Astronomers are clapping back at NASA's claims that the leader of the agency's new space telescope was aware of gay government purges.
In the agency's press release, Bill Nelson was quoted as saying, "After an extensive search of U.S. government and Truman library archives, NASA's historical investigation found that there was no evidence to link the project to any actions or follow up."
In their own statement, which follows a 2021 Scientific American editorial and numerous other calls urging NASA to rename the telescope, astronomy experts Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, Lucianne Walkowicz, Sarah Tuttle and BrianNord are calling shenanigans.
"NASA's press release utilizes a practice of selective historical reading," the open letter reads, pointing to the agency's insistence that the original Webb was unaware of the firing of CliffordNorton, a NASA budget analyst who was canned in 1963. He was the head of NASA.
If you think about it, it makes sense that he was aware of the institutionalized homophobia in a way that didn't survive in existing documentation, or that he wasn't aware of a key dynamic at the workplace. The two options are not flattering.
"Because we don't know of a piece of paper that explicitly says 'James', they assume he didn't," the experts wrote. The administrator of NASA should be aware if his chief of security is extra judicially interrogating people.
The implication that managers are not responsible for homophobia or other forms of discrimination that happens on their watch puts responsibility on the most marginalized people.
The astronomer said that NASA is engaging in historical cherry picking with a figure who was, along with the state-sanctioned homophobia that occurred on his watch, accused of engaging in Cold War-era "psychological warfare"
The astronomer wrote in Scientific American that telescopes should be named after those who came before them and led the way to freedom.
NASA dropped a stunning new image of a star being born.
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