NASA’s Bolden Sets Off a S*** Storm Over Muslim Outreach Comments
This interview with Al Jazeera by NASA Administrator Charles Bolden seems rather innocuous to me, but it has set off an absolute s*** storm.
The main concern seems to be this short comment near the top of the interview:
“When I became the NASA Administrator — before I became the NASA Administrator — he charged me with three things. One was that he wanted me to re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, that he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with predominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering.”
Taken in and by itself, this would seem to be saying that the Obama Administration’s primary interest in NASA is for the agency to undertake outreach to the Muslim world. That’s how the President’s critics are interpreting the statement. Right wing pundit Charles Krauthammer thundered:
“This is a new of fatuousness. NASA was established to get America into space and to keep us there. This idea of ‘feel good about your past’ scientific achievements is the worst kind of group therapy, psycho-babble, imperial condescension and adolescent diplomacy. If I didn’t know that Obama had told him this, I’d demand the firing of Charles Bolden.”
Former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin, who is livid over the Administration’s effort to cancel the Constellation program he helped to create, joined in:
Michael Griffin, who headed NASA during the last four years of the Bush administration, says the space agency’s new goal to improve relations with the Islamic world and boost Muslim self-esteem is a “perversion†of NASA’s original mission to explore space. “NASA was chartered by the 1958 Space Act to develop the arts and sciences of flight in the atmosphere and in space and to go where those technologies will allow us to go,†Griffin said in an interview Tuesday. “That’s what NASA does for the country. It is a perversion of NASA’s purpose to conduct activities in order to make the Muslim world feel good about its contributions to science and mathematics.â€
NASA says that the remarks have been taken out of context, saying that Bolden was referring to NASA’s broad outreach and engagement with the world:
The White House stood by Bolden on Tuesday. Spokesman Nick Shapiro said in a written statement to FoxNews.com that Obama “wants NASA to engage with the world’s best scientists and engineers as we work together to push the boundaries of exploration.
“Meeting that mandate requires NASA to partner with countries around the world like Russia and Japan, as well as collaboration with Israel and with many Muslim-majority countries. The space race began as a global competition, but, today, it is a global collaboration,” he said.
Bob Jacobs, NASA’s assistant administrator for public affairs, echoed that point. However, he said that Bolden was speaking of priorities when it came to “outreach” and not about NASA’s primary missions of “science, aeronautics and space exploration.” He said the “core mission” is exploration and that it was unfortunate Bolden’s comments are now being viewed through a “partisan prism.”
Jacobs’ is right. Bolden is clearly talking about NASA’s engagement efforts both at home and aboard, not its programmatic priorities. Let’s break down the statement:
“One was that he wanted me to re-inspire children to want to get into science and math”
The White House has made a major effort to engage American children in science, mathematics and engineering through the Summer of Innovation and other programs. This is a clear priority, and one that is not the least bit controversial.
he wanted me to expand our international relationships
Deeper engagement with the world is a key part of the Administration’s strategy, as reflected in the National Space Policy. This approach is not unusual; NASA operates an International Space Station with 14 partners. It also has scientific and technical cooperation agreements with much of the world.
“third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with predominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering.”
Bolden may merely be saying here that within the broader engagement of the world, there’s has been a priority placed on underdeveloped ties with Muslim nations. NASA’s has much deeper ties elsewhere in the world, and the space agency is deepening them. But, this is an area of opportunity for cooperation that has been under utilized.
Bolden might have been flattering his Arab audience. This outreach to the Arab world is “perhaps” the most important part of our engagement strategy aboard. We honor your historical contributions to science, math and engineering. Why not work together peacefully in these areas?
I imagine that Bolden and other NASA officials must say similar things when they’re forging international ties on a whole variety of projects wherever they go in the world. This type of flattery is not unusual in international affairs and global business. It’s part of the language and it’s probably taken with a grain of salt, but it’s appreciated nonetheless.
This mass outrage seems especially odd because there was very little concern within the space community or right wing punditocracy when Richard Branson sold 32 percent of Virgin Galactic to an investment group controlled by the Abu Dhabi government last year. This is rocket technology developed by Americans, yet there was barely a peep. If it’s good enough for Branson and his nascent space empire to engage the Arab world, why isn’t it good enough for NASA?
There’s another essential point no one seems to be grasping: there is a lot of money for and experience with large infrastructure projects in extreme environments in the Middle East. These guys build massive developments on artificial islands in the Persian Gulf. If you want to build anything of any size off the Earth, where do you think the money is going to come from? Branson gets it.
This whole thing is a tempest in a teapot. Since President Richard Nixon approved the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project nearly 40 years ago, NASA has played a leading role in peaceful international cooperation in science and technology. Obama’s initiative merely builds upon that effort in a world that is increasingly international in its approach to space. There’s nothing unusual here.
6 responses to “NASA’s Bolden Sets Off a S*** Storm Over Muslim Outreach Comments”
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What can I say? I took a few days off to commemorate the Fourth, as John Adams wanted:
“I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”
John was right. And you must be British.
GET OVER IT! THE WAR IS OVER!
BTW, your soccer team sucks! A bunch of overpaid millionaires! Invented the sport, indeed! Forty-four years and nothing!
Jeez, NASA Guy. Lighten up, man. You must be the least patriotic person in America.
You also can’t read. The story is about the shit storm. That only started on the sixth when everyone got back from the holiday. The comments were hardly much of anything. At least to anyone who’s been paying attention. They had announced they were outreaching to the Muslim world long before that.
Shit, it’s easy to excerpt some small part of a 20 minute interview take it all out of context and get everyone all riled up. Any idiot can do that. Cheap theater. Lazy as hell.
I would submit to the author that there is a meaningful difference between the NASA Administrator stating that one of his foremost goals is to reach out to muslim nations and to help them feel good about their scientific contributions and Branson selling a stake in his own company to a group in Abu Dhabi. NASA is a US federal agency that is meant to be guided by the will of the American people and Virgin Galactic is a private company. I think people are justified in reacting negatively to Bolden’s remarks even though they were probably poorly chosen. The NASA Administrator should be tasked with carrying out the goals of NASA. But one can hardly believe that NASA’s foremost or even furthest most goal should have anything to do with reaching out to muslim nations. And that is no knock on Muslim nations. They are just not that relevant to the primary mission of NASA. I like Charlie Bolden a lot, but I think he has to start choosing his words more carefully.
Bolden was clearly talking about priorities within NASA’s outreach efforts. Muslim outreach is not the highest priority for Bolden or NASA; it simply ranks high within a part of what NASA does. The effort is part of two overlapping initiatives: a government-wide effort to improve relations with the Muslim world; an effort within NASA toward deeper engagement with the rest of the world.
The Virgin Galactic sale should have probably raised more eyebrows at the time. It involved selling a large stake in an American high-tech company that deals with tightly controlled rocket engine technology with military applications to a company controlled by a Middle Eastern government. And the promise of their own spaceport.
In fact, the U.S. government began an investigation of the deal some months ago looking at various issues.
Again, it was probably a poor choice of words or lack of a better preamble by Bolden. He said that Obama charged him with three things: a) re-inspire children b) expand international relationship and c) reach out to the Muslim word, etc. Bolden did not say that Obama had asked him to carry out those three goals as part of a NASA “outreach program”. I think people were reacting to what appeared to be misplaced priority for NASA. I see no evidence that people were reacting to potential technology transfer to Muslim nations. I think Bolden makes himself more of a target for the NASA hard-liners in Congress and elsewhere with this kind of statement. In my opinion, a more prudent course during these extremely turbulent times for NASA would be to focus more on core NASA issues and not “outreach”.
I came within a hair’s breadth of meeting Bolden once, maybe 10 years ago in a hotel in Tokyo (New Otani) run by the U.S. military. But the guy moves very fast and I missed my chance. What energy.
Bolden goes on Al Jazeera and, well, moves a little too fast. The *subtext* of his mere appearance is, of course, outreach, and he probably should have slowed down and said it explicitly. But this sh*tstorm reaction was a bit too fast as well.
Too bad some people can’t get past their phobias and through the rest of this video. At one point you see Bolden choke up when he talks about how it was Ronald McNair who encouraged him to try becoming an astronaut, by telling Bolden he was being ridiculous in thinking he couldn’t ever be accepted. There was an expression on Bolden’s face for those few seconds that said: “McNair — *he* should be sitting where I’m sitting right now.” (Maybe true, but McNair died on Challenger.)
And at that point I realized: this whole thing is about opportunity. Basically, by not dumbing down what he was saying, while inviting participation, and being an example of how far you can go in life, Bolden is telling his audience:
“You can be a part of all this. NASA can’t do it alone anyway, but NASA wouldn’t — and shouldn’t — do it alone even if it could. The door is open. We’ll keep it open for as long as it takes. McNair was black. I’m black. We both came out of the South. We both went all the way to orbit. Obama is black. He even spent some of his youth in an islamic country. He went all the way to the most powerful position in the most powerful nation on Earth, a nation that used to enslave black people. You’re Arabs, and Muslims, you have your own history you could be bitter about. But swallow your bitterness about the past. Join us in the future.”
“Outreach” as a term is losing its luster, it is the new “PR”. But going into space isn’t going up, because there’s no ultimate “up” in space. It’s going out. Because it requires such effort, it’s *reaching* out. It can be the ultimate outreach. Maybe it has to be.