The decision to name the Next Generation Space Telescope after former administrator James E. Webb has led to significant controversy and demands that it be renamed.
Host | Matthew S Williams
On ITSPmagazine 👉 https://itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/matthew-s-williams
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Episode Notes
The decision to name the Next Generation Space Telescope after former administrator James E. Webb has led to significant controversy and demands that it be renamed. This issue has shone a light on a dark period in the history of the U.S. and NASA and has raised questions about the agency's naming conventions.
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Resources
The Lavender Scare - National Archives: https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2016/summer/lavender.html#:~:text=Beginning%20in%20the%20late%201940s,the%20power%20of%20congressional%20investigation.
Why NASA should have a do-over on the name of JWST - Jason Wright: https://sites.psu.edu/astrowright/2022/10/25/why-nasa-should-have-a-do-over-on-the-name-of-jwst/
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For more podcast Stories from Space with Matthew S Williams, visit: https://itspmagazine.com/stories-from-space-podcast
The James Webb Space Telescope Naming Controversy | Stories From Space Podcast With Matthew S Williams
[00:00:00] The authors acknowledged that this podcast was recorded on the
traditional unseated lands of the La kwungen peoples. Hello and welcome back
to Stories From Space. I'm your host, Matt Williams, and today I want to
discuss a long overdue topic, which is the James Webb Space Telescope and the
controversy surrounding its name.
Now, for most people, this controversy was first introduced to them in 2020,
published in. That was authored by a team of astronomers and cosmologists led
by Chand Prescott Weinstein. She's an assistant professor of physics and core
faculty member in women's and gender studies at the University of New
Hampshire.
And as the author of the Distorted Cosmos, a Journey into Dark Matter Space
Times and Dreams deferred. However, for many others, the controversy didn't
start there as we'll get into, in this episode, [00:01:00] the choice to name the
James Webb Telescope Thusly had led to some opposition and pushback from
many scientists as early as 2003 when the decision was made.
So first of all, some background on the Space telescope itself. Originally, the
James Webb Space Telescope was conceived of in the 1980s, but planning did
not begin until the 1990s with the deployment of Hubble. NASA and its
scientific and commercial partners. Were thinking of a successor mission, one
that would follow up on all of Hubble's observations using next generation
optics, spectrometers, and the like.
At the time, it was known as the next Generation Space telescope, and it was
officially proposed in 1996. Roughly six years later, the decision was made to
rename the project the James Webb Space Telescope in honor of the late James
[00:02:00] Ewe who had died 10 years prior. He was NASA's second
administrator and oversaw the Apollo program from 1961 to 1968.
However, this decision met with a lot of opposition, mainly because it broke
with convention. In the past, all scientific instruments that were deployed to
space were named in honor of the scientific principle they were investigating,
which often meant that they were named after the person who first proposed it.And this includes the Chandra Observatory, the Spitzer Space Telescope, the
Compton Space Telescope, and of course the venerable Hubble. Using Hubble
as an example here it was named for the Hubble constant because this is exactly
what the telescope would be investigating once it was deployed to space.
By conducting deep field observations of the cosmos, astronomers using Hubble
data, hope to constrain the Hubble metric. In other words, the rate at which the
universe was [00:03:00] expanding. And this in turn was named after Edwin
Hubble, the famous astronomer who determined alongside George Le Metra
that the cosmos was in a state of expansion.
Furthermore, the naming convention usually involved consultations with the
scientific community, with other NASA centers, and even with public input.
Oftentimes involving children sending in essays, suggesting names for
remission, and why they thought it would be appropriate. This decision,
however, was made by NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe, an appointee of the
George W.
Bush administration. And had served as the 10th administrator of NASA from
2001 to 2004 in a statement issued at the time, he said, it is fitting that Hubble
successor be named in honor of James Webb. Thanks to his efforts, we got our
first glimpses at the dramatic landscape of outer space. He took our nation on its
first voyages of exploration.
Turning our imagination into reality. Indeed, he laid the foundations at
[00:04:00] NASA for one of the most successful periods of astronomical
discovery. As a result, we're rewriting the textbook today with the help of the
Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, and the James Webb
Telescope. In short, the decision to rename the next generation space telescope
to the James Webb Space telescope broke with an established convention,
which even though it did not go against any official rules, and the fact that the
then current administrator of NASA took it upon himself to decide the name of
Hubble successor, a rather important decision and that he would choose to name
it after a fellow administrator and career civil servant like himself.
Was seen as a case of executive overreach or the dismissal of the opinions of
the scientific community. However, in 2015, the controversy reached a new
level of intensity. Thanks to Revelations about the role James Webb played in
the [00:05:00] historic period known as the Lavender Scare. Now the public had
already given a preview of this.Thanks to David K. Johnson, a historian who released a book in 2004 called
The Lavender Scare, which indicated through archival evidence that Webb,
along with other State Department heads were involved in the systematic
purging of federal employees on the basis of them being gay. This took place in
the 1940s and fifties, and it coincided with the rise of McCarthyism.
And the name Lavender Scare comes from a quote by McCarthy himself who
viewed homosexuality as a gateway to communism, or that homosexuality and
communism were indistinguishable, both examples of what he viewed as
subversive or deviant behavior. As David Johnson indicated in his book,
McCarthy identified homosexuality as the psychological maladjustment that led
[00:06:00] people towards communism.
The red scare now had a tinge of lavender. Furthermore, under the influence of
Republican politician, Joseph McCarthy, the proponents of this scare believed
that because there was a social stigma attached to the sexuality of people in the
lgbtq plus community, that they were at risk of being blackmailed or of
becoming Soviet assets based on the, essentially people would be vulnerable
because they didn't want this aspect of their lives revealed to.
Therefore they'd be at risk of manipulation. However, this was a very, very
cynical justification, seeing as how as noted McCarthyite viewed homosexuality
and communism as virtually indistinguishable. This is similar to what the Nazis
believed when it came to communism and Judaism, where they accused Jews of
fostering communist movements in countries as a means of undermining
national unity [00:07:00] and spreading chaos.
In short, irrational paranoia based on hatred and ignorance. This purging, in any
case, it was between 1949 and 1952 when James Webb served as the under
Secretary of State in the Truman administration. When executive ordered ten
four fifty and other provisions that banned subversives from office were
implemented.
And the debate surrounding this issue was all about whether or not Webb was a
willing, a complicit individual in all this, or whether he was just going along
with policy, just following orders. A key point in the debate revolved around
what Nicholas Edsel, a historian had argued in his book about the lavender scare
titled Towards Stonewall Homosexuality and Society in the Modern Western
world, which was published in 2003.
And in terms of the debate surrounding James Webb, there [00:08:00] is a
passage which is quoted that says, in early 1950, when under Secretary of Statetestified to ascent committee that most of the government employees dismissed
from moral turpitude were in fact homosexual. And this has since been
addressed and corrected because apparently Eds so was mistaken in referencing
the undersecretary of state as the one testifying before Congress.
And that the person in question was in fact John Purify, who was the deputy
under Secretary of State for administration, and the records show that Purify
had testified before Congress several times on the issue of purging homosexuals
and the risk of having them in government positions. However, what is more
clear is the fact undersecretary of state involved with what called the.
Which was chaired by Democratic Senator Clyde r Hoey from 1949 to 1952,
[00:09:00] which was specifically tasked with investigating the employment of
homosexuals and Webb's own involvement with this committee comes up at
two points, and the first was on June 22nd, 1950 when he met with President
Truman to determine, and second on June 28th, 1950, when he met with Senator
Hoey.
As well as Charlie Murphy and Steven Springer, who were the White House
counsel and an administrative assistant Truman. Now in terms of what was
discussed at these meetings, according to Brian C. Odom, who's the NASA
chief historian who investigated the matter, the purpose of these meetings was
to determine in President Truman's words, quote, a proper basis for cooperation.
End quote with the HOI committee and also with the larger congressional
investigation. In any case, all of this was the subject of an investigation that
took place in November of 2022, conducted by AU [00:10:00] and his
colleagues and the report details how Autumn and his team reviewed over
50,000 pages of documents from archival collections, including the archives at
NASA, HQ and Washington dc, the Marshall Space Flight Center, the National
Archives and Records Administration, and the Truman Presidential Library.
And the investigation focused on two very key points. One was the
aforementioned meetings that Webb had with Truman and with Senator
Hawley. And second on the firing of one individual in particular, Clifford j
Norton, who was an asset budget analysis who was fired and arrested in 1963.
And it's worth noting that Norton would go on to sue the Civil Service
Commission, which ruled in his favor and paved the way for this policy
executive order, ten four fifty being overturned in 1975.
And in the end, the author stated that. The report found Webb's [00:11:00]
primary involvement was to attempt to limit Congressional access to thepersonal records of the Department of State. None of the evidence found links
Webb to actions or follow up in pursuit of firings. After these discussions, they
also indicated that they could not conclude one or another, whether or not Webb
was even aware of Norton's firing at the time.
And based on these findings, NASA chose not to rename whip. Naturally, this
decision resulted in some backlash, some.
In particular from people who felt that the investigation really hadn't done its
job, that its scope had been deliberately limited to ensure that nothing would
change. One critic in particular was Jason Wright, who was a professor of
astronomy, meaning astrophysics at Penn State, and a member of the Sexual and
Gender Minority Alliance, which is the committee that advises the American
Astronomical Society on LGBTQ plus issues.[00:12:00]
And Wright's main criticism was at the nature of the investigation itself and
how it interpreted Webb's involvement in the purging of homosexual
employees, both as under Secretary of State and as the administrator of nasa. As
Adam and his team stated in the executive summary of their report, the central
purpose of this investigation was to locate any evidence that could indicate
whether James Webb acted as a leader of or proponent for firing LGBTQ plus
employees from the federal workforce, right?
Countered this via Twitter saying. As expected, it looks like NASA asked the
historians to focus on a narrow question. That's only part of the rationale for
renaming JWST. Of course, being a leader or proponent for firing LGBTQ plus
employees would be disqualifying, but the bar for putting a name on the most
important telescope in a generation should be a bit higher than that.
No, [00:13:00] that said, the evidence we knew about is still there. Firing
LGBTQ plus people at nasa. Was custom within the agency when Webb was
administrator. He may not have been a leader or proponent of that policy, but
neither did he resist or minimize it. He must have been aware of it. And as he
write on his website, asked for a write.
This decision was basically an insult to all the LGBQ people currently working
at nasa. As he said, think for a moment about the L-G-B-T-Q NASA employees
working on JWST today. They want to be proud of their work, proud of the
telescope, proud as L-G-B-T-Q NASA employees. But just to use the name of
the telescope is to name a man who undisputedly would've had them fired.This feels perverse to me. And he certainly has a point. On the one hand, the
reports conclusions basically amounted to James Webb was [00:14:00]
responsible for implementing a policy as with many other heads of state, but we
can't prove that he liked what he was doing, which in the end seems like a
massive irrelevance.
And what's more for all people working at NASA today who are busy
developing and analyzing and processing all of the wonderful, groundbreaking
data that Webb is providing, they're basically living with the knowledge that
this man, if he were still around today, we wouldn't have jobs. We wouldn't be
here.
We would've been purged for being subversives. And indeed, many, many lies
were ruined as a result of this policy back in the day. Accused Communists who
had been blackballed by the Red Scare and McCarthyism, the victims of the
Lavender Scare were publicly outed. They're shamed, they're ridiculed, and they
were not hired again.
So professionally and personally, their lives were upended. However, the
[00:15:00] conclusions and the release of the report also had a bit of a twist.
Aside from them concluding that they would not be changing the name of the
James Webb space telescope, there was also indications that NASA was willing
to reexamine its naming policies and make changes.
And this was indicated by a statement that was released by the American
Astronomical Society. It was authored by the board of Trustees in which they
stated that many a a s members are concerned about the response of NASA to
the JWSD name and process, and we wanted to provide a brief update. In
response to our most recent letter administrator, Nelson replied that NASA's
acting chief historian, as well as a contract historian were reviewing records and
that NASA would share the findings publicly after completion.
Thus, referring to the report. And they go on to state that. Nelson also agreed
that the mission naming policy for NASA must be reexamined and that will also
be shared. We await these [00:16:00] results and something did come of this. As
of April, 2023, NASA announced that it had new policy in place that would
make it unlikely that future missions will be named after individuals.
However, all of this did strike the scientific community, many members of it as
window dressing and appeasement. On the one hand, the conventions for
naming the Great Observatories, which in the past had involved consultation aspreviously noted. These were not followed when it came to assigning a name
for the James Webb Space Telescope.
So why would they need to be revisited and reexamined? As we covered earlier,
the decision to name the telescope after James Webb had been Sean O'Keefes. It
was a unilateral decision that broke with convention. So that being said, the
decision to, on the one hand, uphold the naming of the James Webb Space
Telescope, which [00:17:00] of course broke with established policy.
And then on the other hand, to say that the policies needed to be updated to
prevent such things from happening again. Seen both intransigent and
superfluous. As Jason Wright would also indicate on his website, in the midst of
all this controversy, in the release of the report, the scientific community was
already taking steps to address the issue of nomenclature and was basically
taking matters into its own fans as he wrote as.
At this point, NASA's resistance has gone from stubbornness to recalcitrant.
Already NASA employees are refusing to use the name in prominent
publications. The Royal Astronomical Society says that it expects authors of the
monthly notices for the Royal Astronomical Society, not to use the name and
other publications.
Were also upfront about using the abbreviation, but not spelling it out. And this
was partly motivated by a [00:18:00] spirit of accommodation for people who,
for reasons of conscience did not want to use the name, but also as a arguably a
little act of resistance. The scientific community is basically fighting back
against decision that they were left out of in the first place, and have felt the
same way ever since.
Jason Wright Chand, Prescott Weinstein, and members of the American
Astronomical Society, and more expressed openly how disappointed they were
not only with NASA's decisions, but in how they went about dealing with the
opposition and the moral outrage on behalf of the LGBTQ plus community and
the scientific community.
Basically, NASA was giving them the bureaucratic runaround and dismissing
what they had to say. What's more, this controversy really echoed another major
controversy involving NASA and its personnel, its scientists, [00:19:00] and
that had to do with the case of Werner Vaughn Braun. NASA's response to this
controversy in particular and the way they frame the issue.Dredged up a lot of memories about the complicity of German rocket scientists
such as Von Braun during World War ii, in which they were members of the
Nazi party and involved in a number of crimes against humanity. In particular,
Vaughn Braun, who was not only a member of the Nazi party and an SS officer,
his weapons were used to kill civilians, but even more egregious than that was
the fact that they were built using slave labor from a local concentration camp.
And that more people actually died building and servicing these rockets than
were killed by them and all of these crimes. These were not publicly known at
the time that of Von [00:20:00] Bro's greatest contributions to nasa. And while
today, NASA has all that information on their website, addressing bro's
involvement with the Nazis and the war effort, this information was not widely
known until after von Braun died.
And of course, much like Webb, there are people who'd argue that, oh, we don't
know the full extent of his involvement. We don't know if he agreed, endorsed,
or was truly responsible for implementing decisions and policies that led to
people being killed. But it really comes down to the same kind of moral
turpitude and ambiguity.
It really is not a defense at all to say that even though they're responsible for
murder and crimes against human beings, crimes against humanity, but we can't
say for sure that they shared the views that led to this. And of course, others
would argue that had Von Braun not been recruited under Operation Paperclip,
along with other German [00:21:00] rocket scientists, that NASA would not
have achieved its ultimate victory in the space race against the Soviets because
of course, the Soviets were also recruiting former Nazi rocket scientists to assist
in their programs.
To which of course, one can easily encounter that. Well, that's all fine and good.
It was an act of necessity during the Cold War. However, the truth needs to
come out and we also need to acknowledge that it is not just to be naming any
big, bold, and hopeful missions after individuals who had blood on their hands,
or at the very least in Wes case, had ruined lives.
But all this has made even more difficult based on the fact that we don't know
exactly what these people were thinking or where they stood, and we will never
know. If there's no other records or indications or testimonials, then that will
[00:22:00] remain a gray area for all time. And furthermore, why do we even
need to know?Fact remains that they committed the acts. Whether or not their heart was in it is
irrelevant, and it really doesn't matter. In the case of the James Webb Space
Telescope in the first place, we name missions after the fundamental concepts
that they are investigating, and if that does involve the name of a prominent
scientist from the past, then yes, that will be applied.
And as always, the decision should be made through the consultation process
and it should be appropriate to the mission itself. And this is certainly the case
with the next generation telescope that's going to be Web's successor, and even
more importantly, the successor to Hubble, which is the Nancy Grace Roman
Space telescope.
This telescope is set to deploy by 2027. [00:23:00] Though engineers and
technicians at NASA are hoping to attempt a 2026 launch and this observatory
is named after Nancy Grace Roman. Who was the first female executive at
NASA and its first chief of astronomy, and this was during the 1960s and
seventies at a time when there were very, very few women at nasa and one of
her greatest contributions was in developing the concept for space telescopes.
'cause she would argue. The only real way to get truly deep views of the cosmos
where they're free of atmospheric interference and light distortions and thermal
problems was to deploy a telescope to space, and therefore to have unfettered
observations of the cosmos. And all these considerations went into the design
and the deployment of Hubble.
So Nancy Grace Roman is known as the [00:24:00] mother of Hubble. It's a
popular nickname she picked up and Nancy Grace Roman passed away in 2018,
so she did have the honor of seeing her baby Hubble Space Telescope deployed
to space and was able to be around and witnessed some of its greatest
contributions to science.
It's unfortunate that she won't be able to witness the launch of the telescope
named in honor of her, but she certainly got to witness the very idea, the very
concept that she gave rise to realized for the very first time naming this next
generation telescope after her. Given that it's hubble's natural successor is
extremely appropriate.
In any case, it appears that the James Webb Space Telescope is going to
continue to be named thusly. However, the issue is not going to go away and it's
not going to be resolved simply by changing the rules, [00:25:00] saying, well,
don't name missions after individuals anymore, and nor should it go away.
Because it highlights the importance of executive decision making and theresponsibility that they have, especially when it comes to consulting with the
wider scientific community, and of course, the responsibility they have to the
current and subsequent generations.
We're leaving a legacy behind. We need to make sure that that legacy is
representative of the values we wanna carry forward. As always, the field of
science and ethics, they're not separate. One, cannot compartmentalize between
science and what many would mistakenly label politics, but which is in fact,
simple questions of responsibility and what's morally right, and those
considerations are not going away.
Well, thank you for listening. Tune in [00:26:00] again, where I'll be speaking
with NASA scientist and technologist Les Johnson, where we discuss the latest
volume to which I'm a contributor. Of scientific essays that explore interstellar
exploration and the possibility of humans living on another world someday.
Topics will of course include propulsion. A subject Johnson is intimately
familiar with and also an expert of, and terraforming of which I am something
of a hobbyist and a sort of resident expert, not my words. In the meantime,
thank you for listening. I.