The Lavender Scare and James Web
December 19, 2022 2:10 PM Subscribe
The NYT today shone additional light on the allegations of homophobia that have been common since the naming of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), including here on Metafilter. In particular, they point to the research done by Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi, president of the National Society of Black Physicists, who suggests that anti-gay witch-hunts in the US State Department that have been blamed on Webb, were in fact perpetrated by John Peurifoy. However, they story does not end there.
Since Oluseyi published his findings, he has now become the subject of attacks. Dr. Oluseyi has been accused of championing a homophobe, and Times reviewed various accusations against Dr. Oluseyi, and they noted several of these claims were demonstrably false, and others could not be substantiated.
David K. Johnson, a history professor at the University of South Florida and author of The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government argues that continuing to judge Webb by modern standards are wrong, saying "The activists who say that James Webb should have stood up and spoken against the purges are anachronistic." Others say that even if he wasn't guilty, he didn't stand up for gay employees and is therefore undeserving. However, that standard implicates basically every government employee before 1998.
In his findings, Dr. Oluseyi noted that he had no information about Webbs personal beliefs, only that the charges against him were false. That has not seemed to be sufficient for many.
Since Oluseyi published his findings, he has now become the subject of attacks. Dr. Oluseyi has been accused of championing a homophobe, and Times reviewed various accusations against Dr. Oluseyi, and they noted several of these claims were demonstrably false, and others could not be substantiated.
David K. Johnson, a history professor at the University of South Florida and author of The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government argues that continuing to judge Webb by modern standards are wrong, saying "The activists who say that James Webb should have stood up and spoken against the purges are anachronistic." Others say that even if he wasn't guilty, he didn't stand up for gay employees and is therefore undeserving. However, that standard implicates basically every government employee before 1998.
In his findings, Dr. Oluseyi noted that he had no information about Webbs personal beliefs, only that the charges against him were false. That has not seemed to be sufficient for many.
I also know a number of scientists personally using JWST who are not exactly fans of the naming. And journals who will not have the initials spelled out. We are as a community largely past being ok with this name.
posted by edd at 3:35 PM on December 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by edd at 3:35 PM on December 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
OK. This exhausts me. I have no personal investment in James Webb, I think the Lavender Scare was disgusting and contemptible, and I've long advocated for the renaming of objects and institutions giving honor to past people who have done horrible things. I think Wilson's name should come off everything, for example. But the level of intellectual sloppiness that appears to have been operating all along the chain here is just depressing.
This is the historian's nightmare, when casual research by nonprofessionals that, to be fair, probably wasn't intended to be relied on for important decisions gets laundered through various non-peer-reviewed sources with increasing levels of indignation until a person's reputation is destroyed without adequate basis, because people don't apply reasonable standards of historical research, even when the issue in question is very serious. Dr. Oluseyi did the most straightforward research you could do, and immediately identified the lack of sourcing for the quotes and the confusion of identities.
Additionally, this (link from the prior Mefi article, concerning a NASA employee who was fired for being gay in the 1960s): "A white paper drawn up within NASA, and described as not meant for public release, says: “This [comment by unknown person in personnel that it was a “custom within the agency” to fire people for “homosexual conduct"] shows that NASA had decided that removal of homosexual employees would be its policy. They had a choice during Webb’s tenure as administrator to set or change that policy.”" What is the first question you might ask here, if you have any historian's instincts, or some familiarity with how our federal system of government operates, and want to be comfortable in your conclusions rather than relying on a "white paper" which itself relies on a third-hand and anonymous quote? Well, the NYT actually asked it: was this, in fact, a policy of NASA in particular, or was it a broader federal policy, and, if so, what power did NASA have even not to enforce it? As the NYT points out in the linked article here, "In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed an executive order that essentially barred gay Americans from federal employment. It applied to all federal agencies and remained in effect throughout the 1960s, when Mr. Webb led NASA...James Kirchick, author of “Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington” [said] “It is unimaginable that a high-level functionary would have stepped in and blocked a broad federal law that applied to every agency,” he said." In fact, it seems incredibly unlikely that he would have the authority to just...exempt NASA from an executive order, though it's possible there might have been more informal means of preserving the NASA employee who was fired.
Dr. Oluseyi noted that he had no information about Webbs personal beliefs, only that the charges against him were false. That has not seemed to be sufficient for many.
Well, if you want to take the position that working in a position of authority in the federal government under Truman or Eisenhower makes you definitionally a homophobe, okay, that's an extreme but not ridiculous proposition (just apply it evenly across the board, please), but that's not what I think most people were basing their judgment on, rather than the belief that Webb had personally been a lead henchman in the (cruel and destructive) Lavender Scare.
(Even if Webb had actually made the statement attributed to him--"most of the people removed from the government for moral turpitude were homosexuals”--that statement incredibly obviously requires context, which has always been lacking, to understand. If true [I don't know whether it is, but it seems at least possible], it's literally a statement that could appear without objection in a history text. By itself, it doesn't tell you whether the speaker is a homophobe or not.)
I have no doubt that the people here were acting in good faith. One can debate the principles involved. The degree to which one is responsible for the actions of a government in which one holds some authority is a difficult question, about which people can disagree. But it would be really nice if people were willing to recognize that reading and interpreting historical documents actually requires expertise and care, substantial knowledge of the factual context, and a suspicious mind about footnotes, so that we could start from a set of facts about which we can have a reasonable understanding of our degree of confidence in them.
posted by praemunire at 3:38 PM on December 19, 2022 [52 favorites]
This is the historian's nightmare, when casual research by nonprofessionals that, to be fair, probably wasn't intended to be relied on for important decisions gets laundered through various non-peer-reviewed sources with increasing levels of indignation until a person's reputation is destroyed without adequate basis, because people don't apply reasonable standards of historical research, even when the issue in question is very serious. Dr. Oluseyi did the most straightforward research you could do, and immediately identified the lack of sourcing for the quotes and the confusion of identities.
Additionally, this (link from the prior Mefi article, concerning a NASA employee who was fired for being gay in the 1960s): "A white paper drawn up within NASA, and described as not meant for public release, says: “This [comment by unknown person in personnel that it was a “custom within the agency” to fire people for “homosexual conduct"] shows that NASA had decided that removal of homosexual employees would be its policy. They had a choice during Webb’s tenure as administrator to set or change that policy.”" What is the first question you might ask here, if you have any historian's instincts, or some familiarity with how our federal system of government operates, and want to be comfortable in your conclusions rather than relying on a "white paper" which itself relies on a third-hand and anonymous quote? Well, the NYT actually asked it: was this, in fact, a policy of NASA in particular, or was it a broader federal policy, and, if so, what power did NASA have even not to enforce it? As the NYT points out in the linked article here, "In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed an executive order that essentially barred gay Americans from federal employment. It applied to all federal agencies and remained in effect throughout the 1960s, when Mr. Webb led NASA...James Kirchick, author of “Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington” [said] “It is unimaginable that a high-level functionary would have stepped in and blocked a broad federal law that applied to every agency,” he said." In fact, it seems incredibly unlikely that he would have the authority to just...exempt NASA from an executive order, though it's possible there might have been more informal means of preserving the NASA employee who was fired.
Dr. Oluseyi noted that he had no information about Webbs personal beliefs, only that the charges against him were false. That has not seemed to be sufficient for many.
Well, if you want to take the position that working in a position of authority in the federal government under Truman or Eisenhower makes you definitionally a homophobe, okay, that's an extreme but not ridiculous proposition (just apply it evenly across the board, please), but that's not what I think most people were basing their judgment on, rather than the belief that Webb had personally been a lead henchman in the (cruel and destructive) Lavender Scare.
(Even if Webb had actually made the statement attributed to him--"most of the people removed from the government for moral turpitude were homosexuals”--that statement incredibly obviously requires context, which has always been lacking, to understand. If true [I don't know whether it is, but it seems at least possible], it's literally a statement that could appear without objection in a history text. By itself, it doesn't tell you whether the speaker is a homophobe or not.)
I have no doubt that the people here were acting in good faith. One can debate the principles involved. The degree to which one is responsible for the actions of a government in which one holds some authority is a difficult question, about which people can disagree. But it would be really nice if people were willing to recognize that reading and interpreting historical documents actually requires expertise and care, substantial knowledge of the factual context, and a suspicious mind about footnotes, so that we could start from a set of facts about which we can have a reasonable understanding of our degree of confidence in them.
posted by praemunire at 3:38 PM on December 19, 2022 [52 favorites]
She is a professor at the University of New Hampshire, as (sort of) noted in the article, despite said article not referring to her as such.
posted by damayanti at 3:40 PM on December 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by damayanti at 3:40 PM on December 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
Very happy to be corrected and it's a very well deserved title.
posted by edd at 3:42 PM on December 19, 2022
posted by edd at 3:42 PM on December 19, 2022
Also while I have fairly strong views about his possible homophobia, he was administrative and not a scientist and personally I would prefer such an amazing scientific instrument designed by scientists and engineers, be named after a scientist.
JWST is shared by the Canadian and European Space Agency too. It was a poor choice at the best of times.
posted by edd at 3:50 PM on December 19, 2022 [11 favorites]
JWST is shared by the Canadian and European Space Agency too. It was a poor choice at the best of times.
posted by edd at 3:50 PM on December 19, 2022 [11 favorites]
If you want frame a leader as responsible for the good things an organization does, then they are responsible for the bad things, too. Simple as that.
posted by Zalzidrax at 3:57 PM on December 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Zalzidrax at 3:57 PM on December 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
David K. Johnson, a history professor at the University of South Florida and author of The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government argues that continuing to judge Webb by modern standards are wrong, saying "The activists who say that James Webb should have stood up and spoken against the purges are anachronistic."
I'm sure this is a reasonable position for a professional historian, at least in their professional lives, because otherwise how would they get anything done. You could hardly write a book about Roman history if you had to parenthetically put after person's name the ways in which our standards would judge them A Total Shit. I think it's worth thinking carefully though about how we apply that principle to things which are not professional history. When we name a building, a square, or a scientific instrument we are also making a statement about who we are in the present and would like to be in the future. When Americans gave their children Jefferson or Lincoln as middle or first names, that was partially a belief in the constructive power of emulation. In that sense, it does make sense to apply modern standards because we are making a statement of who we want to be.
That that being said, I think it's useful to correct the historical record and a useful cautionary note for a lot of media and online commentary which is astoundingly circular and just quotes itself without anyone actually going into archives and records. Anyone could have done this research. A lot of coverage of the naming question has taken the form of a lot of material about the Lavender Scare more generally followed by a very short note about James Webb's role in it. Nobody doubts that the Lavender Scare happened and nobody bothered to dig up detail on James Webb. [Worth noting at this point that objections from within the astronomy and astrophysics community were always a lot more complex and never claimed that he was some kind of maniac bigot, uniquely and personally responsible for purges within State]
However where does this leave us? James Webb may not have played a particularly central or motivated role in the purging but was he in a leadership position while it happened? Yes. Was he briefed on it? Indeed and Dr. Oluseyi found at least one memo attesting to that.
Is it true that this applies to basically every mid- or senior- level US government administrator of that generation? Yes but I think rather than using that as a reason to say, "So, that's all right then" we should pause at what that meant for gay men and women of that generation. They weren't persecuted by one guy in one place (never the accusation against Webb) they were slowly but surely squeezed by a bureaucratic vise. Many of them would have received sterile, form letters from a personnel department "regretfully" terminating their employment and been genuinely missed by supervisors who meant it when they said, "Gee Mike, you know none of this stuff is any business of mine and I wish... but it's not up to me". Cold comfort to them, unemployed and unemployable with nothing but government experience and a government that didn't want them that James Webb probably wished he didn't have to have meetings with senators about the work his underlings at State were doing to fire and blacklist from government work several thousand people. Whether he had any personal animus is unknown but also irrelevant!
That doesn't make him some kind of uniquely terrible goblin whose every mention must be scrubbed from the record, but coming back to the naming of things being about who we want to be in the future, it probably doesn't make him the best candidate for naming very expensive things after. That was always the case against it, if somebody had wanted to name their electron microscope or an admin building after him that would be one thing but the objection was always "Is this really the very best person you could come up with for a project this big??". I mean this is the successor to Hubble and Edwin Hubble was kind of a big deal in astronomy. I mean I wouldn't be in favour if he had the State department history but also was a famous cosmologist or something but it's such a thorn to so many people because not only was he just an administrator but he also has this association with deeply unpleasant and bigoted history.
It's not it's the usual course of affairs to name big telescopes after NASA administrators and we'd be somehow stripping him of a traditional job perk, most people don't get anything named after them. Most senior administrators in the US government don't get so much as a nice stapler named after them, so we could have just not done it.
So thanks for the correction, Dr. Oluseyi, but I still don't think this was the best name.
posted by atrazine at 4:27 PM on December 19, 2022 [77 favorites]
I'm sure this is a reasonable position for a professional historian, at least in their professional lives, because otherwise how would they get anything done. You could hardly write a book about Roman history if you had to parenthetically put after person's name the ways in which our standards would judge them A Total Shit. I think it's worth thinking carefully though about how we apply that principle to things which are not professional history. When we name a building, a square, or a scientific instrument we are also making a statement about who we are in the present and would like to be in the future. When Americans gave their children Jefferson or Lincoln as middle or first names, that was partially a belief in the constructive power of emulation. In that sense, it does make sense to apply modern standards because we are making a statement of who we want to be.
That that being said, I think it's useful to correct the historical record and a useful cautionary note for a lot of media and online commentary which is astoundingly circular and just quotes itself without anyone actually going into archives and records. Anyone could have done this research. A lot of coverage of the naming question has taken the form of a lot of material about the Lavender Scare more generally followed by a very short note about James Webb's role in it. Nobody doubts that the Lavender Scare happened and nobody bothered to dig up detail on James Webb. [Worth noting at this point that objections from within the astronomy and astrophysics community were always a lot more complex and never claimed that he was some kind of maniac bigot, uniquely and personally responsible for purges within State]
However where does this leave us? James Webb may not have played a particularly central or motivated role in the purging but was he in a leadership position while it happened? Yes. Was he briefed on it? Indeed and Dr. Oluseyi found at least one memo attesting to that.
Is it true that this applies to basically every mid- or senior- level US government administrator of that generation? Yes but I think rather than using that as a reason to say, "So, that's all right then" we should pause at what that meant for gay men and women of that generation. They weren't persecuted by one guy in one place (never the accusation against Webb) they were slowly but surely squeezed by a bureaucratic vise. Many of them would have received sterile, form letters from a personnel department "regretfully" terminating their employment and been genuinely missed by supervisors who meant it when they said, "Gee Mike, you know none of this stuff is any business of mine and I wish... but it's not up to me". Cold comfort to them, unemployed and unemployable with nothing but government experience and a government that didn't want them that James Webb probably wished he didn't have to have meetings with senators about the work his underlings at State were doing to fire and blacklist from government work several thousand people. Whether he had any personal animus is unknown but also irrelevant!
That doesn't make him some kind of uniquely terrible goblin whose every mention must be scrubbed from the record, but coming back to the naming of things being about who we want to be in the future, it probably doesn't make him the best candidate for naming very expensive things after. That was always the case against it, if somebody had wanted to name their electron microscope or an admin building after him that would be one thing but the objection was always "Is this really the very best person you could come up with for a project this big??". I mean this is the successor to Hubble and Edwin Hubble was kind of a big deal in astronomy. I mean I wouldn't be in favour if he had the State department history but also was a famous cosmologist or something but it's such a thorn to so many people because not only was he just an administrator but he also has this association with deeply unpleasant and bigoted history.
It's not it's the usual course of affairs to name big telescopes after NASA administrators and we'd be somehow stripping him of a traditional job perk, most people don't get anything named after them. Most senior administrators in the US government don't get so much as a nice stapler named after them, so we could have just not done it.
So thanks for the correction, Dr. Oluseyi, but I still don't think this was the best name.
posted by atrazine at 4:27 PM on December 19, 2022 [77 favorites]
atrazine, what a thoughtful comment. I've never heard this argument articulated like that before, but I won't forget it. Thanks.
posted by kittensofthenight at 4:56 PM on December 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by kittensofthenight at 4:56 PM on December 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
"The activists who say that James Webb should have stood up and spoken against the purges are anachronistic."
Anachronism by the overzealous is similar to the nostalgia of the politically conservative. One is misreading the past, the other the present.
posted by Brian B. at 4:56 PM on December 19, 2022 [10 favorites]
Anachronism by the overzealous is similar to the nostalgia of the politically conservative. One is misreading the past, the other the present.
posted by Brian B. at 4:56 PM on December 19, 2022 [10 favorites]
If you want frame a leader as responsible for the good things an organization does, then they are responsible for the bad things, too. Simple as that.
It is not that simple.
Is it true that this applies to basically every mid- or senior- level US government administrator of that generation? Yes but I think rather than using that as a reason to say, "So, that's all right then" we should pause at what that meant for gay men and women of that generation. They weren't persecuted by one guy in one place (never the accusation against Webb) they were slowly but surely squeezed by a bureaucratic vise. Many of them would have received sterile, form letters from a personnel department "regretfully" terminating their employment and been genuinely missed by supervisors who meant it when they said, "Gee Mike, you know none of this stuff is any business of mine and I wish... but it's not up to me". Cold comfort to them, unemployed and unemployable with nothing but government experience and a government that didn't want them that James Webb probably wished he didn't have to have meetings with senators about the work his underlings at State were doing to fire and blacklist from government work several thousand people. Whether he had any personal animus is unknown but also irrelevant!
And this is entirely fair. There is some moral opprobrium involved in being in that position at that time, a judgment that attaches to every single person in a position of authority for the approximately three decades in which you could be fired solely for being gay, and the two decades or so after that before the executive order was formally repealed, who didn't speak out. I think people can very reasonably disagree about the degree of opprobrium. But I think that also requires a nuanced judgment on the facts, and I have to say that I don't think the argument here would've gotten much traction without the misunderstanding (again, good-faith, but it would be nice if people were willing to recognize the limits of their own expertise) of the facts.
posted by praemunire at 4:57 PM on December 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
It is not that simple.
Is it true that this applies to basically every mid- or senior- level US government administrator of that generation? Yes but I think rather than using that as a reason to say, "So, that's all right then" we should pause at what that meant for gay men and women of that generation. They weren't persecuted by one guy in one place (never the accusation against Webb) they were slowly but surely squeezed by a bureaucratic vise. Many of them would have received sterile, form letters from a personnel department "regretfully" terminating their employment and been genuinely missed by supervisors who meant it when they said, "Gee Mike, you know none of this stuff is any business of mine and I wish... but it's not up to me". Cold comfort to them, unemployed and unemployable with nothing but government experience and a government that didn't want them that James Webb probably wished he didn't have to have meetings with senators about the work his underlings at State were doing to fire and blacklist from government work several thousand people. Whether he had any personal animus is unknown but also irrelevant!
And this is entirely fair. There is some moral opprobrium involved in being in that position at that time, a judgment that attaches to every single person in a position of authority for the approximately three decades in which you could be fired solely for being gay, and the two decades or so after that before the executive order was formally repealed, who didn't speak out. I think people can very reasonably disagree about the degree of opprobrium. But I think that also requires a nuanced judgment on the facts, and I have to say that I don't think the argument here would've gotten much traction without the misunderstanding (again, good-faith, but it would be nice if people were willing to recognize the limits of their own expertise) of the facts.
posted by praemunire at 4:57 PM on December 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
I have to say that I don't think the argument here would've gotten much traction without the misunderstanding (again, good-faith, but it would be nice if people were willing to recognize the limits of their own expertise) of the facts.
Agreed. My sense is that some people who traffic in moral outrage may have found it inconvenient to back down when it turned out that they got their facts wrong... a common phenomenon in this type of contemporary discourse. So they came up with new, broader rationales for said outrage. And now the outrage, unmoored from the original error, has gone viral.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 6:09 PM on December 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
Agreed. My sense is that some people who traffic in moral outrage may have found it inconvenient to back down when it turned out that they got their facts wrong... a common phenomenon in this type of contemporary discourse. So they came up with new, broader rationales for said outrage. And now the outrage, unmoored from the original error, has gone viral.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 6:09 PM on December 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
Let's just stop naming things after people? They are all horribly flawed. It would've been way cooler and more informative to call it the NA-EU Ultratelescope or something.
posted by sid at 6:14 PM on December 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by sid at 6:14 PM on December 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
It’s a weird kind of self-gaslighting escalation. It goes from “he was instrumental in the start of the Lavender Scare” to “he led an agency that persecuted LGBT people” to “he was part of a government that discriminated against LGBT people” to “we should rename the Kennedy center after Harriet Tubman” to “we should never name anything after anyone”.
posted by mr_roboto at 6:50 PM on December 19, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by mr_roboto at 6:50 PM on December 19, 2022 [8 favorites]
Naw, it's this guy who's doing the gaslighting. Let's be clear about what the allegations were. They were that he was complicit. Not that he was the person who directed them.
A few key excerpts from the Nature article linked in the "here on Metafilter" thread.
A group of astronomers had led a community petition to change the name, alleging that the telescope’s namesake, former NASA chief James Webb, had been complicit in the persecution and firing of gay and lesbian federal employees during his career in the US government in the 1950s and 1960s.
The reason why it blew up is that NASA tried to refute it by making some very, shall we, say, unlikely denials.
NASA’s acting chief historian, Brian Odom, says he has not found any information in NASA’s archives to suggest that firing people for their sexual orientation was agency policy under Webb.
...
As early as April 2021, an external researcher flagged wording from the 1969 court ruling to NASA officials. It came in the case of Clifford Norton, who had appealed against being fired from NASA for “immoral, indecent, and disgraceful conduct”. In the decision, the chief judge wrote that the person who had fired Norton had said that he was a good employee and asked whether there was a way to keep him on. Whomever he consulted in the personnel office told him that it was a “custom within the agency” to fire people for “homosexual conduct”.
This obviously caused consternation and anger amongst even scientist who weren't terribly activist:
“The problem for most of the astrophysics community is not the decision itself, but the lack of rationale to explain why this is the appropriate decision. (For some people, the problem is the decision.)”
This guy is trying to rewrite the story by taking a really big swing at a strawman point that was not actually at the center of the controversy by the time it got big.
That he was complicit with this stuff is very simple. What we should do about that isn't.
posted by Zalzidrax at 7:13 PM on December 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
A few key excerpts from the Nature article linked in the "here on Metafilter" thread.
A group of astronomers had led a community petition to change the name, alleging that the telescope’s namesake, former NASA chief James Webb, had been complicit in the persecution and firing of gay and lesbian federal employees during his career in the US government in the 1950s and 1960s.
The reason why it blew up is that NASA tried to refute it by making some very, shall we, say, unlikely denials.
NASA’s acting chief historian, Brian Odom, says he has not found any information in NASA’s archives to suggest that firing people for their sexual orientation was agency policy under Webb.
...
As early as April 2021, an external researcher flagged wording from the 1969 court ruling to NASA officials. It came in the case of Clifford Norton, who had appealed against being fired from NASA for “immoral, indecent, and disgraceful conduct”. In the decision, the chief judge wrote that the person who had fired Norton had said that he was a good employee and asked whether there was a way to keep him on. Whomever he consulted in the personnel office told him that it was a “custom within the agency” to fire people for “homosexual conduct”.
This obviously caused consternation and anger amongst even scientist who weren't terribly activist:
“The problem for most of the astrophysics community is not the decision itself, but the lack of rationale to explain why this is the appropriate decision. (For some people, the problem is the decision.)”
This guy is trying to rewrite the story by taking a really big swing at a strawman point that was not actually at the center of the controversy by the time it got big.
That he was complicit with this stuff is very simple. What we should do about that isn't.
posted by Zalzidrax at 7:13 PM on December 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
Let's be clear about what the allegations were. They were that he was complicit. Not that he was the person who directed them.
Now I feel like I’m being gaslit. The actual original accusation… and this is still online, I’m not making this up, you can still find it online…was that:
Now I feel like I’m being gaslit. The actual original accusation… and this is still online, I’m not making this up, you can still find it online…was that:
Serving as Undersecretary of State during the Era of McCarthy, Webb was instrumental in implementing stringent personnel requirements intended to prevent suspected anarchists, communists and homosexuals from employment with the Department of State. Webb singled out homosexuals in a later report, noting "It is generally believed that those who engage in overt acts of perversion lack the emotional stability of normal persons."posted by mr_roboto at 7:54 PM on December 19, 2022 [11 favorites]
So I (a historian, but not remotely on this topic) was curious to see the actually, you know, source and after skimming through various articles could only find this short memo. If there are other sources I'm missing, I'd be curious to know.
Anyway, for those who haven't seen it, it's from 1950, so before Eisenhower's anti-gay executive order in 1953. It doesn't have much info in it, but it's clear that Webb was part of discussions on "the problem of homosexuals and moral perverts." And then there is this 1969 court case by a NASA employee who was fired during Webb's tenure for being gay.
But, if that's all there is, that seems pretty....weak. All you can reasonably conclude is that he was in the room while discussions on this topic were happening. As the historian who wrote The Lavender Scare pointed out on Twitter in response to a historian agitating against Webb, "Truman & Webb met to "manage" the 1950 congressional committee investigating Republican charges that homosexuals threatened national security. They hoped to contain it from fanning the flames of McCarthyism. This does not prove Webb had a leadership role in the lavender scare."
Dr. Oluseyi also looked into this meeting in his blog post, and found "A detailed description of the June 28th meeting compiled by Stephen J. Spingarn is available from the National Archives catalog, confirming that the meeting was about the Hoey subcommittee’s activities and whether hearings should be private or public." There is more info in his post, but basically this sounds like a pretty dry meeting deciding procedure/chains of communication/etc. Not the policy itself. In short, it's not the smoking gun some of the scientists agitating against Webb seem to want it to be.
This doesn't mean Webb wasn't a bigot - given the time, there odds are good that he was - but historians don't make claims based on odds. But I spent a bit of time just now scrolling through the various Twitter threads/opinion pieces, and I see a lot of talk/pronouncements, but little evidence.
And while there is also no evidence of this, it's worth keeping in mind that lots of people don't protest every policy they disagree with (i.e. pick their battles), but often make a point of avoiding enforcing policies they don't like for as long as they can - again, no evidence this was true for Webb, but this is why claims of "If he oversaw the department during a time with a bad policy, he's complicit if he didn't publicly decry it" are irksome to me. I mean sure, maybe, but there are many forms of resistance that occur that don't end up in archives- you'd need to collect oral histories with people who worked under Webb to know what his actual relationship to the policy. To be fair, I also find irksome NASA's official historian claiming that there were absolutely "no links" between Webb and the policy - there is no way Webb didn't know about it, what's not clear is what he did or did not regarding it. Powell's framing here shows his typical bias - he seems to be on the NYTimes 'anti-woke' beat.
All that said, I strongly agree with atrazine's point that "When we name a building, a square, or a scientific instrument we are also making a statement about who we are in the present and would like to be in the future...it does make sense to apply modern standards because we are making a statement of who we want to be."
Still, there is enough in Webb's record (like standing up in no small way against racial segregation) to suggest he's not a terrible choice for the honor. Were there better choices out there? I'm sure there were. Hopefully future symbolic gestures with direct attention to them.
posted by coffeecat at 8:44 PM on December 19, 2022 [10 favorites]
Anyway, for those who haven't seen it, it's from 1950, so before Eisenhower's anti-gay executive order in 1953. It doesn't have much info in it, but it's clear that Webb was part of discussions on "the problem of homosexuals and moral perverts." And then there is this 1969 court case by a NASA employee who was fired during Webb's tenure for being gay.
But, if that's all there is, that seems pretty....weak. All you can reasonably conclude is that he was in the room while discussions on this topic were happening. As the historian who wrote The Lavender Scare pointed out on Twitter in response to a historian agitating against Webb, "Truman & Webb met to "manage" the 1950 congressional committee investigating Republican charges that homosexuals threatened national security. They hoped to contain it from fanning the flames of McCarthyism. This does not prove Webb had a leadership role in the lavender scare."
Dr. Oluseyi also looked into this meeting in his blog post, and found "A detailed description of the June 28th meeting compiled by Stephen J. Spingarn is available from the National Archives catalog, confirming that the meeting was about the Hoey subcommittee’s activities and whether hearings should be private or public." There is more info in his post, but basically this sounds like a pretty dry meeting deciding procedure/chains of communication/etc. Not the policy itself. In short, it's not the smoking gun some of the scientists agitating against Webb seem to want it to be.
This doesn't mean Webb wasn't a bigot - given the time, there odds are good that he was - but historians don't make claims based on odds. But I spent a bit of time just now scrolling through the various Twitter threads/opinion pieces, and I see a lot of talk/pronouncements, but little evidence.
And while there is also no evidence of this, it's worth keeping in mind that lots of people don't protest every policy they disagree with (i.e. pick their battles), but often make a point of avoiding enforcing policies they don't like for as long as they can - again, no evidence this was true for Webb, but this is why claims of "If he oversaw the department during a time with a bad policy, he's complicit if he didn't publicly decry it" are irksome to me. I mean sure, maybe, but there are many forms of resistance that occur that don't end up in archives- you'd need to collect oral histories with people who worked under Webb to know what his actual relationship to the policy. To be fair, I also find irksome NASA's official historian claiming that there were absolutely "no links" between Webb and the policy - there is no way Webb didn't know about it, what's not clear is what he did or did not regarding it. Powell's framing here shows his typical bias - he seems to be on the NYTimes 'anti-woke' beat.
All that said, I strongly agree with atrazine's point that "When we name a building, a square, or a scientific instrument we are also making a statement about who we are in the present and would like to be in the future...it does make sense to apply modern standards because we are making a statement of who we want to be."
Still, there is enough in Webb's record (like standing up in no small way against racial segregation) to suggest he's not a terrible choice for the honor. Were there better choices out there? I'm sure there were. Hopefully future symbolic gestures with direct attention to them.
posted by coffeecat at 8:44 PM on December 19, 2022 [10 favorites]
The common moral understanding has shifted a lot in the last few centuries. If on the odd chance that today's morality isn't objectively perfect, that understanding will continue to shift. Some things that are now OK may cease to be OK.
We can't control our descendants, but we can set a precedent about how to handle anachronistic immorality. I think it should be a balanced approach. Those pushing future-immoral ideas could be shunned, or even erased for extreme proponents. Proponents of the future morality could be elevated due to their prescient ideas. Everyone else should be judged near the common understanding of the time.
In that framework, the JWST has an OK name. They wanted to celebrate the space-race 60's, and couldn't name it after Wernher von Braun, so James Webb was close enough.
The next one is supposed to be named "The Carl Sagan Observatory," please speak now or forever hold your peace.
posted by netowl at 9:22 PM on December 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
We can't control our descendants, but we can set a precedent about how to handle anachronistic immorality. I think it should be a balanced approach. Those pushing future-immoral ideas could be shunned, or even erased for extreme proponents. Proponents of the future morality could be elevated due to their prescient ideas. Everyone else should be judged near the common understanding of the time.
In that framework, the JWST has an OK name. They wanted to celebrate the space-race 60's, and couldn't name it after Wernher von Braun, so James Webb was close enough.
The next one is supposed to be named "The Carl Sagan Observatory," please speak now or forever hold your peace.
posted by netowl at 9:22 PM on December 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
The fact that decades of senior administrators in the civil service have moral failings doesn't mean "I guess we have to ignore it".
We could, you know, pick people who aren't senior administrators in the civil service to honor. Find someone who was an administrator and was fired rather than go along with the policy. Find someone who had a good career, and then was fired by the policy.
If there are none of those, find a woman who wasn't allowed to become an administrator because of sexism. Name it after them.
Even if you hold that they may have been the product of their time and thus blameless -- which I question, as many people didn't agree with those actions for moral reasons, even if they didn't have the courage to sacrifice their own career and life to oppose it -- but even then, who we choose to honor is a product of our time and we are fully able to judge that by our own time's standards.
Honor people who are exemplary by our time and our own standards of today.
posted by NotAYakk at 9:34 PM on December 19, 2022 [11 favorites]
We could, you know, pick people who aren't senior administrators in the civil service to honor. Find someone who was an administrator and was fired rather than go along with the policy. Find someone who had a good career, and then was fired by the policy.
If there are none of those, find a woman who wasn't allowed to become an administrator because of sexism. Name it after them.
Even if you hold that they may have been the product of their time and thus blameless -- which I question, as many people didn't agree with those actions for moral reasons, even if they didn't have the courage to sacrifice their own career and life to oppose it -- but even then, who we choose to honor is a product of our time and we are fully able to judge that by our own time's standards.
Honor people who are exemplary by our time and our own standards of today.
posted by NotAYakk at 9:34 PM on December 19, 2022 [11 favorites]
The next one is supposed to be named "The Carl Sagan Observatory," please speak now or forever hold your peace.
He pronounced billions oddly. And he wore turtleneck sweaters under sportcoats with matching sneakers. Need I say more?
posted by y2karl at 11:20 PM on December 19, 2022 [5 favorites]
He pronounced billions oddly. And he wore turtleneck sweaters under sportcoats with matching sneakers. Need I say more?
posted by y2karl at 11:20 PM on December 19, 2022 [5 favorites]
The last time around with this I did feel like some of the claims being made didn't really match with the evidence being offered. It's very interesting to hear more. I think atrazine's point about different standards of naming for say, an auditorium versus a preeminent space telescope is a really good one, well articulated.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 1:14 AM on December 20, 2022
posted by vibratory manner of working at 1:14 AM on December 20, 2022
Anachronism by the overzealous is similar to the nostalgia of the politically conservative. One is misreading the past, the other the present.
This is of course bollocks.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:41 AM on December 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
This is of course bollocks.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:41 AM on December 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
Let's be clear about what the allegations were. They were that he was complicit. Not that he was the person who directed them.
They totally were. The Forbes article is "no longer active" (not sure what that means), but you can even see where it calls him "an actively homophobic man"; the Oluseyi post quotes it as accusing him of leading "State Department witch hunts."
Some people got way over their skis on the facts here. But, you know, if I make a math error in a political argument, especially one that's not fatal to the broader argument, I can admit it. Far less embarrassing than pretending I never did. There is a worthwhile discussion to be had here about the limits of who is worthy of honor, but it's hard for people to engage with a sensitive topic when at least some people are moving the goalposts and pretending they didn't. (I haven't read every bit of discussion of this everywhere on the web, only the main articles, but I am sure there are people who did come at this either later or in a more cautious way who were focusing on the broader problem. I'm only saying the cause celebre was probably driven by what appeared to be inflammatory quotes and confusion about his role versus the other undersecretary's.)
Honor people who are exemplary by our time and our own standards of today.
I hate to say this, because it sounds so very bleak, but this is just not possible at even a moderate scale, especially if (as implied here) the standard is not just "didn't actively cooperate in doing bad thing," but "didn't stand up against bad thing done in a group they were an important member of, and it is unclear what they may have actually thought of it." Not when you consider all the possible axes here, and consider that we don't have full evidence for many people we might consider candidates. Hubble himself was a white man born in 1889 with an elite education. The odds that he held no beliefs racist or sexist by the standards of today are almost nil.
It's a compromise, a deeply unsatisfying compromise however you look at it, which is the way it always turns out when grappling with the moral dimension of history. I think the Yale report on renaming buildings sets forth some useful principles to apply, although arguably there should be a somewhat higher bar to clear for new namings. (And I think it's important to recognize that tireless activism pushed through the stripping of the Calhoun name from the residential college there in the 2010s, when the problem had been openly discussed since at least the 1980s, and probably earlier. I am not against renaming, or against outrage towards the outrageous; I am fearful of what happens when insufficient care leads to bad history.)
posted by praemunire at 8:22 AM on December 20, 2022 [3 favorites]
They totally were. The Forbes article is "no longer active" (not sure what that means), but you can even see where it calls him "an actively homophobic man"; the Oluseyi post quotes it as accusing him of leading "State Department witch hunts."
Some people got way over their skis on the facts here. But, you know, if I make a math error in a political argument, especially one that's not fatal to the broader argument, I can admit it. Far less embarrassing than pretending I never did. There is a worthwhile discussion to be had here about the limits of who is worthy of honor, but it's hard for people to engage with a sensitive topic when at least some people are moving the goalposts and pretending they didn't. (I haven't read every bit of discussion of this everywhere on the web, only the main articles, but I am sure there are people who did come at this either later or in a more cautious way who were focusing on the broader problem. I'm only saying the cause celebre was probably driven by what appeared to be inflammatory quotes and confusion about his role versus the other undersecretary's.)
Honor people who are exemplary by our time and our own standards of today.
I hate to say this, because it sounds so very bleak, but this is just not possible at even a moderate scale, especially if (as implied here) the standard is not just "didn't actively cooperate in doing bad thing," but "didn't stand up against bad thing done in a group they were an important member of, and it is unclear what they may have actually thought of it." Not when you consider all the possible axes here, and consider that we don't have full evidence for many people we might consider candidates. Hubble himself was a white man born in 1889 with an elite education. The odds that he held no beliefs racist or sexist by the standards of today are almost nil.
It's a compromise, a deeply unsatisfying compromise however you look at it, which is the way it always turns out when grappling with the moral dimension of history. I think the Yale report on renaming buildings sets forth some useful principles to apply, although arguably there should be a somewhat higher bar to clear for new namings. (And I think it's important to recognize that tireless activism pushed through the stripping of the Calhoun name from the residential college there in the 2010s, when the problem had been openly discussed since at least the 1980s, and probably earlier. I am not against renaming, or against outrage towards the outrageous; I am fearful of what happens when insufficient care leads to bad history.)
posted by praemunire at 8:22 AM on December 20, 2022 [3 favorites]
I think atrazine makes a very good argument for why Webb is not a good choice of name for the telescope.
I also think that people who uncritically repeated false statements about Webb are not the right people to make that argument. I definitely formed my opinion on the subject believing what I guess was a rumor that he was some kind of active champion of homophobic policies.
posted by straight at 8:36 AM on December 20, 2022 [4 favorites]
I also think that people who uncritically repeated false statements about Webb are not the right people to make that argument. I definitely formed my opinion on the subject believing what I guess was a rumor that he was some kind of active champion of homophobic policies.
posted by straight at 8:36 AM on December 20, 2022 [4 favorites]
In case it is unclear I didn't mean to imply that atrazine was someone who repeated unsubstantiated things about Webb.
posted by straight at 8:45 AM on December 20, 2022
posted by straight at 8:45 AM on December 20, 2022
I guess the way I think about these things is an an incentive problem? It seems to be correct that it would have taken a man of uncommon bravery and moral foresight to publicly reject the administration-wide push for institutionalized homophobia.
So if we change the name, we’re telling the hyper-ambitious legacy-obsessed administrators of today that if they want their name to be on something big and shiny and expensive in the future, they should do their best to cultivate uncommon bravery and moral foresight. Seems fine to me.
posted by rishabguha at 9:55 AM on December 20, 2022 [5 favorites]
So if we change the name, we’re telling the hyper-ambitious legacy-obsessed administrators of today that if they want their name to be on something big and shiny and expensive in the future, they should do their best to cultivate uncommon bravery and moral foresight. Seems fine to me.
posted by rishabguha at 9:55 AM on December 20, 2022 [5 favorites]
As per usual, you shouldn't trust the NYT on this sort of matter, as one of the people smeared in the article explains at length.
posted by MartinWisse at 10:26 AM on December 20, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by MartinWisse at 10:26 AM on December 20, 2022 [6 favorites]
I guess the way I think about these things is an an incentive problem? It seems to be correct that it would have taken a man of uncommon bravery and moral foresight to publicly reject the administration-wide push for institutionalized homophobia.
So if we change the name, we’re telling the hyper-ambitious legacy-obsessed administrators of today that if they want their name to be on something big and shiny and expensive in the future, they should do their best to cultivate uncommon bravery and moral foresight. Seems fine to me.
It seems to me that there are some difficulties with this logic. If there was such an individual that stood against institutionalized homophobia they would probably have been let go themselves, and there's every chance that we wouldn't know about them now. Or certainly, they wouldn't be well known enough to be considered for an honour such as this. I'm not saying that is fair, just that it reflects how messed up society has been.
posted by trif at 10:52 AM on December 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
So if we change the name, we’re telling the hyper-ambitious legacy-obsessed administrators of today that if they want their name to be on something big and shiny and expensive in the future, they should do their best to cultivate uncommon bravery and moral foresight. Seems fine to me.
It seems to me that there are some difficulties with this logic. If there was such an individual that stood against institutionalized homophobia they would probably have been let go themselves, and there's every chance that we wouldn't know about them now. Or certainly, they wouldn't be well known enough to be considered for an honour such as this. I'm not saying that is fair, just that it reflects how messed up society has been.
posted by trif at 10:52 AM on December 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
Read this with interest, see no evidence that the known facts re: Webb are wrong. Oluseyi did flag a section added to his essay, but I'm not sure when that happened; however, it would have been better practice to identify Prof. Lucy, if that's who he was responding to. If I were taking a depo of NASA, I would definitely ask about the email that referred to "Hakeem"...but without evidence that his facts were wrong, I'm not sure it makes a huge difference. And you can't simultaneously point out that the argument originated with Dan Savage's Stranger article and claim that it was only about "complicity."
I am at a point where I just don't understand the need to double down on the mistakes about the record and as a result get into the weeds of what we might call procedural arguments that are independent of the genuine historical or frankly moral questions. (Saying you screwed up the facts, by the way, is not a personal smear.) Mostly it just makes me want to go back and revamp the humanities education scientists are getting so that they learn to interpret an incomplete set of third-party documents with more care. If you believe that leading a U.S. government agency from about the 1940s through at least the 1970s (1990s if you count til the repeal of the EO) is fatally morally compromising, or at least compromising enough that you don't deserve to have anything named after you, you can make that argument. Whatever else he did, Webb was unquestionably the head of an agency during a time when you could be fired just for being gay, and during his tenure, at least one person was fired for being gay. I think we've seen in these comments alone that this argument is one many people respond to (it goes further than I would, but I understand and respect it; everyone's not going to draw the line in the exact same place). You don't need to cling to false attributions of statements or actions, or speak as though NASA somehow had some unique or unusually aggressive policy about firing gays when there was a federal-government-wide executive order, or act like you didn't make an understandable mistake about the historical record, to do so.
Looking forward to seeing if anything else turns up from the archives, though. Something new can always turn up.
posted by praemunire at 10:56 AM on December 20, 2022
I am at a point where I just don't understand the need to double down on the mistakes about the record and as a result get into the weeds of what we might call procedural arguments that are independent of the genuine historical or frankly moral questions. (Saying you screwed up the facts, by the way, is not a personal smear.) Mostly it just makes me want to go back and revamp the humanities education scientists are getting so that they learn to interpret an incomplete set of third-party documents with more care. If you believe that leading a U.S. government agency from about the 1940s through at least the 1970s (1990s if you count til the repeal of the EO) is fatally morally compromising, or at least compromising enough that you don't deserve to have anything named after you, you can make that argument. Whatever else he did, Webb was unquestionably the head of an agency during a time when you could be fired just for being gay, and during his tenure, at least one person was fired for being gay. I think we've seen in these comments alone that this argument is one many people respond to (it goes further than I would, but I understand and respect it; everyone's not going to draw the line in the exact same place). You don't need to cling to false attributions of statements or actions, or speak as though NASA somehow had some unique or unusually aggressive policy about firing gays when there was a federal-government-wide executive order, or act like you didn't make an understandable mistake about the historical record, to do so.
Looking forward to seeing if anything else turns up from the archives, though. Something new can always turn up.
posted by praemunire at 10:56 AM on December 20, 2022
Okay, I've stewing on this ever since I read this post this morning, but this is an awful post?
It does the typical internet thing of having read one particular article or post that looks plausible, deciding that this is now the truth and not bothering to do any other research into it nor looking at what the opposing side actually said or what their evidence was.
It also fits that slatesque contrarian bias where you can make a seemingly black and white case into something more complicated by focusing on particular details but missing the bigger picture.
Both Oluseyi's original post and the NYT's article on it, by somebody who is neither a historian nor a science correspondent, faik to mention the ongoing feud Oluseyi has with Matthew Francis and Chanda Prescod-Weinstein (note the NYT's article refers to Oluseyi with his title but not her, doesn't refer to her science awards but does mention she's a sub-six figures tweeter and the child of activist parents).
Far from being an objective look into the history of queer persecution under Webb's administration this comes across as white washing and an attempt to punish the people responsible for bringing this up, especially in the case of the NYT's article.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:02 AM on December 20, 2022 [5 favorites]
It does the typical internet thing of having read one particular article or post that looks plausible, deciding that this is now the truth and not bothering to do any other research into it nor looking at what the opposing side actually said or what their evidence was.
It also fits that slatesque contrarian bias where you can make a seemingly black and white case into something more complicated by focusing on particular details but missing the bigger picture.
Both Oluseyi's original post and the NYT's article on it, by somebody who is neither a historian nor a science correspondent, faik to mention the ongoing feud Oluseyi has with Matthew Francis and Chanda Prescod-Weinstein (note the NYT's article refers to Oluseyi with his title but not her, doesn't refer to her science awards but does mention she's a sub-six figures tweeter and the child of activist parents).
Far from being an objective look into the history of queer persecution under Webb's administration this comes across as white washing and an attempt to punish the people responsible for bringing this up, especially in the case of the NYT's article.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:02 AM on December 20, 2022 [5 favorites]
Here's also an earlier piece by Matthew Francis, also responding to the original Oluseyi article and providing links to primary evidence.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:04 AM on December 20, 2022
posted by MartinWisse at 11:04 AM on December 20, 2022
links to primary evidence.
But this looks like more of the same? There's the 6/22/1950 memo and the 1/13/1969 Norton court proceedings. Am I missing something?
posted by mr_roboto at 11:20 AM on December 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
But this looks like more of the same? There's the 6/22/1950 memo and the 1/13/1969 Norton court proceedings. Am I missing something?
posted by mr_roboto at 11:20 AM on December 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
The linked Matthew Francis piece makes the statement: “However, while at State, Webb was also deeply involved in purging LGBTQ+ employees in the name of national security,” but it’s not clear to me what it’s based on. Purely on Webb’s employment at State in the relevant period, or is there anything specific to Webb Francis is relying on that isn’t the original misunderstanding about which undersecretary testified before Congress?
posted by LizardBreath at 11:24 AM on December 20, 2022
posted by LizardBreath at 11:24 AM on December 20, 2022
Hello there. I would like to admit something stupid and embarrassing, for the amusement of all.
Until reading this thread, I believed that the JWST was named for Jim Webb, the former Democratic Senator from Virginia and unsuccessful Presidential candidate. I assumed (wholly without support) that given his political and military career, he was somehow involved with NASA and maybe had helped secure funding for a better space telescope.
I remembered him as being a pretty reasonable guy and so I was surprised to see a thread accusing him of systematic homophobia.
Feel free to point and laugh. I deserve it.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 11:35 AM on December 20, 2022 [6 favorites]
Until reading this thread, I believed that the JWST was named for Jim Webb, the former Democratic Senator from Virginia and unsuccessful Presidential candidate. I assumed (wholly without support) that given his political and military career, he was somehow involved with NASA and maybe had helped secure funding for a better space telescope.
I remembered him as being a pretty reasonable guy and so I was surprised to see a thread accusing him of systematic homophobia.
Feel free to point and laugh. I deserve it.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 11:35 AM on December 20, 2022 [6 favorites]
It does the typical internet thing of having read one particular article or post that looks plausible, deciding that this is now the truth and not bothering to do any other research into it nor looking at what the opposing side actually said or what their evidence was.
It also fits that slatesque contrarian bias where you can make a seemingly black and white case into something more complicated by focusing on particular details but missing the bigger picture.
It's impossible to tell if you're referring here to the original accusation or the current response.
posted by star gentle uterus at 12:14 PM on December 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
It also fits that slatesque contrarian bias where you can make a seemingly black and white case into something more complicated by focusing on particular details but missing the bigger picture.
It's impossible to tell if you're referring here to the original accusation or the current response.
posted by star gentle uterus at 12:14 PM on December 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
This is of course bollocks.
Challenge accepted. I will assume you are objecting to both claims. The first part about misreading the past involves the concept of double-bind, where a space telescope backer, Webb, steered an agency deciding among dozens of directions, but was expected to commit career suicide, therefore no space telescopes at all. Therefore, misread. The second part about misreading the present involves political fundamentalism. I will let Karen Armstrong explain.
Background from Wikipedia:
This leads to the modern period described in part two, “Fundamentalism”, when there was a growing adoption of a literalist interpretation of scripture in the United States, which eventually gave rise to The Fundamentals, a series of 12 volumes refuting modern ideas published shortly before and during the World War I, of which 3 million copies were distributed to every pastor, professor and theological student across America by the largesse of oil millionaires. Though this led to a distinctive ideology, it was not till the 1980s that it emerged as a political force.
In Armstrong's own words:
Human beings, in nearly all cultures, have long engaged in a rather strange activity. They have taken a literary text, given it special status and attempted to live according to its precepts. These texts are usually of considerable antiquity yet they are expected to throw light on situations that their authors could not have imagined. In times of crisis, people turn to their scriptures with renewed zest and, with much creative ingenuity, compel them to speak to their current predicament. We are seeing a great deal of scriptural activity at the moment.
This is ironic, because the concept of scripture has become problematic in the modern period. The Scopes trial of 1925, when Christian fundamentalists in the United States tried to ban the teaching of evolution in the public schools, and the more recent affair of The Satanic Verses, both reveal deep-rooted anxiety about the nature of revelation and the integrity of sacred texts. People talk confidently about scripture, but it is not clear that even the most ardent religious practitioners really know what it is.
Protestant fundamentalists, for example, claim that they read the Bible in the same way as the early Christians, but their belief that it is literally true in every detail is a recent innovation, formulated for the first time in the late 19th century. Before the modern period, Jews, Christians and Muslims all relished highly allegorical interpretations of scripture. The word of God was infinite and could not be tied down to a single interpretation. Preoccupation with literal truth is a product of the scientific revolution, when reason achieved such spectacular results that mythology was no longer regarded as a valid path to knowledge.
Both cases involve mistaking the consequences of misunderstanding a time frame. The latter one is more tricky, because misreading ancient literature is done by using a modern frame to give it literal meaning, therefore misreading the modern time frame.
posted by Brian B. at 12:41 PM on December 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
Challenge accepted. I will assume you are objecting to both claims. The first part about misreading the past involves the concept of double-bind, where a space telescope backer, Webb, steered an agency deciding among dozens of directions, but was expected to commit career suicide, therefore no space telescopes at all. Therefore, misread. The second part about misreading the present involves political fundamentalism. I will let Karen Armstrong explain.
Background from Wikipedia:
This leads to the modern period described in part two, “Fundamentalism”, when there was a growing adoption of a literalist interpretation of scripture in the United States, which eventually gave rise to The Fundamentals, a series of 12 volumes refuting modern ideas published shortly before and during the World War I, of which 3 million copies were distributed to every pastor, professor and theological student across America by the largesse of oil millionaires. Though this led to a distinctive ideology, it was not till the 1980s that it emerged as a political force.
In Armstrong's own words:
Human beings, in nearly all cultures, have long engaged in a rather strange activity. They have taken a literary text, given it special status and attempted to live according to its precepts. These texts are usually of considerable antiquity yet they are expected to throw light on situations that their authors could not have imagined. In times of crisis, people turn to their scriptures with renewed zest and, with much creative ingenuity, compel them to speak to their current predicament. We are seeing a great deal of scriptural activity at the moment.
This is ironic, because the concept of scripture has become problematic in the modern period. The Scopes trial of 1925, when Christian fundamentalists in the United States tried to ban the teaching of evolution in the public schools, and the more recent affair of The Satanic Verses, both reveal deep-rooted anxiety about the nature of revelation and the integrity of sacred texts. People talk confidently about scripture, but it is not clear that even the most ardent religious practitioners really know what it is.
Protestant fundamentalists, for example, claim that they read the Bible in the same way as the early Christians, but their belief that it is literally true in every detail is a recent innovation, formulated for the first time in the late 19th century. Before the modern period, Jews, Christians and Muslims all relished highly allegorical interpretations of scripture. The word of God was infinite and could not be tied down to a single interpretation. Preoccupation with literal truth is a product of the scientific revolution, when reason achieved such spectacular results that mythology was no longer regarded as a valid path to knowledge.
Both cases involve mistaking the consequences of misunderstanding a time frame. The latter one is more tricky, because misreading ancient literature is done by using a modern frame to give it literal meaning, therefore misreading the modern time frame.
posted by Brian B. at 12:41 PM on December 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
As a government employee, this is making my head hurt. I have to pass a security clearance for my job, and the first time I was investigated, the FBI discovered that I (gasp) lived with someone without benefit of marriage. The agent asked me if I could be blackmailed and I must have given him a look of absolute incredulity, because he shut up and cleared me. But my point is that it's not his fault or my fault, or my boss's fault (since he would have had to acquiesce to me being fired over this- nothing he said could have stopped it); it's our society's collective fault, and we can try every day to change that. And, obviously, stop reflexively naming things after people. There's no law!
That's why the Mars Rovers are so endearing. Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity, and Perseverance.
posted by acrasis at 2:10 PM on December 20, 2022 [4 favorites]
That's why the Mars Rovers are so endearing. Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity, and Perseverance.
posted by acrasis at 2:10 PM on December 20, 2022 [4 favorites]
MartinWisse, as I made clear in my comment, I share your skepticism of Powell (the NYTimes author). He's got an agenda, and his "reporting" is often bad faith. But that doesn't mean everything he writes is 100% wrong. Like others have already pointed out, the only "evidence" anyone has yet to dig up (including the pieces you've shared) doesn't prove what people have suggested it does.
And again, the historian who wrote The Lavender Scare thinks calls to rename the telescope are misguided/miss the bigger picture. Presumably he's looked through way more primary sources here than any of the other people involved.
posted by coffeecat at 2:23 PM on December 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
And again, the historian who wrote The Lavender Scare thinks calls to rename the telescope are misguided/miss the bigger picture. Presumably he's looked through way more primary sources here than any of the other people involved.
posted by coffeecat at 2:23 PM on December 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
The Royal Astronomical Society has an update.
posted by edd at 8:03 AM on December 22, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by edd at 8:03 AM on December 22, 2022 [1 favorite]
So why [i]was[/i] it named after this dude, if he was just a middling bureaucrat? What was the naming supposed to inspire?
It could have been named after him by a reactionary type. General Lee didn't want any statues of himself....
posted by eustatic at 6:07 PM on December 22, 2022
It could have been named after him by a reactionary type. General Lee didn't want any statues of himself....
posted by eustatic at 6:07 PM on December 22, 2022
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This thread is necessary linkage as are probably others I'm sure will be caught up upon.
Also it may be Prof P-W in which case my apologies. Certainly if I was in charge it'd be Prof. But I've not kept up on her career.
posted by edd at 3:26 PM on December 19, 2022 [3 favorites]