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FBI’s secret search for lesbians in Manhattan Project revealed

August 17, 2023 jsteward

In 1943, thousands of workers began arriving at remote outposts in Washington, New Mexico and Tennessee where American ingenuity would be pressed to its limit in a secret and frantic push to build the first atomic bomb.

One particular group of eight women at Hanford in Eastern Washington and Los Alamos in New Mexico would have been among the forgotten, if not for the FBI’s feverish hunt for private details about their lives. The government that had recruited them to the elite Manhattan Project was now trying to strip them of vital security clearances by proving they were lesbians.

Declassified FBI records and Atomic Energy Commission memos reviewed by The Seattle Times chronicle the women’s experiences trying to live their authentic lives while staying ahead of the FBI in a chase that stretched from Los Alamos to Hanford and spanned a decade.

“The [Atomic Energy Commission], in saying these people are going to be security risks, they’re damning them. You’re also lumping them in with groups that might wish the U.S. and its allies harm,” Robert Franklin, assistant professor of history at Washington State University, Tri-Cities, and assistant director of the Hanford History Project, told the paper. “They’re not enemies, but the fact is they could be compromised just because of who they are.”

“It’s deeply unsettling and really should be a cautionary tale,” he added. “They wouldn’t have been a risk if we had been able to accept people for who they are.”

Find out more:
The Seattle Times
The Advocate
military.com

Transformational Change Initiative IDEA grants awarded to six projects

July 23, 2023 adriana

Washington State University faculty have been awarded six 2023 Transformation Change Initiative (TCI) grants for advancing inclusion, diversity, equity, and access (IDEA) to impact teaching and learning system-wide.

The grants range from $800 to $5,000 and represent the second round of TCI IDEA grants which are among several key WSU priorities and commitments in the provost’s office that promote IDEA. Three members of CAS faculty are project leaders.

“Infrastructural Racism: Latinx, African Americans, and East Pasco, Wash.”

Robert Franklin, co-lead
College of Arts and Sciences, WSU Tri‑Cities, and Department of History

This hands-on, design-oriented project will highlight the “racist legacy of infrastructure” in the Tri‑Cities region with a principal focus on the city of Pasco, Wash. Taught jointly between the School of Design and Construction and the Department of History, this community-engaged elective course involves faculty from WSU Tri‑Cities and WSU Pullman and will connect students with locals to learn about the historic spatial inequities and present-day opportunities in Pasco. By offering design ideas ranging from parks to museums to memorials, students may reimagine a marginalized physical landscape that has been manipulated and neglected for more than a century. Beyond reading and classroom discussion, the project is intended to apply student learning to a real-world setting through site visits, community meetings, and on-site public presentations. Planning for the course will take place in summer and fall 2023 and the class will be offered in spring 2024.

“Teaching Academy Faculty Book Club: Equity and Inclusion in Higher Education”

Kara Whitman, lead
WSU Teaching Academy, system-wide, and School of the Environment
Ashley Boyd, co-lead
WSU Teaching Academy, system-wide, and Department of English

The WSU Teaching Academy will offer a faculty-engaged, system-wide book club in fall 2023 utilizing the text “Equity and Inclusion in Higher Education: Strategies for Teaching,” with editors Rita Kumar and Brenda Refaei. The book club will raise teaching faculty’s awareness of the needs of each student at WSU, foster reflective oriented dialogue to help improve teaching at all levels and in all disciplines, inspire teaching faculty to take steps toward equitable and inclusive teaching, engage faculty and teaching assistants in learning about and practicing equity and inclusion broadly and in their discipline-specific areas, provide access to IDEA resources, and continue to establish the WSU Teaching Academy’s support for equity-oriented practices across campuses. There will be three facilitated book club discussion meetings plus two implementation workshops in fall 2023. Awards will be given to book club participants who demonstrate excellence in the implementation of equity and inclusion in their teaching. The academy plans to invite the editors of the book to be keynote speakers at its TEACHxWSU 2023 on Oct. 20.

Find out more

WSU Insider

Ask Dr. Universe: Who Invented the Calendar?

July 18, 2023 adriana

I use a calendar to keep up with my work as a science cat. I also love calendar apps that count down to big events—like my birthday. People have always tracked time for work and holidays.

I talked about this with my friend Nikolaus Overtoom. He’s a professor of ancient history at Washington State University.

He told me we use the Gregorian calendar today. That’s a revised version of the Julian calendar. The Romans invented the Julian calendar.

But there were calendars before that. Ancient people all over the world had calendars—including a detailed calendar made by the ancient Maya.

“Early people looked to the heavens to understand the movement of planets and stars,” Overtoom said. “They used that information to help structure their societies. They needed to know when to plant crops or move their herds.”

Find out more

Ask Dr. Universe

5 Overlooked LGBTQ Stories to Celebrate Pride Month

July 10, 2023 adriana

How do you learn—and save—a history that was often too dangerous to write down?

To mark Pride Month 2023, we hunted through the Atlas Obscura archives for stories that have long been overlooked in mainstream American history: tales of people across the centuries—from as long ago as Colonial Williamsburg—who would now be thought of as part of the LGBTQIA+ community. Among them:

The Forgotten Trans History of the Wild West
By Sabrina Imbler

People who did not conform to traditional gender norms were a part of daily life in the Old West, according to Peter Boag, a historian at Washington State University. While researching a book about the gay history of Portland, writes Sabrina Imbler, Boag stumbled upon hundreds and hundreds of stories of people who dressed against their assigned gender. Trans people have always existed all over the world. So how had they escaped notice in the annals of the Old West?

Find out more

Atlas Obscura

Ask Dr. Universe: What diseases spread on pirate ships?

June 27, 2023 adriana

A pirate’s life was dangerous. They attacked other ships and battled other pirates as well as the law. But they were also at the mercy of another foe: sickness.

I talked about this with my friend Lawrence Hatter. He’s a history professor at Washington State University.

He told me the big era for pirates was 1710 to 1730. It was a time when lots of sailors were out of work. Some of them became pirates.

Here are four kinds of disease they might face on the job: scurvy, mosquito-borne diseases, infectious diseases and gangrene.

Find out more

Ask Dr. Universe