea that one can apply the moral lens of our times to past events. It is built around our civil war. It arises around any urgent need, certainly the civil rights movement. In this case, it would refer to James Webb, and let's say, look, in 1949, 1950, when you're in the State Department and employees who are gay or potentially homosexual employees, because no one knows who they are, are attacked. that he should have understood it as a matter of moral civil rights and stood up, said something, and resigned if necessary.

I'll give you an example. There is a professor at the University of New Hampshire, Dr. Chandra Prescod-Weinstein, a renowned physicist. She was highly critical of Hakeem and argues that James Webb actually had a choice. That, she wrote, he may have been a radical freedom fighter and simply refused to serve in the Truman administration.

So how should we think about such an argument?

Well, the problem is that if you talk to historians, including very prominent gay historians who have studied this period, there was no gay rights movement at that time. Presenteeism in these types of cases is seen as asking people to anticipate where the story will go in a way that is simply beyond their relatives at the time. In 1949, 1950, it is unreasonable to expect anyone to sense that the gay rights movement will rise in the next two, three, four decades and flourish. This is your argument.

Michael, whatever intellectual framework you follow when it comes to James Webb, it seems that in the case of the Hakeem investigation, the original critique has been recast and altered. And in a way, the goalposts have moved. First, the accusation was that he had done something very wrong. This has been refuted, so the criticism becomes that he was an accomplice. So how did Hakeem come to think about it?

Hakeem is genuinely frustrated with this plot change from one thing to another.

It's never quite clear where it ends. And at some point, Hakeem, a scientist who loves to investigate, begins to realize that the facts probably won't be the end of the story. There will be no discovery, no set of facts to put an end to it.

And that's why this episode feels so relevant to our current cultural moment. I believe there is indisputably a growing tendency for progressive forces in our culture to view the past with disapproval. It often comes from a place of justified anger over a historical mistake, but at times it can appear disinterested and quite merciless towards values ​​that have existed in the past. And it can dismiss facts and nuances that don't fit the final judgment of those who disagree. I feel fine?

Yes, I see it all the time in my texts and reports. And in talking to Hakeem, he was kind of faced with a riddle. On the one hand, it is extremely frustrating to see facts ignored or pushed aside. On the other hand, since he talks about himself, he understands. You get a sense of pain and regret when you look back at history and try to make sense of it.

What happens next in Hakeem's story?

It takes a decidedly nasty and personal turn.

He was offered a job at George Mason University and an indictment was filed.

These accusations are made indirectly on Twitter and in a telephone conversation with another professor of physics at George Mason University, who appropriately transfers them to the George Mason administration. In turn, George Mason contacts the Florida Institute of Technology. It's very important to remember that it's not there. The Florida Institute of Technology had investigated these allegations several years earlier and re-examined them. I found nothing there. I spent a good three weeks of reporting trying to track down these allegations, talking to many alumni and couldn't find anything, nor could Florida Institute of Technology or George Mason continue to hire them. And indeed, Hakeem Oluseyi is now a visiting professor at George Mason.

I should point out something that probably crossed your mind, Michael, when you related that at this point in history you were investigating the reputation of someone who was attacked after examining the reputation of someone else who was attacked. And perhaps all these attacks come from the same set of sources.

Yes, this is the politics of self-destruction that accompanies so much discussion these days, when you challenge the consensus on a particular issue, and it's not enough to discuss it. Say no, no, no, you're wrong about x, y and z. You have to take that person down and your personal reputation will be destroyed. This is unfortunately a common aspect of today's intellectual debate.

So of course we know how the story ends. The James Webb Space Telescope is in the sky. We know it's called the James Webb Space Telescope. But has NASA itself officially been involved in this whole saga and debate about Webb and his past?

If they have. Your internal historian has compiled quite an extensive report. They basically ratified everything that came and found. Now the report is very careful. Complicated story, right? We can't be 100 percent sure what James Webb really believed in his heart, but the report examines all the allegations against him, and historical records simply don't support them.

So where is Hakeem at this point in his career, and has any of that, in his opinion, changed his life or changed his trajectory?

I think when you go through a melting pot like that, and it was a melting pot for Hakeem, it certainly left you with a sense of how tense and charged our cultural moment is. But when I asked him...

There is not a single regret for exploring this. I think he feels that he has done what he considered his intellectual duty, which is to analyze these allegations as thoroughly as possible and come to certain conclusions.

It turned out to be right.

It turned out to be right. Yes.

Reflecting on this whole saga, you have to imagine that there are other consensuses, if that's the right word, that are not correct. Other moments where many people think that James Webb, someone like that, did something wrong. But there's no character like Hakeem who spends the time and, in this case, the cost of reputation to challenge these narratives because it's just not worth it to them as we see. And in that sense, I find Hakeem's story inspiring, right? The efforts he had made, the years he had put into it, the risks he was willing to tolerate. Or it's kind of an extreme caution, because who wants to put up with all that just to break a dead guy's record, right?

Absolutely. And actually, in my report, I spoke to a lot of physicists who didn't want to write. They told me that Hakeem did well and I'm not going there because if I go there they will attack me. And you hear that, honestly, all the time in academia. And I know there are many leading liberal scientists and activists who argue that this is not the case. But I'm just saying that I'm taking part in these conversations.

And when you say it's happening, you mean a form of fear and self-censorship that makes people afraid to tell the truth.

So, if you write Hakeem Oluseya, will it be an inspirational story of an intellectual who stood up for what he believed in and what he found, or is it a cautionary tale, as you say, where you don't want to go.

Good. Now, Michael, you might think of the whole story differently, that the people who were angry with Webb's telescope from the beginning were doing something more important, and that a factual error here and there, a reputation that may have been tarnished, is ultimately not so important like spreading a message of fairness and equality within an institution like the State Department or NASA, and that you can't make omelettes without breaking eggs. You can't change the world without occasionally hurting people.

Yes, I think if you're not the egg that's being hatched, then maybe it's a more comfortable position. But I think it's fair to say that we're treading dangerous waters if we say that the truth can be sacrificed for the greater good. It seems to me that looking at the life of Hakeem Oluseya, you see quite deeply the risk of falling.

Well, Michael, thank you very much.

Thank you Michael.

We'll be right back.

This is what you need to know today. The Times reports that Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, whose prolonged absence has threatened the Democratic congressional agenda, has returned to work despite a series of serious health problems that have left her in poor health. Feinstein was first hospitalized with shingles in February, which had spread to her face and neck, causing vision and balance problems and facial paralysis. At the same time, it triggered an undisclosed case of encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain that can cause memory loss, language problems, and bouts of confusion. New information suggests Feinstein wasn't ready to resume work and is now having trouble functioning at work.

And Disney is pulling the plug on a $1 billion office complex in Florida after a series of relentless politically motivated attacks on the company by Republican state governor Ron DeSantis. The office complex would generate more than 2,000 jobs in the region with an average salary of $120,000. Disney's decision highlights the economic risk of DeSantis's presidential aspirations.

Today's episode was produced by Mooj Zadie and Will Reid. It was edited by Michael Benoist, reviewed by Susan Lee, features original music by Marion Lozano, Dan Powell, Elisheba Ittoop, Diane Wong, Rowan Niemisto and Brad Fisher, and was designed by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

It's all in The Daily. My name is Michael Barbara. See you on Monday.