Getting Physicists to Invest in Caring, Not Killing: Who Takes Responsibility?

I. And you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?

For eight and a half years now, I have ridden the tide of ample funding for “basic” research in physics and astronomy. From the well-funded Harvard Physics Department and the mostly Federally funded Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, MA to the National Science Foundation-funded Research Experience for Undergraduates hosted in the summers at the University of Chicago Department of Physics, I’ve never been wanting for funding to engage in research. By the time I was a twenty year old baccalaureate, I had cleaned up raw images of supernovae taken by Hubble, built a component for the Tevatron at Fermilab, observed masers (lasers in the radio frequencies) with the Very Large Array (featured in the film “Contact”), built lasers for Lene Hau’s slow-light experiments, assisted in the development of a theory about extrasolar planetary atmospheres and studied the structure of Active Galactic Nuclei (thought to be home to the universe’s most massive black holes).

In 2003, I arrived at UC Santa Cruz to begin a Phd in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, and the department seemed to have more research money than students to give it to. There was an amazing array of research areas to choose from, all lead by top faculty in their respective fields. As far as I was concerned, I was in the money. But, I learned quickly that one cannot always assume that the money comes from savoury sources. During the introductory research tutorial, one faculty member bragged to us neophytes that one of the observatories managed at Santa Cruz would soon have a planet-finding telescope. How did they get the start-up money for it? He proudly told us, “We piggy-backed on one of Bush’s post-9/11 defense bills.” I am willing to concede that at least the money isn’t going to be spent on Iraq or Afghanistan. Still, it was hard for me to understand taking pride in a victory that was essentially shared with George Bush’s war machine.

This is not the only way Santa Cruz has touches bases with that realm. UCSC manages all of the University of California’s Observatories (UCO), including the Keck and Lick telescopes, which have been testing grounds for the civilian use of a military technology: adaptive optics (AO). Thanks to AO, ground-based telescopes can be just as powerful as the Hubble Space Telescope. UC Santa Cruz is now the headquarters of the National Science Foundation-funded Center for Adaptive Optics (CfAO), which has ties to Lawrence Livermore National Lab, a facility with a long history of weapons building. These ties are more than informal-–at least one member of the CfAO faculty has a cross appointment at Livermore. In essence, the continued development of AO is now a joint venture between civilian and military scientists.

Does that mean that we should stop doing research in adaptive optics? This is a question I was forced to ask as, more than once, astronomers from my department clashed with campus anti-war activists over the CfAO. I was caught in the middle. I grew up in a household where we did not watch GI Joe or play with guns because having the power to take someone’s life is not a game and not to be glorified. In February 1991, my family was outside of the Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles, protesting Bush Sr.’s Gulf War. On September 13, 2001, I was sitting in Phillips Brooks House, home to all community service organizations at Harvard, discussing how to oppose impending US military aggression against Afghanistan. On a cold day in March 2003, I spoke to thousands of people at Government Center in Boston about my opposition to the newly-begun war in Iraq. There is no question that I have consistently stood for investing in caring instead of killing.

And so had many of the astronomers around me. Conversation on the grad student e-mail list regularly turned to how strongly we felt that the wars, both of them, were wrong, to how strongly we all disliked Bush and how immensely dreadful America’s response to the fall of the Twin Towers was. The faculty were no different. At the daily morning coffee break, they regularly expressed their fears and anxieties about what was happening. In effect, these people were not (and are not) warmongers. They weren’t in a rush to “shock and awe the A-rabs.” They were people who loved looking up at night and being able to tell a true story about what they saw, people who thought lasers were fascinating, people who had an intuitive relationship with optics. Additionally, the vast majority of them were people who loved sharing this vision with the outside world: the CfAO’s extensive outreach programs from elementary school through undergraduate are impressive and well-supported by both grads and faculty in the Astronomy Department.

Naively, it seems like these are the sort of people we should celebrate: people who show passion for understanding the natural world and a desire to spread that joy and the hope that comes with understanding how small and insignificant and precious and unique we all are as a race and as individuals. But the activists had a point. The CfAO was a grey zone. Much as the astronomers might prefer their research to be entirely civilian and entirely useless to the military, most likely that isn’t the case.

Another tough lesson that I had to learn about funding was that it’s damn hard to get some if you’re not doing research that is considered “useful.” Although I’ve developed a sensibility about its meaning, the interpretation of the word in physics and astronomy research remains ambiguous. It seems to follow the tide of Congressional opinion about what should be supported. Traditionally this has meant research that it is in the “National Interest” to support. This is considered to be research that either:

A. gets us ahead by making us look cool in the reignited Cold War (a rhetoric now being applied to competition with China, and to some extent, the EU,) or

B. enhances our military prowess through better surveillance, better weapons, better planes, etc.

II. And we may ask ourselves, my God! What have we done?

It’s impossible to talk about either option without mentioning the hideous blight on human history that is the atomic bomb and the Manhattan Project. In the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the awesome power of physicists to radically impact the world was recognized. The National Science Foundation (NSF), a Federal agency, was founded to provide funding for research in the “National Interest.” Because it had become clear that high energy physicists could provide their nation with new weapons, an infusion of money via the Department of Energy went into research on high energy physics. These researches lead us to tremendous developments in particle physics, thus contributing to our fundamental understanding of the universe.

The number of people (well, white men mostly) earning PhDs in physics swelled. Groups like the JASONS were formed by Manhattan project scientists and the Department of Defense, and physicists became an integral part of the state apparatus. Simultaneously, the Cold War raged on and astronomers found a deep well of funding in the newly formed National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Terrified that the Soviets might get to take over space first, the Eisenhower administration threw money at the space program. We’ve all heard about the space race, so I won’t get into the details. Needless to say, forty years later, the NSF and NASA are funding giants.

I hope at this stage the picture is becoming clear. The history of funding in physics and astronomy is fundamentally tied to the history of what Eisenhower termed the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC). And so far, I have talked about it in fairly calm, unaffected terms. This is something that we are trained to do in the academy, particularly in the sciences.

Still, what I have written about here is a highly emotional issue, not just for science’s victims but for scientists as well, one that I have shed many tears over. One that I have crawled into bed afraid to pick up my textbooks over. When I was ten, I knew that scientists had the potential to do evil, but I couldn’t help getting the Call. In the same way that some people must paint and others must play music, I just have to understand the amazing fact of this elegant relationship between mathematical descriptions and the reality of our world. For me it has remained a child-like love, and this is in part what has caused me tremendous pain.

Struggling with this has made me realize that the question, at this stage anyway, isn’t whether science is evil, but how the people doing it choose to use it. And that comes back to a question of values and choices. I’d like to think that if I were given the option of building an atomic weapon and never doing physics again, I’d quit. But I’m different: my parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents were all activists. I grew up thinking in fairly anti-capitalist terms, believing that nothing ever comes before people.

I learned something about this way of thinking, though. Generally speaking, it isn’t welcomed in the physics community. I receive accusations of being unfocused because faculty know I spend my free time on social justice struggles. My friends who go rock climbing or skiing in their free time don’t hear the same messages. I’ve been asked what is more important: my work with the National Society of Black Physicists or my research? Honestly, this is a crazy question. But to the world of physics, I am not cut out to be a physicist because I think it’s a crazy question.

In other words, the physics community frequently weeds out the “carers”, the people who place value on caring above all else. This is probably one reason it is doing worse than almost any other field at gender and ethnic integration. This is also another reason that it is so easy for physicists to be recruited into the defense industry. We are taught that to be successful means we put our conscience down, that we let our role as guardians for each other and humanity take a back seat.

The few exceptions to this rule are the ones physics couldn’t ignore. Albert Einstein was an ardent anti-racism activist who could safely speak out because he was a Nobel Laureate who had made profound contributions to fundamental physics. But most of us won’t do something that stands out as strongly as relativity did. Does that mean we are not allowed to have a conscience? Many will be watching closely to find out what the answer is in the area of optical engineering where Paul Cottle recently quit his job because he objects to the sale of his Canadian-owned employer to a US-based arms maker responsible for weapons such as the infamous cluster bomb.

III. And you may ask yourself, where does this highway go?

Okay, so what is my point? My point is that as long as the funding for physics and astronomy is tied to the MIC, there will be a problem. And there will be physicists who love their physics and have learned that to succeed, they must love it above humanity. This comes back to my story about the astronomers at the Center for Adaptive Optics. The activists who gave them a hard time might have had a point, but they failed to understand one related to it: people are stuck in this funding system. What has the anti-war movement done to help us out? Physicists have always been forced into a black or white position: either you are doing something awful, or you are giving up your passion. Why does it have to be either/or? What if the people pursuing quantum mechanics had just quit? You might not be reading this blog on a computer. Yet physicists are often targeted, with little understanding about the political and economic context in which they develop and work.

Right now, the funding model for physics (in the US) is inextricably tied to its ability to create weapons of mass destruction (which so far have only been used by the US). But, please remember that it is so much more than that. It is an inspiration. People love to hear about the cosmos, and they love the glory of having specialists, scientists, who work painstakingly to find out the details and relay them back to the rest of humanity. Those of you who are old enough will remember Carl Sagan’s TV series “Cosmos,” which was watched by tens of millions of people when it first aired. Humans just want to connect to the cosmos, even if it’s not what they think about every day, all day. Moreover, physics inspires the youth who become our engineers, the people who build the world around us.

I am honored to be part of this process of discovery and to be one of those tasked with “bringing home the physics bacon.” This is why I am writing to you, as a physicist, to ask for help. We need more no-strings-attached funding. Help us push to fund science for the reasons that you care, not the reasons that George Bush and Dick Cheney care. Organize to direct civilian funding to groups like the National Society of Black Physicists, so that they are in a position to choose not to take support from the CIA, FBI, and US Military without having to cut back on their services. In other words, claim physics for the people!

Obviously, physicists also need to start taking responsibility. In the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, many came together to form what has become the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which sought to keep an eye on the destructive impact of physics. But this legacy of social commitment is forgotten history in our community. Remembering is crucial, as is doing more. It’s important to ensure that the Paul Cottles of the world feel safe standing up to the war machine and saying no. This means that faculty are responsible for not only teaching physics to budding physicists, but also for reminding them of their ethical duty. As my father said to me at my college graduation, “You’ve been given a lot of power. Now, use it properly.” It’s time for all of us to admit the power we have in the state and military apparati and use it to make peace, not war.

Moreover, science education needs an adrenaline shot. We ought to value our duty to communicate and share with the non-specialist public, to follow in the footsteps of great humanists like Carl Sagan. We need to start looking up, not down, to those who choose to teach. Organizations like The Algebra Project seek to build a bridge between math education and community development. It’s time for the scientific community to throw its support behind such projects. We must participate in making access to quality education a right, not a privilege.

As more seemingly endless wars pop up on the horizon, now is the time to reconsider what matters and who the real heroes are. We live in an era of tragic and perverse values that allows the carers to be framed as failures. From the girl who wants a ‘Women in Physics’ club to the guy who wants to teach summer physics programs for kids, we’re taking punches from all sides for who we are, for wanting to bridge the gap between doing physics and realizing our duty as members of humanity. Meanwhile, scientists who choose to assist the military are considered American Heroes. I cannot imagine a more false idol for our community. The true heroes are the physicists who not only commit to good research and good teaching, but also to refusing to kill. Physicists like pedagogy activist, researcher, and anti-war protester Sanjoy Mahajan are all too rare, particularly in the United States. The burden of this failure rests on all our shoulders.

Acknowledgments: The title of this article was inspired by the The Global Women’s Strike. Section titles come from “Once In A Lifetime” by the Talking Heads.