Who is Natalie Goswell? Colorado professor claims astrophysics is racist and 'hypermasculine'
COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO: A Colorado astrophysicist claims her field is rooted in "systemic racism and white supremacy" because of the "hypermasculine" and "violent" language used to describe stars. Natalie Gosnell is an assistant professor at Colorado College and studies binary star systems.
In an interview with the college newspaper, the professor claims she has struggled to understand the division between arts and science that is rooted in "systemic racism." Suggesting that academic fields like science and engineering are commonly male-dominated, Gosnell argues that the approach and language used to describe certain scientific phenomena are sexist and racist. "Both artists and scientists are just observing things about the world, interpreting those observations, and then sharing their interpretation," Gosnell told Colorado College News.
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Who is Natalie Goswell?
The Colorado astrophysicist won the Cottrell Scholar Award in 2021 for a combination of her research and her unconventional approaches to teaching. Goswell completed her master's and PhD in astronomy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and was offered a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Texas at Austin. She is currently an assistant professor at Colorado College.
Gosnell's research mostly focuses on understanding blue straggler binary star systems, which often involve one star burning out and merging with another. The astrophysicist says the way stars burn through their fuel and die is viewed through a "hypermasculine" lens and claims the metaphors used to describe them are "very violent," reported Daily Mail. She says stars that take mass from other stars are labeled "bad boys," arguing that the designation lacks scientific value. The professor may have been referring to an article written in 2009 by popular science journalist Nancy Atkinson, which claimed that "blue stragglers [which] steal mass from companion stars by crashing into their neighbors" are "stellar bad-boys."
"As an astrophysicist, I am a product of institutions steeped in systemic racism and white supremacy," Gosnell asserted. She claims the fields of art and science are more similar than people think. "I think because science and art were so separate, and that's how it is […] systemic questions within science, the often chosen metaphors [to discuss science] are very violent and hypermasculine," she said. "The tenants of white supremacy emerging [in physics] of individualism and exceptionalism and perfectionism… it's an either-or thinking and there's no subtlety, there's no gray area. All of this is manifested in the way we think about our research and what counts as good research, what counts as important research," she said.