Jessica Wang

In American Science in an Age of Anxiety: Scientists, Anticommunism, and the Cold War, Jessica Wang argues, “The Cold War transformed the politics of the scientific profession, the relationship of scientists to the state, and the bureaucratic order devoted to scientific research” (pg. 3). Rather than present scientists as a unified group, she writes, “What needs to be recognized is that American scientists, like other groups, were deeply divided by political differences during the Cold War” (pg. 4). She concludes, “American scientists both challenged and perpetuated the development of the Cold War political order” (pg. 7). She focuses on the period 1945-1950, arguing that it was instrumental to twentieth century U.S. politics. In this way, her work reflects Paul Boyer’s By the Bomb’s Early Light, but with a primary focus on scientists rather than culture at large.
In the aftermath of WWII, many scientists advocated international control of atomic secrets. Wang argues, “The atomic scientists’ movement created a new political role for American scientists, but with the rise of the Cold War, it also provided a major avenue for anticommunist attacks against them” (pg. 12). Their work represented continuity with nineteenth century scientists, who believed expertise could help “mitigate the deleterious effects of the unrestrained free market of classical liberalism” (pg. 36). Wang argues, “The ultimate significance of liberal and progressive left scientists’ vision for postwar science, then, lies in their specific position on the political spectrum than in their willingness to effect a reconciliation between expert authority and popular will and to create a political structure for the former that would give precedence to the latter” (pg. 37). Wang continues in her argument that scientists did not adopt anticommunism through the efforts of state forces. She writes, “Like American liberals, scientists felt the same pressures and impulses to equate left-leaning politics with disloyalty and dogmatic adherence to the Communist Party and to ferret out radicals within their midst” (pg. 55). In this way, scientists “established their beliefs through their own understanding of the Cold War international conflict” (pg. 58). Wang bases this conclusion on access to newly accessible, though incomplete, records from the FBI (much like the work of John Earl Haynes).
This new access to records leads Wang to examine the security clearance system, which “assumed that there existed a certain ideological type of profile that predisposed persons to commit espionage or other crimes of subversion” (pg. 86). Most who testified to secure clearance did not question a process that could define loyalty based on personal politics. Even President Truman expected loyalty of atomic scientists. Wang writes, “Truman and other Cold War liberals never fully appreciated the way their own anticommunist rhetoric validated the more extreme actions of HUAC and, later on, Senator McCarthy” (pg. 181). In this way, Wang argues, “Scientists were not simply passive victims of unjust Cold War political repression. They were also agents of the national security state, who offered crucial expertise for the execution of Cold War policies” (pg. 205). The Korean War, however, and the Truman administration’s changed standards for dismissal that included “a reasonable doubt as to the loyalty of the person involved to the Government of the United States” fundamentally changed the political landscape and ended opportunities for dissent (pg. 253). Wang concludes that only the Eisenhower administration and the Supreme Court could end the “altered political conditions of the second half of the 1950s,” regardless of scientific activism (pg. 286).… (más)

Reviewed by RAH by Brian Balogh, who sees this as "90s" history in which "even the losers -- especially the losers -- effect change." Turning her sites to the community of atomic scientists in the cold war, Wang finds "agency within the agencies." She pits the progressive scientists of the Federation American Scientists (FAS) against the conservative "elite science administrators" of an older generation. In setting up the the Atomic Energy Committee (AEC), the progressives won civilian control of atomic energy. Controversy soon arose over the National Science Foundation (NSF), in which Vannevar Bush sought to establish an autonomous board and the progressives sought to make the foundation more responsive to the needs of the broader society by providing political oversight and allowing grant money to flow to non-elite scientists. Under the pressure of the HUAC and the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (JCAE), progressive scientists were soon under intense pressure. A regime of intimidation set in where the FBI conducted social sabotage to socially isolate the less prominent scientists with left leanings. Staunch Civil Libertarians live David Lilienthal were complicit in this "purge" as loyalty oaths, non-communist affidavits and FBI background investigations were put into place. By 1950, the progressive left had been silenced. While Wang condemns the lack of a more public campaign of resistance by the liberally inclined scientists, Balogh finds that the institutional politics and larger setting of public opinion renders her view simplistic. Rather than condemning the progressive scientists, perhaps we should cast their "quiet diplomacy" in defense of civil rights as a reasonable approach to the question in the face of overwhelming public anxiety over the bomb? Perhaps, as Daddy King said to his son Martin "Its better to be a living dog than a dead lion"?… (más)