Shame on the American Society for Microbiology.
A prominent US scientific society altered its website to remove references to diversity and equity ― terms targeted by the administration of US President Donald Trump. Articles about scientists who are members of under-represented groups also temporarily vanished from the site, although they have since reappeared.
The editing sparked an outcry among some of the more than 37,000 members of the organization, the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) in Washington DC. Some ASM members note that other scientific societies have posted statements in support of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), rather than deleting terms targeted by White House orders.
Their excuse? They were just following the orders of their lawyers.
That sounds familiar, for some reason.
Read about Chemistry in Nazi Germany. The major scientific societies in Nazi Germany were quick to pander to Hitler, and they had the same kinds of arguments: they were patriots supporting their country, they had to fire all those Jewish professors to keep government support, etc., etc., all while they were looting conquered nations and doing secret work on nerve gasses and sieg heiling their way to bigger grants.
“It is one of the most notable phenomena in academia in 1933 that the severest measures of National Socialist policies against science were carried out under a high degree of silence and with the frequent consensus of scientists,” writes Deichmann in a review of chemistry during the Nazi era (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed.2002,41, 1310). She has found only a single instance in which a German scientist refused to accept a new position created through the dismissal of a Jewish scientist.
This silence regarding the unfair dismissal of Jewish colleagues was common across most fields of science, and it stemmed from some combination of anti-Semitism, nationalism, cowardice, obedience, or opportunism, Deichmann says. The vacant positions were often taken by young scientists who may not have had comparable academic career opportunities had anti-Jewish policies not cleared the way. Perhaps for this reason, Deichmann notes, 63% of young scientists joined the Nazi Party, a larger percentage than the 53% of chemists and biochemists of all ages who joined.
The article is specifically about chemistry, but to be fair, all the disciplines were doing it. Hans Spemann, the Nobel-prize winning development biologist, was busy coordinating the purge of Jewish scientists from German universities.
What chemists did was mirrored in the rest of Germany’s scientific community. “Chemists received a lot of support for their research” from the Nazi regime, Deichmann says. “But I am not sure we can say they were more opportunistic than other” scientists. Comparable percentages of biologists, psychologists, and chemists joined the Nazi Party, she says. The German Biological Society, for example, had a journal called Der Biologe (The Biologist) that was entirely full of Nazi ideology, and psychologists and biologists participated in terrible human experiments, she adds.
After the war, these same scientists were quick to say “I knew nothing!” and pretend to have been oppressed by the Nazis.
After the war ended and international scientists began asking pointed questions about the activities of their German colleagues, Maier says, German researchers increasingly adopted a false narrative that they had suffered under Hitler, despite their flush funding under the Third Reich. “They would say the Nazis were anti-intellectual, antiscientific, and anti-basic research,” he says. “This is absolutely false.” The Third Reich “was a paradise for these scientists, compared to the situation up to 1933, when there were many cutbacks” because of financial constraints imposed by the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I.
Many chemists claimed they didn’t know what had been happening at Auschwitz’ Monowitz-Buna factory and at other concentration camps. “But how can you get such a large chemical factory established and running smoothly without any chemists present?” Maier asks. Kuhn, for instance, may not have personally visited any concentration camps, but as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Medical Research and president of DChG throughout the war, he was certainly privy to some aspects of Hitler’s human experimentation, Deichmann notes.
I wish I could say that Richard Kuhn received his comeuppance after the war, but no. He had been an active supporter of the Nazis, ratting out his Jewish colleagues and promoting Nazi dogma.
From the beginning of the Third Reich, Kuhn also began to pepper his speeches at home and abroad with “Sieg Heil,” even at non-Nazi functions. When he won the Nobel Prize in 1938 for his natural product research, Kuhn rejected the prize with a letter punctuated with his handwritten addendum: “The Führer’s will is our belief.” During the war, Kuhn also did extensive research on the toxic nerve gases tabun and sarin and invented a poison gas called soman.
Once the war was over, he happily accepted his deferred Nobel prize (I guess the Füher’s will was inoperative after he blew out his brains) and got a bland, boring writeup on the Nobel foundation site. Perhaps the only recognition of his heinous behavior was that a scientific prize in his name, the Richard Kuhn Medal, was discontinued in 2005, long after his death in 1967.
In 2005, the Society of German Chemists (Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker, GDCh) declared their intention to no longer award the Richard Kuhn Medal: “The board of the GDCh intends to discontinue awarding the Medal named after the organic chemist, Nobel Prize laureate of the year 1938 and President of the GDCh in 1964–65, Richard Kuhn. The board thereby draws the consequences out of research on Richard Kuhn’s behaviour during National Socialism. Even though the question of whether Kuhn was a convinced National Socialist or just a career-oriented camp follower is not fully answered, he undisputably supported the Nazi-regime in administrative and organizational ways, especially by his scientific work. Despite his scientific achievements, Kuhn is not suitable to serve as a role model, and eponym for an important award, mainly due to his unreflected research on poison gas, but also due to his conduct towards Jewish colleagues.”
We can’t even threaten the chickenshit administrators at ASM with posthumous ignominy, I guess. Even Richard Kuhn gets the benefit of the doubt about whether he was actually a Nazi, so I guess even minor functionaries who bow down before Trump are safe from public shaming.
All we can do is suggest that maybe they should consider doing what is right.
Like the Minnesota State High School League, which has shown more courage than the well-educated chickenshits at the ASM.
The Minnesota State High School League will continue its policy of letting student-athletes “participate consistent with their gender identity,” according to a memo sent to MSHSL member schools on Thursday.
The MSHSL’s message came a day after President Donald Trump signed an executive order seeking to ban transgender athletes from participating in women’s and girls’ sports.
“The Minnesota State High School League, similar to other youth sports organizations, is subject to state anti-discrimination laws, which prohibit discrimination based on gender identity,” the MSHSL said. “Therefore, students in Minnesota are allowed to participate consistent with their gender identity.”
In 2023, the state Legislature amended the Minnesota Human Rights Act to include gender identity as a protected class shielded from discrimination in areas such as employment, housing and education.
Resist in every little way you can.
I have no problem calling Kuhn a Nazi. His actions go way beyond mere career opportunism. Scientists who weren’t Nazis either fled the regime (Einstein, Schrodinger, Szilard, many more), kept their heads down politically (Heisenberg, Planck), or were murdered.
Apropos the wholesale destruction of American scientific institutions, here’s a 1949 letter from Walter C. Alvarez in Science:
We are told that loyalty to the president, not the Constitution, is the first criterion for serving in this administration. How long before the Hitler Oath is required of all government employees and especially the military?
For civil servants:
“I swear: I will be faithful and obedient to the president of the United States and people, Donald J. Trump, to observe the law, and to conscientiously fulfil my official duties, so help me God!” (Modified from Wikipedia translation)
And for the military:
“I swear by God this holy oath
that I shall render unconditional obedience
to the president of the United States and people,
Donald J. Trump, supreme commander of the armed forces,
and that as a brave soldier I shall at all times be prepared
to give my life for this oath.” (Modified from Wikipedia translation)
chrislawson@1 I think you’re being too kind to Heisenberg. He wasn’t a member of the Nazi party and may not have been overtly political, but he did help the regime, or attempted to, since I doubt they would have gotten to a weapon with the kind of reactor his group was pursuing (source: Cassidy’s 1992 biography Uncertainty). His ostensible goal, which I’m willing to believe, was to preserve science in Germany after the war. Anyone should have seen how ill-conceived this was (and his contemporaries did for the most part, which is why they left).
@chrislawson #1:
Goebbels was being disingenuous, as usual. For example, the Nazi regime so distrusted its own people that it restricted private hobbies like the building of radio sets. By the time the war started, the young men conscripted into the German armed forces had no prior experience in or particular enthusiasm for the technical skills necessary for radio (and later radar) installation, usage and maintenance. In contrast, when the British Army built up after the fall of France they had no problem filling the ranks of the Signals Corps with men halfway to being trained and qualified (my Uncle Jim was one of them).
How long will it be before the MAGAs get the presidential hint and start marching against the life sciences?
“How long will it be before the MAGAs get the presidential hint and start marching against the life sciences?”
Do the MAGAts protesting hospitals for COVID treatment count? Because it sure seems like that ship has sailed.
Also, the ones blockading clinics and waving posters of bloody fetuses definitely count.
PaulBC@3–
You can check out Heisenberg’s history. He was clearly not a Nazi, happily worked with Jewish scientists, tried to protect them from the Nazi regime, sent scientific findings to Jewish colleagues who had fled overseas (an inherently dangerous thing to do at the time), and had many of his academic appointments blocked by the Deutsche Physik movement…until his mother sat down with her friend, Himmler’s mother, and sorted things out over tea and biscuits. The procedural integrity of the totalitarian society!
This is not a vindication of Heisenberg. He actively participated in the Nazi regime, mostly working on nuclear energy. Although he did not believe one could make a nuclear bomb, he did believe fission could be a powerful energy source for the German navy, which makes him directly complicit in the German war effort. Also, he had numerous opportunities to leave Germany but chose to stay put, even when directly offered asylum by Western intelligence agencies well into the 1940s. So, no, he is definitely not a role model.
But my point was that he was not a Nazi like Richard Kuhn, who actively denounced Jewish co-workers, collaborated with the SS, and turned his letter refusing the Nobel Prize into Fuhrer fan fiction bordering on slash. Kuhn was an out-and-out Nazi. Heisenberg was not, but was willing to work with Nazis out of a misguided sense of loyalty to Germany. It can’t have been pure career opportunism, because if that was his driving motivation he would have left Germany in the late 1930s, when his every university appointment was being blocked by the Deutsche Physikers at the same time he was receiving prestigious offers from all over the world.
Rich Woods@4–
Agreed. Goebbels was an instrumental part of the problem he was complaining about. He was blaming Rust for doing exactly what Rust was told to do. Self-awareness is not strong in the fascist mindset.
chrislawson@7 I agree that Heisenberg was not a Nazi. I just don’t agree that he kept his head down politically. I was going to mention my hazy recollection of the meeting he had with Niels Bohr (I read a lot of biographies way back), but apparently that was already dramatized. https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/medical-history/uncertainty-what-happened-when-heisenberg-met-bohr I had the impression that he want Bohr’s approval for his choice to stay in Germany, but like the article says, nobody actually knows what either of them said to each other.
“Keeping his head down” and “politically” are both subject to interpretation. It is clear that Heisenberg had an agenda that required staying in Germany and not fully alienating himself with the Nazi government. He would have been welcomed many other places, so I consider that to be a political, foolish, and amoral choice. I agree that there are a lot of good things to say about him as well, and he was not an antisemite. It was just a quibble about how you expressed this.
For my mother’s father, who had a doctorate in chemistry, it was the antisemitism that sealed the deal, and he was all in with the H-man. He was a party block leader, and at the height of the war worked in Peenemuende building V-1 rocket motors, with the help of slave labor provided by prisoners of war and Jewish people held there for forced labor. The fact that he worked on V-1 rocket motors was the only thing that kept him out of prison when the trials were going on, but in the end he was deemed too old to help with Werner von Braun’s project (he was already sixty or so).
Both he and my father’s father supported the NSPD, though my father’s father later told me he regretted it. Both were well educated and scary smart. To me it has been a visceral demonstration that intelligence and education do not make one immune to bad ideas. At best they help us recognize them if we want to.
PaulBC–
Fair enough. I don’t want to get into a measuring contest about Heisenberg’s culpability. It was significant. Really, what he should have done is leave Germany in the mid-1930s. He was one of the few German scientists at Farm Hall who openly expressed gratitude that the Allies had won the war, but he never seemed to reconcile that he personally, and freely chosen, had worked against that outcome.
[meta]
chrislawson, just saying: “Really, what he should have done is [what chrislawson thinks he should have done]” is a better way to express your claim.
Me, I reserve judgement (pointlessly pedantic subjective judgement) in the absence of actual facts about his specific circumstances and milieu and so forth.
(What, am I now Speaker for the Dead?)