Hakeem Oluseyi: An unexpected life in Science, and unpopular truths
The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss
Lawrence M. Krauss
4.4 • 592 Ratings
🗓️ 20 September 2023
⏱️ 157 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
I confess that Hakeem Oluseyi had not really risen on my radar screen until the last year or two. I was aware of the National Society of Black Physicists, having sometimes gotten notices about is meetings, but, being generally unsupportive of current efforts to compartmentalize scientists by their identity, I hadn’t really paid much notice to it. Then, in one of those ironies that periodically makes one feel better about the vicissitudes of fortune, I learned more about him only after people had attempted to cancel him.
When I read about Hakeem’s brave and impressive campaign to uncover the truth about James Webb after a small but unduly loud group of physicists, whose actions seem to be centered about their mutually celebrated victimhood, argued that the James Webb Space Telescope should be renamed, my interest in him, along with my respect for him, rose considerably.
Prompted by this newfound interest, I read a book he had co-authored, entitled, A Quantum Life: My Unlikely Journey from the Street to the Stars, and I was fascinated by the remarkable transformation of a hillbilly turned drug dealer into an academic. Here was someone who could have reveled in begin a victim by lashing out in hate, but instead was inspired to improve himself and those around him. I decided I wanted to delve deeper into the man, his life, his science, and his recent unfortunate experiences while holding firm to the search for truth in a podcast. It was a fun, and fascinating few hours. Hakeem and I both like to joke as well as tell stories, and we are both serious about the effort to understand nature, and to share our enthusiasm about that effort. I hope the combination of our mutual enjoyment about life and science, along with learning about his own story will inspire, entertain and inform. I certainly enjoyed our discussion and I hope you will as well.
As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well.
And a reminder that The Origins Project Foundation is programming some live upcoming events, including a live podcast with Richard Dawkins in Birmingham Sept 25th, and two live events in Southern California museums. Oct 15th, at the Bowers Museum, I will be giving a presentation on my new book, and Oct 17th Brian Keating and I will be recording a joint podcast at the San Diego Air and Space Museum. Go to originsproject.org for more info and the opportunity to purchase tickets.
Get full access to Critical Mass at lawrencekrauss.substack.com/subscribe
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, this is Lawrence Krause and welcome to the Origins Podcast. |
| 0:12.0 | For this podcast, I have my guest, Dr. Akeem O'Shehi, who is an astronomer and physicist and also president of the Black Society of physicists in the U.S. |
| 0:25.6 | His story is a remarkable one. |
| 0:30.6 | If you had to pick someone who you would imagine would never get to college, much less post-college experience and then becoming a faculty |
| 0:39.7 | member at university in physics and astronomy, you would have picked Hakeem. |
| 0:45.8 | He's written about it in a book that he produced a while ago, and we talked about his |
| 0:50.8 | origins and not only the things that got him interested first in science, |
| 0:55.0 | but the many, many challenges he had to overcome to become a scientist. |
| 1:00.1 | It's inspiring and enjoyable and actually also he's a remarkably pleasant and jovial fellow to talk to about this and other things. |
| 1:11.9 | We also talked about a more recent experience of his that another challenge you had to face |
| 1:15.8 | in a remarkable piece of work following the claims made by some people that James Webb was |
| 1:22.7 | a homophobic and racist who while director, well, administrator of NASA, had excluded those people |
| 1:32.8 | from positions and also spoken out against them. Hakeem did a remarkable piece, I would almost |
| 1:41.8 | call investigative journalism or historical journalism. |
| 1:45.8 | He was at NASA and he went through all of the materials to see if this was corroborated |
| 1:52.6 | because he was quite concerned when he heard it. |
| 1:55.7 | And what he discovered was that, of course, the claims were untrue. |
| 2:00.6 | For that, he should have been celebrated. |
| 2:03.3 | What happened immediately afterwards was he was vilified by the same people who've been |
| 2:07.7 | promoting this notion that the James Webb Space Telescope name should be changed, who acted |
| 2:13.6 | in an anti-scientific manner in the sense that they assumed the answer before they had the |
| 2:18.1 | evidence. And he provided the evidence and he didn't have a position on this. He just wanted to |
... |
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