Thread by @adamspacemann

Right, so let's talk about James Webb. It's a big and complicated story and maybe, like me, you've been mainly following it through headlines. Maybe you'd like to think about it more deeply now and consider why we should #renameJWST. For you, a thread 🧵: scientificamerican.com/article/new-re…

But first, I need to thank all the folks who spoke to me so cogently and passionately last week on this topic (some taking time out of their weekends), including @RocketToLulu, @IBJIYONGI, @bsgaudi, @yaoyuanmao, @johannateske, and others. You are all stellar!

I also have to thank @alexwitze for being a real journalist and staying on this story and providing us with this treasure trove of emails via FOIA. I'm entirely riding on her coattails here. media.nature.com/original/magaz…

Plus great thanks to my excellent editor @LeeBillings for coming to me with the story, trusting my execution of it, and helping see it through to publication

I think we need to start with the Lavender Scare. I know this fucked up country has done a lot of fucked up things in its past, and here's yet another one, but this little episode hasn't really gotten all the attention it deserves

The Lavender Scare was a period from roughly the 1940s to 60s when homosexual employees of the federal government were systematically targeted, surveilled, harassed, and illegally fired. archives.gov/publications/p…

"Somewhere between 5,000 and tens of thousands of gay workers lost their jobs... Some faced continued unemployment or underemployment, exclusion from their professions, financial strain or even ruin, and considerable emotional distress. Suicide was not uncommon."

Imagine you wake up one day and have been publicly outed and fired by the US State Department. Your family knows, your life is in shambles, and all because of something that was entirely out of your control—who you happen be attracted to and love.

James Webb was number two at the US State Department during the Lavender Scare. That's honestly the ballgame right there. Unless NASA can find evidence that Webb actively worked as hard as he could to stop all these firings (and they can't because he didn't), that's kind of it

The most damning email in my opinion is on pg 301 to 307 in the FOIA documents: media.nature.com/original/magaz…, where a redacted person who identifies themselves as an intern in the NASA history office lays out the case against Webb quite well.

"That Webb played a leadership position in the Lavender Scare is undeniable," they write. And then again later, just in case we didn't get the point: "I
have not been able to find any credible sources that dispute that Webb played a leadership role in the Lavender Scare....

"To the contrary, the rigorous, scholarly, and peer-reviewed materials about that time--including archival records--quite explicitly situate Webb as playing a leadership role in the Lavender Scare firings as early as 1950."

This same person goes on to explain exactly why keeping Webb's name on the telescope is harmful "The name of such a facility will be bound to hundreds, if not thousands of people’s careers. The name will be tied to their data, their findings papers, and their press releases."

"Additionally, as we have seen with the Hubble Deep Field in Ursa Major, the name of the telescope may even end up tied to regions of the sky... keeping Webb's name on the telescope may send a message of exclusion, especially to LGBTQ NASA employees"

You have to remember that, for astronomers, getting a telescope named after you is one of the highest honors. Like, we only do that for people we really, really think deserve to float among the stars.

Furthermore, much like there are NASA Hubble fellows and Spitzer fellows, one day there's going to be Webb fellows. Can you imagine a queer astronomer being totally happy and joyful to receive a fellowship with the name of somebody who worked to exclude people like them?

The case of Clifford Norton (who was fired for suspicion of being gay while Webb was head of NASA) is especially smh-ing. NASA Security Chief Fugler kept Norton in the office until 6 am, interrogating him about his sex life: law.justia.com/cases/federal/…

You can say that Webb was a complicated person, a man of his time, and none of us are perfect but, as @bsgaudi told me "We’re naming a telescope for people now, and we should be following the morals that we believe in now."

Also as @bsgaudi said to me: "People have said he [Webb] was a champion of diversity, but that’s actually kind of worse. It means he was aware of diversity issues, but he didn’t agree that queer people should be part of that group."

Another choice quote from @yaoyuanmao that didn't make it into the article: "There are literally millions of people who have done something great, and we have one new space telescope."

Furthermore, to paraphrase @RocketToLulu: You can’t give credit to Webb for putting people on the moon and then say it doesn’t count when it comes to firing queer employees.

The real problem for me is that the emails very clearly show NASA struggling with this whole issue when the answer was given to them time and again. "It’s like they were looking for some picture of James Webb kicking a queer person" - @bsgaudi

The agency can chose not to rename the telescope but, as @IBJIYONGI suggested, they should then have a section on every single JWST website that discusses why that was a mistake. "If we’re doing the history of galaxies, then we should also be doing the history of humanity."

Right now, not that many people outside the astronomy community know the name of the telescope (go ahead, ask your friends). But one day this telescope is going to be as famous as Hubble. Everybody knows Hubble. My mom knows Hubble.

NASA could take the opportunity to say, look, we're sorry, we made a mistake, and just figure out a new name. The longer they wait, the worse the problem will be.

The cost of changing the name seems negligible. NASA changes the names of things all the time. The speed with which everyone started using "Nancy Grace Roman" and "Vera Rubin" shows that it's not a huge burden.

Already, teams are having discussions on how they will refer to the telescope in their papers, how to address the issue, etc. That's time they could be doing something else, like for instance, actual science. So there are costs to not renaming JWST as well.

But really, NASA needs to do this or else risk having a permanent and lasting impact on their relationship with the queer astrophysics community. As @nadiamdrake and others have reported, the agency isn't doing so hot with LGBTQ+ issues right now scientificamerican.com/article/nasa-c…

What else can I say at this point? I don't know if this convinces you that we should #RenameJWST but I hope that at least it's given you some things to consider and chew over.

Also, just adding in that since this person was able to find all this evidence and scholarship quite easily, it means anyone else at NASA could have done so at any time had they wanted to.