The first images from the James Webb Space Telescope are amazing. With its deep infrared eyes, the telescope illuminates regions of the Universe with a clarity never before possible.
The telescope is a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. More than 300 universities, companies, space agencies and organizations are participating.
With emotion, it’s easy to forget that the Webb telescope has been the subject of controversy. It is named after a NASA administrator who has been associated with the pursuit of queer people in the “Lavender Scare” of the 50s and 60s.
Who was James E. Webb?
James Edwin Webb was born in 1906 in North Carolina. He graduated with a degree in education and law, and spent time in the U.S. Marine Corps.
He held a senior position in the State Department from 1949 until the early 1950s.
In 1961, US President John F. Kennedy appointed Webb as administrator of NASA, the second since the agency was established in 1958.
In this role, he was responsible for the Apollo program to land humans on the moon. He was very successful in lobbying for congressional support, and also navigated NASA through the difficult aftermath of an incident in which three Apollo 1 astronauts lost their lives in a fire. from capsule to ground.
James Webb, Wernher von Braun and Kurt Debus at a Kennedy Space Center in 1964. NASA
Webb pushed for science to be prioritized in the Cold War environment, where every space mission was a political tool. He also promoted “psychological warfare” (or propaganda).
Webb left NASA in 1968, before Apollo 11 flew to the moon. He later served on various advisory boards and was involved with the Smithsonian Institution, the United States’ flagship group of museums, schools, and research. He died in 1992.
What was the “Lavender Scare”?
During the Cold War, Western capitalist democracies feared communist infiltration. This became known as the “Red Scare”. The “Lavender Fright” was intertwined with this paranoia.
Proponents of these ideas argued that because of the social stigma associated with their sexuality, LGBTQ + people were at risk of being blackmailed into becoming Soviet spies. Since the late 1940s, under the influence of Republican politician Joseph McCarthy, LGBTQ + people were expelled from the U.S. government occupation.
The exact role of Webb in Lavender Scare is much debated. Several astronomers asking to change the name of the telescope have observed that Webb (while in the State Department) was involved in high-level meetings on Lavender Scare policies.
In a Scientific American article last year, authors led by cosmologist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein wrote:
Records clearly show that Webb planned and participated in meetings during which he delivered homophobic material. There is no evidence that he chose to defend the humanity of the persecuted.
But according to a 2021 Nature article:
David Johnson, a University of South Florida historian in Tampa who wrote the 2004 book The Lavender Scare, says he knows of no evidence that Webb led or instigated the persecution. Webb attended a White House meeting on the threat allegedly posed by gay people, but the context of the meeting was to contain the hysteria members of Congress were causing. “I don’t see him having any leadership role in Lavender Scare,” Johnson says.
Is it better for Webb to passively enact policies rather than lead the persecution? Other government departments actively opposed the investigation and dismissal of LGBTQ + employees.
Echoes of controversy
Space instruments are usually appointed through a consultation process, often with the public invited to contribute their ideas. It is also not uncommon for spaceship names to be changed. For example, the 1991 Gamma Ray Observatory was named after physicist Arthur Holly Compton after its launch.
The name of the Webb telescope was chosen by NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe in 2002.
NASA’s official response to the controversy is that “at this time there is no evidence to justify changing the name of the telescope.”
Whatever Webb’s role in Lavender Scare, the question for some observers seems to boil down to whether he was personally homophobic.
Framing the subject in this way has echoes of another controversy: the complicity of the German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun in the Third Reich.
Von Braun, who was a member of the Nazi Party and an officer in the SS, played a key role in the U.S. space program.
Today, NASA mentions von Braun’s Nazi past on its website. But space historian Michael J. Neufeld says “his Nazi record was not widely known until after his death.”
Many excuse von Braun’s political loyalty by arguing that he only wanted to launch rockets into space.
Where from here?
The James Webb Space Telescope is a touchstone for the problems that have arisen in recent times.
For example, there has been a backlash against the commemoration of colonial “heroes” who perpetrated violence against natives and slaves, leading to the demolition of statues around the world.
Some denounce the idea of inclusion as the last to “wake up”. Others argue that maintaining historical barriers to participation in science, based on race, class, gender, and disability, means we lose potential talent.
Science is meant to be objective and not prejudiced. In reality, scientists and scientific administrators are people like any other, with their own ideologies and flaws.
The question is whether we judge them by the standards of their time or those we have today.
In the end, perhaps we should remember that the 1967 Outer Space Treaty proclaims that space belongs to all of humanity.
Alice Gorman, Associate Professor of Archeology and Space Studies, Flinders University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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