Princeton University Thunch Talk

Intrigued by the recent Thirty Meter Telescope protests on Mauna Kea in Hawai‘i, I launched on a historical study of how astronomy came to the mountain, based on the observatories’ own archives, most of which had never been studied. These documents show the colonial and social underpinnings of how astronomers “discovered” and conquered what Gerard Kuiper heralded in 1964 as “probably the best site in the world – I repeat – in the world, from which to study the Moon, the Planets, the Stars” : how vast tracts of lands were given away for $1 annual leases, how observatories took the place of the islands’ sugarcane plantations and ranches, how the world’s biggest mirrors collided with the environmental and Hawaiian movements. This case study raises the larger question of the responsibility of field scientists toward the sites and communities in which they work.