James Webb, former Undersecretary of State and NASA Administrator. Courtesy NASA
by James C. Sherlock
In WokeWorld, research will result in fierce attacks if it does not align with the “narrative.”
Even if that research is by George Mason professor and astrophysicist Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi, who is president of the National Society of Black Physicists.
The New York Times, in an article by free speech and expression reporter Michael Powell, tells the story.
Since 2015, there has been a legend accepted by many in the scientific community that James Webb, former NASA Administrator, was a homophobe. That story drove relentless and, happily, failed efforts to have the space telescope renamed.
The efforts failed for the seemingly simple reason that the story is false.
But the left won’t let it go.
Dr. Oluseyi reported in 2021 that there was no evidence that Mr. Webb, a champion of civil rights who took on George Wallace while NASA chief, was guilty of the homophobe charge. In fact, his penetrating research showed that it was a case of mistaken identity.
Dr. Oluseyi was instantly subjected to relentless, organized abuse that continues to this day.
Mr. Powell’s story explores both sides of the issue. He found that:
this was not just a battle over history, but a battle reflecting modern times, which is to say it has been deeply contentious and personal, leading to angry accusations among warring scientists.
Indeed.
But science has nothing to do with it.
Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi. Credit TED.
Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi. From his inspiring biography, we learn that
Dr. Oluseyi worked with the 2011 Nobel Prize winning Supernova Cosmology Project, developing detectors for a planned space-based telescope that will investigate the nature of the dark energy that is accelerating the universe’s expansion.
Today, he is a member of the team developing the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), which is America’s top priority observatory. He has worked on developing the LSST’s camera and is developing programs for analyzing the data it will collect.
George Mason is lucky to have him.
James Webb. Webb was Under Secretary of State in the late 1940s, perhaps the most momentous and productive period in American foreign policy from the end of World War II until today. He was subsequently the head of NASA who led the quest to put American astronauts on the moon and for whom the remarkable NASA space telescope is named.
Wikipedia on Webb. Dr. Oluseyi was curious about the story, enflamed in part by text inserted into Webb’s Wikipedia page, that Mr. Webb was a homophobe.
Dr. Oluseyi’s findings. Dr. Oluseyi published his deeply sourced findings on the matter in January of 2021:
I can say conclusively that there is zero evidence that Webb is guilty of the (homophobic) allegations against him.
Rather than exposing a bigot — as Webb was described in two popular articles reporting this story in 2015 — my research suggests that the purveyors of these allegations wrongly accused an innocent man who was, among more well-known achievements, a hero of diversity and inclusion in American government. He worked with Lyndon Johnson and John F. Kennedy to use NASA facilities in America’s southern states to promote racial integration and equal opportunity in employment.
His research revealed that Mr. Webb’s critics blamed the wrong man.
Wrongly convicting one innocent person is also an immense injustice. The layers of failure that led to this misattribution of appalling behavior to James Webb, which has persisted for a decade and a half, are themselves appalling. This entire episode represents an example of shoddy investigative rigor from both scientific scholars and journalists. They all should have known better and they all should have done better.
But that report didn’t fit the progressive narrative.
Oluseyi has been fiercely attacked by a progressive academic (sorry for the redundancy) mob every day since.
Sort-of-Scientific American. The response is exemplified in an op-ed in Scientific American in March of 2021. The author self-describes as “an assistant professor of physics and a core faculty member in women’s and gender studies at the University of New Hampshire.”
That article is part of Scientific American’s “Sexuality, Gender and Justice” series. Another cultural icon fallen to the left.
Scientific-as-long-as-it-furthers-the-narrative American would perhaps take up too much room on the masthead.
NASA’s Investigation. The Times reports that in November of this year, NASA’s chief historian issued an 89-page report. That report echoed Dr. Oluseyi’s findings that the accusations against Mr. Webb were, in fact, attributable to a different person at the State Department while Webb was there. A person who did not work for Webb and had a completely different portfolio.
Once more into the breach. That only accelerated the attacks. An example of the thoughtfulness of those attacks:
We can’t just exonerate a dead white guy who was in the thick of a repressive government.
The NASA report was dismissed out of hand by critics who admitted they had not even read it. There was apparently no need if one was a true believer.
Bottom line. But read the Times story. In fact, read all of the linked articles.
They will offer an object lesson, if another one is needed, on the mindless yet relentless cannibalism of the woke mob.
