The strongest space telescope at present in operation will retain its controversial title.
The James Webb Space Telescope launched in December 2021 amid requires the observatory to be renamed. The observatory was named in 2002 after authorities bureaucrat James Webb, who served because the second administrator of NASA throughout the Sixties. But opponents of the title argue that Webb persecuted individuals identified or suspected to belong to the LGBTQ+ group. Now, NASA has concluded an investigation into Webb’s function in what’s been dubbed the Lavender Scare, and the company has determined to depart his title on the $10 billion telescope.
“To date, no available evidence directly links Webb to any actions or follow-up related to the firing of individuals for their sexual orientation,” the report reads. “Based on the available evidence, the agency does not plan to change the name of the James Webb Space Telescope,” NASA officers wrote in a statement asserting the report.
Gallery: James Webb Space Telescope’s 1st photos
As early as spring 2021, astronomers have been elevating issues about Webb’s document; by September, a petition calling for a new name for the observatory was gathering signatures. At the tip of September, present NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the company wouldn’t change the title. In March of this 12 months, with the telescope safely in orbit, paperwork concerning the investigation obtained by means of freedom of data insurance policies and released by the journal Nature (opens in new tab) reinvigorated the talk. In April, NASA officers mentioned that their investigations into Webb’s document have been continuing; since then, consideration has centered on the science the observatory is already conducting.
In a statement launched Friday (Nov. 18), NASA officers exonerate Webb whereas condemning broader federal authorities actions within the Fifties throughout what known as the “Lavender Scare” in a nod to the intertwined however higher remembered “Red Scare” persecution of suspected communist supporters that started in 1950. The Lavender Scare included a surge in discrimination in opposition to and persecution of presidency workers who have been suspected of being what one 1950 doc cited within the report known as “homosexuals and other moral perverts.”
“For decades, discrimination against LGBTQI+ federal employees was not merely tolerated, it was shamefully promoted by federal policies,” Nelson mentioned within the new assertion. “The Lavender Scare that took place following World War II is a painful part of America’s story and the struggle for LGBTQI+ rights.”
The full report, available online, runs 87 pages, about half of which is crammed by photos of historic paperwork dubbed “key evidence.” In addition, an government abstract states that, as a part of the investigation, NASA Chief Historian Brian Odom consulted “thousands of documents” whereas an unidentified exterior historian contracted to the mission “survey[ed] over 50,000 pages covering the period from 1949-1969.”
Webb served as NASA’s second administrator from 1961 to 1968, main the company because it feverishly labored to execute the Apollo program and land astronauts on the moon in 1969. But the function wasn’t his first in authorities; he spent a number of years with the Treasury, then joined the Department of State as an undersecretary of state in 1949, a job he held till 1952 — therefore the two-decade vary of the examined paperwork.
Opponents of the observatory’s title have argued that Webb was complicit within the Lavender Scare throughout each appointments. The investigation appears to have interrogated Webb’s document extra narrowly. “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+ employees from the federal workforce,” the manager abstract begins.
Peering into the previous
As detailed within the report, the investigation into Webb’s actions centered on a pair of conferences Webb attended in 1950 and the 1963 firing of a NASA finances analyst named Clifford Norton.
The report’s authors studied occasions and paperwork courting again to early 1950, as the federal government started pursuing perceived safety dangers in its ranks; leaders on the time regarded sexual orientation as a danger issue, partially due to issues about blackmail. In June, Webb attended two key conferences: one with President Harry Truman and one with U.S. Sen. Clyde Roark Hoey (D-North Carolina).
Before discussing these incidents, the report provides an in depth historical past of the six months prior, focusing significantly on the actions of John Peurifoy, then the deputy undersecretary of state for administration, which was the third-ranking job within the division in keeping with his New York Times obituary.
Peurifoy was one in every of two officers main the division’s inside safety program, in keeping with the report. He additionally served because the division’s consultant to the infamous committee led by Hoey devoted to investigating the “problem” of “the employment of homosexuals and other sex perverts in government.”
The report paints Peurifoy as a pacesetter within the anti-LGBTQ+ actions of the division’s management till his departure in August 1950 and notes that the State Department had concluded the Hoey Committee would have restricted entry to its secretary and undersecretary .
“Because of this, it is a sound conjecture that Webb played little role in the matter, from either an administrative or philosophical perspective, beyond the June 28, 1950, meeting with Senator Hoey,” the report states, including that the investigation did not discover any paperwork that tied Webb to the committee.
“Based upon the available evidence, Webb’s main involvement was in attempting to limit Congressional access to the personnel records of the Department of State,” the report states of the June 28 assembly. “During that meeting, Webb did pass along to Senator Hoey ‘some material on the subject [of homosexuality] which [Carlisle] Humelsine of State had prepared.’ None of the evidence found links Webb to actions emerging from this discussion.”
The different assembly analyzed throughout the investigation occurred a few week prior; the report argues that assembly allowed Truman and Webb to strategize about how to answer the committee with out ceding energy from the White House to Congress.
Time at NASA
The ultimate incident analyzed within the new report is the 1963 firing of NASA finances analyst Clifford Norton. The report lays out that the D.C. “Moral Squad” noticed Norton and one other man, who individually drove to Norton’s car parking zone. The different man advised the police that Norton had “‘felt his leg’ and extended an invitation to his apartment.”
Both males have been arrested and introduced in for questioning; Norton denied making advances on the opposite man. But the pinnacle of the Moral Squad known as the NASA Security Chief, who questioned Norton once more individually and fired him. Norton later sued for wrongful termination; the courtroom present in his favor in 1969, after Webb had left the company.
“The action against Norton was, as mentioned by his boss Robert F. Garbarini, ‘custom within the agency’ at the time he was fired,” the report states. “Numerous research efforts of NASA History archival collections, those at the National Archives, and related repositories have turned over no direct evidence that Webb ever knew anything about Norton’s firing from the agency, as the action taken against Norton was consistent with civil service policy.”
The report ends with an outline of the archives Odom and others consulted throughout the course of, in addition to photos of a few of the paperwork included.
Both the 1950 conferences and the Norton case have been introduced by these against honoring Webb as incidents of complicity. The memos he handed to Hoey fed the Lavender Scare, some say, and Puerifoy would not have acted as he did had his superiors, Webb included, objected; equally, the 1963 incident would have performed out in another way if Webb opposed Norton’s firing, some argue.
Some additionally posit that, relating to an honor as prestigious as having a world-class observatory named for a historic determine, that individual ought to meet the next normal than there merely not being any proof to sentence him.
Others disagree about how a lot duty Webb bears. University of South Florida historian David Johnson, who wrote a e book concerning the Lavender Scare, says that condemning Webb ignores the context of the time and the pressure of the federal government’s anti-LGBTQ+ marketing campaign, estimating that 5,000 to 10,000 federal workers have been fired over the course of the Lavender Scare.
“It was routine, it was a standard government policy. There was no way that Webb could have intervened and said, ‘No, we’re not going to fire this gay person,'” he advised Space.com throughout an interview within the spring. The identical premise holds for Webb’s time on the State Department: “They weren’t standing up and saying gay people should have equal rights, because nobody was saying that in 1950, including gay people,” he mentioned.
“If we’re going to fault James Webb for the Lavender Scare, we would have to change the names of a lot of things and a lot of buildings,” he mentioned, highlighting NASA’s Johnson and Kennedy space facilities. “None of these people were particularly active in persecuting homosexuals, but just like Webb, they were there when this policy was in effect.”
Odom pointed to the identical conundrum in an electronic mail written in March 2021 and launched this spring. “Recommendation: Don’t change the name at this point. Stop naming things after people [he says half joking],” he wrote.
Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or comply with her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
