Curious Reads: Cancellation Wars

Woke NASA, the James Webb Telescope, and "Presentism"

#1 Today’s “top of the fold” story is about fact versus fiction.

That is, we’re talking about the controversy of naming NASA’s new high-powered telescope.

For years, James E. Webb had been accused by astronomers of harming his LGBTQ+ employees during his tenure at the space agency. And when one black astrophysicist decided to look into it, he discovered there was nothing in the accusations after all.

But when he went public with his research, the dissenters came after him instead.

You can read or listen to this NYT story I can’t get out of my head. Read (behind a paywall) or listen to the story from The New York Times’ “The Daily” podcast (free).

The Highlights:

The story revolves around two main characters. The first is a black NASA astrophysicist Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi.

He had heard from other BIPOC astronomer acquaintances that there was some hubub around naming the telecscope after James E. Webb, with accusations that he had participated in NASA’s “lavender scare” (a corollary of McCar…