Talk:James E. Webb

message: The recent edit to Webb's rank in the infobox needs a citation in the article text, which must be changed if necessary. While 2nd lieut. is the entry-level officer grade, did he actually rise four levels in two years (-> lieut. -> capt. -> major -> lt. col.)? Surely his military history must be documented somewhere. JustinTime55 (talk) 20:04, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: And? -- Charles Edwin Shipp (talk) 11:02, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Webb's military rank 

message: I added the following to the article... Webb was a 33rd Degree member of Scottish Rite Freemasonry. ref. Ancient Aliens - The NASA Connection, History Channel 2, 2012 - Brad Watson, Miami 71.196.11.183 (talk) 09:17, 12 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: -- Nicely done. -- Charles Edwin Shipp (talk) 11:04, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Webb was a 33rd Degree Scottish Rite Freemason 

message: This is an explanation of the edits that I made on July 10, 2015, which Pjefts reverted. I have reverted his reversion. It appears that the reversion was based on the fact that in addition to adding a lot of material, I deleted a quote about homosexuals that had been attributed to Webb. According to the source material originally cited in support of that quote, the quote came from the Hoey report, not from Webb.
The citation listed by the original editor in support of this quote (Edsal, Toward Stonewall, page 276-77,) actually reads:
   "The politics of anti-Communism dated back to the beginnings of the Cold War in 1947-48 and were first broadened to include homosexuals in early 1950, when an under-secretary of state testified to a Senate committee that most of the government employees dismissed for moral turpitude were in fact homosexual. Sensing that they had uncovered a potentially disastrous weakness in the Truman administration, Republicans took up the issue with enthusiasm, and Democrats, suddenly placed on the defensive, felt compelled to follow suit. The Senate appointed a committee to investigate the employment of homosexuals in the federal government. Though cautious in estimating the number of "sex perverts" in government service, the committee report, issued in December 1950, nonetheless painted an alarming picture of their character, their influence, and their potential threat to the nation's security.
   "It is generally believed," the report noted, "that those who engage in overt acts of perversion lack the emotional stability of normal persons."
It seems a stretch to attribute a quote in the report directly to the testimony of the undersecretary of state (James Webb.)
The Hoey report itself, available at: https://mattachinesocietywashingtondc.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/document141.pdf, does not list Webb as a co-author. Indeed, Webb worked for the State Department and so would not have directly contributed any text to a Senate committee report anyway.
In the book Lavender Scare by David Johnson, on page 101 to 109 there is a detailed discussion of the Hoey committee and its report. That source establishes that the report was mostly written by Francis Flanagan (Chief Counsel to Senator Hoey.) On page 104, Johnson says that Webb met with Truman to devise a strategy for dealing with the Hoey committee, and that Truman then assigned the task of White House liaison to the committee to Stephen Springarm (not Webb.) Truman's goal was to contain the political damage, and they managed to keep the committee's proceedings in closed session (thus avoiding a media circus like the McCarthy hearings.) The White House also attempted to portray homosexuals in government as a medical issue rather than a security risk (in an attempt to downplay the issue,) although they weren't very successful at that.
The bottom line is that attributing that quote to Webb is historically inaccurate -- the statement was almost certainly written by Francis Flanagan.
The previous version of this page, in which is appeared that Webb's main goals during his tenure at State was to persecute homosexuals gave undue emphasis to his role.
According to Webb's biographer (Lambright), Webb's main objectives during his time at the Department of State were: reorganizing the department to be closer to the White House, struggling with the new Department of Defense over the appropriate budget for containing the Soviet Union, and dealing with the Korean War. Although the Edsal and Johnson references establish that Webb was involved in the State department purges at the level of briefing Congress and Truman, he was not the instigator of those purges (they started in 1947 and he joined State in 1949,) and they don't seem to be a big part of what he focused on. Lambright does not even mention it in the biography.
Nf7443 (talk) 19:59, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Further sourced research has shown this to be the case. I removed the two sentences that reference the misquotes. https://hmoluseyi.medium.com/was-nasas-historic-leader-james-webb-a-bigot-131c821d5f12 —Ben Brockert (42) 15:58, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Blog posts on Medium are not reliable sources. (An academic peer review of that post would probably interrogate its portrayal of Humelsine's memo, for starters, and point out that Webb passed Humelsine's material directly to Senator Hoey .) As it stands, the current article underplays what the cited source says about Webb's role regarding Truman and the Hoey committee. XOR'easter (talk) 19:01, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  "unless the author is a subject-matter expert", which is the case here. —Ben Brockert (42) 14:20, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  He's an astrophysicist, not a historian. In any case, that paragraph has been rewritten, and the rewrite is being discussed below. XOR'easter (talk) 16:14, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  He is an astrophysicist but he says clearly in the Medium article that he worked closely with NASA historians and archivists, and a history PhD student at University of Alabama in Huntsville. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DarkEnergy1998 (talk • contribs) 
The present article contains this quote: "Purges of LGBTQ state employees continued throughout Webb's tenure at the State Department, with Webb's subordinates continuing to report the dismissals of dozens of LGBTQ workers from 1950 to 1952.[13]". This is misleading. A State Department memo (https://catalog.archives.gov/id/54538193) following the one meeting with Webb mentioned on this wikipedia page, outlines the reporting structure. The memo indicates that the men mentioned in Ref 13 are to report John E. Puerifoy and Carlisle H. Humelsine, not James Webb, who following this meeting has no responsibilities in the matter. 16:03, 26 December 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quote about homosexuals was mis-attributed to Webb 

message: I removed the copyvio template for the section on his NASA career. The template had stated the section appeared to be a copy and paste from a NASA website. NASA is a government agency, and works produced by government agencies are not protected by copyright law:
   About U.S. Government Works
   A United States government work is prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties.
   It is not subject to copyright in the United States and there are no copyright restrictions on reproduction, derivative works, distribution, performance, or display of the work. Anyone may, without restriction under U.S. copyright laws:
    reproduce the work in print or digital form;
    create derivative works;
    perform the work publicly;
    display the work;
    distribute copies or digitally transfer the work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending.
 
Mmyers1976 (talk) 15:57, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  NASA section copyvio template. 

message: Substituted at 19:24, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on James E. Webb. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120417091750/http://www.ncmuseumofhistory.org/collateral/articles/f03.tarheels.in.space.pdf to http://www.ncmuseumofhistory.org/collateral/articles/f03.tarheels.in.space.pdf
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Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 01:44, 18 April 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on James E. Webb. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive http://webarchive.loc.gov/all/20011116140952/http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/oralhistory.hom/webb-j/webb.asp to http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/oralhistory.hom/WEBB-J/webb.asp
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Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 10:33, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I've removed this tag and do not understand why it was placed there.  The claim that his administration oversaw the critical first manned launches is clear and verifiable.  
Webb was in office from Feb 1961 through Oct 1968.  This period covers this first suborbital flight by an American (Mercury Redstone 3 in May 1961) through the days before the first Apollo flight (Apollo 7 in Oct 1968).
I wonder if the editor that placed this tag was concerned that Webb was not administrator when the Apollo program reached the surface of the Moon, but that's not the claim.MadeYourReadThis (talk) 15:22, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  claim of overseeing "critical first manned launches" marked as dubious 

message: The article lead is currently two paragraphs. One is a summary of the life of the article subject, the other is a summary of a controversy about the name of a telescope that was named after him well after he died.
My questions are:
1. What percentage of the lead should cover the telescope/overlap with that article. It was named after him, but he isn't actually involved in the topic any deeper. 
2. If the telescope name is controversial because of this articles subject's actions, shouldn't those actions be in the lead instead of the controversy over the actions causing a telescope naming controversy? Wouldn't his actions be more notable than the controversy over the telescope name? (which is covered pretty thoroughly in the article about the telescope)
I'm pinging in the last user to lengthen the lead to be about the telescope for their thoughts/reasoning User:Dirkbb  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.202.75.102 (talk) 00:51, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Contents of the article lead 

message: In this diff, an editor who has made only one edit to the Wikipedia attempted to remove this content: "Astrophysicist Hakeem Oluseyi wrote an article saying that the initial accusations that Webb was part of the Lavender Scare were based on a quote attributed to Webb which he never said, and that there is little to no evidence Webb took part in anti-gay discrimination".  This is a pretty relevant point which has been mentioned by reliable sources and should not be swept under the rug. 
Please do not remove this reliably sourced information without discussion here.  Also, here is the full quote and reference:
::Astrophysicist Hakeem Oluseyi wrote an article saying that the initial accusations that Webb was part of the Lavender Scare were based on a quote attributed to Webb which he never said, and that there is little to no evidence Webb took part in anti-gay discrimination.
Samboy (talk) 14:17, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removal of mention of Hakeem Oluseyi's research  

message: somebody invented a program for equal employment at nasa in the 1960s. that seems to be untrue. and webb especially was not mentioned anywhere in such a context. more the contrary, but no evidence in either side: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-shares-james-webb-history-report. --ThurnerRupert (talk) 08:23, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  no program of equal employment 

message: Hi! I am new to editing on Wikipedia. While researching an assignment, I noticed James E. Webb received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from New Mexico State University in 1966. https://commencement.nmsu.edu/historical.html 
I am considering adding it to this article. ASURonnie (talk) 23:02, 26 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Honorary Degree