Equal Rights Amendment Controversy in the American Astronomical Association

On an early January morning in 1978, Margaret Burbidge took to the stage of the 151st meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) to announce that the AAS would no longer hold meetings in states that had not ratified the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), a proposed Constitutional amendment that explicitly prohibited sex-based discrimination.

The announcement was not meant to be contentious—Burbidge’s statement was one of many mundane council actions that she listed, casually slipped between her presidential State of the Society address and the AAS Pierce Prize lecture during the Austin, Texas meeting. Nevertheless, the following months would see the AAS roiled with accusations of improper conduct, threats of mass membership resignations, and even an ultimatum involving the IRS.

When I first started this project, I had no idea of the historical spectacle I was walking into. During one of our lunch conversations at the Niels Bohr Library & Archives, AIP Chief Research Officer Trevor Owens mentioned that the AAS had some interesting records on the ERA, and I figured that analyzing the archive could make a fun summer side project. After gaining permission to access the record group (AAS records at the NBLA have a fifty-year moratorium), I quickly realized that the ERA boycott decision in Austin had swept the AAS with a level of personal drama I was surprised to see in a professional scientific society.

So, why was the ERA such a contentious issue for the AAS?

A Short History of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)

In 1921, a year after achieving the Nineteenth Amendment guaranteeing women’s suffrage, the National Women’s Party began campaigning for an amendment that would secure equal legal rights for all US citizens, regardless of sex. Between 1923 and 1972, various forms of the amendment were reintroduced to Congress, failing each time.

However, with the rise of second-wave feminism in the United States during the 1960s and the lobbying efforts of the National Organization for Women (NOW), the tide began to turn. On March 22, 1972, after passing through the House the year prior, the Equal Rights Amendment was overwhelmingly adopted by the Senate and placed before the fifty state legislatures for ratification. The amendment was given until 1979 to achieve the required ratification from thirty-eight states.

During 1972, twenty-two states ratified the amendment; throughout 1973, the number continued to grow, reaching thirty by the end of the year. Between 1974 and 1977, however, only five more states ratified the amendment; three shy of the required number for adoption.

Opponents of the ERA, led by figures such as Phyllis Schlafly , emphasized traditional gender roles, arguing that the ERA would erase special protections for women such as their exemption from the US draft. Proponents contended that the amendment would be the strongest basis for asserting and conserving women’s equal rights into the future.

In February 1977, fearful the amendment would not be ratified in time; NOW began a boycott of states that had not yet ratified the ERA. NOW was soon joined by ERAmerica —a bipartisan coalition group—in encouraging organizations such as the AAS to only hold their conventions in states that had already ratified the ERA.

A Closed Meeting Vote

The AAS decision to decline conference invitations from states yet to ratify the ERA was made during a closed council vote held earlier during the 151^st AAS meeting. To the best of my knowledge, there exists no record of what exactly transpired during that closed-doors meeting. However, by piecing together bits of different council members’ correspondences, I’ve been able to create a rough outline of what occurred.

Councilor Jeremiah Ostriker and AAS president Margaret Burbidge both emerge as spirited advocates of the ERA decision during the meeting. Ostriker ardently contended that the ERA directly affected astronomy by creating an equal legal basis for many of the field’s members. In a letter to Burbidge, councilor Elske Smith described Ostriker’s speech during the meeting as an “impassioned statement.” President-elect Ivan King fought against the action, later writing to UC Berkeley department chair John Gaustad that he regretted “not oppos[ing] that ill-considered move more effectively.” Ultimately, the council voted 6 to 5 on the resolution, passing the action by a slim majority.

Immediately after the vote, in a letter dated January 10, 1978—seemingly written during the Austin meeting—councilors Frank Drake , Edward Ney , and Gart Westerhout condemned the action, asserting that it was “contrary to the purpose and constitution of the Society to become involved in political issues not directly related to astronomy.” The renowned astronomers requested that any record of the council’s vote explicitly reflect that they voted against the action. Though their letter was addressed to Burbidge alone, my analysis of later correspondence reveals that some form of the councilors’ letter was widely read and distributed amongst the membership of the AAS.

The AAS council had little idea of the controversy they had unleashed with the ERA decision. In a letter written to former AAS treasurer Frank Edmondson , Secretary Laurence Frederick claimed that he hadn’t seen the action as political given that the AAS already had meetings “set up well beyond the ERA deadline and in pro ERA states.” To Frederick and many supporters of the resolution, the ERA action was simply putting good intention behind measures that had already been taken. Supporting the ERA action amounted more towards re-affirming the equal place of women in the field of astronomy than punishing states that had not yet ratified the ERA.

Opposition Explodes

Opposition to the council’s decision to no longer meet in non-ERA states was swift and powerful. UC Berkeley astrophysicist Carl Heiles became an especially outspoken member of the opposition, immediately resigning in protest from the AAS until the action could be submitted to the membership through a mail-in ballot. UC Berkeley quickly emerged as an axis of opposition with a letter from department chair John Gaustad backing Heiles’ actions and signaling a pending mass resignation.

However, the hostility of the department quickly collapses under closer scrutiny. A second letter from Gaustad dated three months after the original seems to walk back some of his earlier claims, clarifying that the department’s objection was to the council’s action on a political matter without consultation of the larger AAS membership---not necessarily on the ERA action itself.
Like the councilors’ letter immediately after the ERA action, it seems that Gaustad’s original letter received much wider circulation than the letter-writer had perhaps intended. What sorts of pressures led him to the second letter, I can only guess at. I think that it’s safe to assume that the UC Berkeley crowd received a good amount of pushback against their first letter—attached to the second letter is a record of a vote held in the UC Berkeley astronomy department with a nearly unanimous set of signatures agreeing that “it is the legitimate business of the AAS to take a stand on the ERA.”

Among the many letters received by the AAS in response to the ERA action, Frank Bradshaw Wood and James Felten both emerge as rallying cries in opposition to the council’s motion. Felten would go on to give a public statement against the action at the Mexico City ERA Study Committee meeting in 1979, deploring the boycott as indiscriminate and undemocratic. Wood, though originally attempting to preserve his personal relationship with Burbidge, became riled by the continued action of the council as time went on. In his last recorded letter to Burbidge, he called the council a “politburo” ---a reference to the ruling committee in communist Russia---and documented that he would no longer pay dues to AAS. Indeed, as Burbidge noted in her letter to UC Berkeley Professor Elizabeth Scott, the ERA letters ranged from “very sensible and well-reasoned letters both pro and con…to quite angry letters to the con.”

The primary arguments of Felten and Wood, along with the general concerns of the opposition letter-writers, are categorized below.

To examine the dominant concerns presented by the opposition letter-writers, I drew a distinction between concerns about the precedent of political involvement and concerns about the AAS engaging in non-astronomical political action (see graph above). This distinction was relatively arbitrary and highly dependent on the specific language used in the individual letters. Whereas some letter writers drew a strict distinction between astronomical political action (concerns about funding, keeping the sky dark, etc.) and non-astronomical political action (the ERA), others made no such distinction.

Interestingly, many of the concerns about the council’s ERA action ostensibly had nothing to do with the ERA itself. Instead, letter-writers focused on the precedent of political involvement and what that could mean for the future of the Society. It’s hard to say whether this concern was truly the motivating factor of the opposition—the flood of letters that came into the all-male council of the American Physical Society (APS) when they pursued a similar action to the AAS, for example, placed much more emphasis on the negative consequences of the ERA.

A strong secondary concern was that the council had taken a political position without polling the membership. Apparently for other major decisions during the period—such as the establishment of a Washington, DC office (specifically to increase the political lobbying power of the AAS, I might add)—membership opinion had been polled. It was unclear to me how much this poll affected the outcome of the council’s action, but, from the letters, it does seem as though the ERA action was a departure from established council norms.
There are rough geographic correlations between letter-writers and their stances on the ERA action, though these correlations are weaker than I initially expected. Opposition naturally emerged from states that had not yet ratified the ERA, especially Virginia and Florida. However, many states that had already ratified the ERA had letters of opposition, and many states that had not yet ratified the ERA had letters of support, revealing department-level divides within faculty. As shown below, states shaded a darker purple had stronger total support for the ERA action.

Council Members Consider Rescinding the Action

Facing strong opposition from membership, many council members began re-evaluating the ERA decision. After a considerable amount of “soul-searching,” Elske Smith wrote to Burbidge proposing that the ERA action be rescinded at the next council meeting. Smith was extremely concerned about the backlash to the ERA motion—she feared that the society-at-large would hesitate to elect another woman to the AAS presidency if they thought women scientists were more concerned with women’s affairs than astronomy. Ivan King similarly attempted to rally council members to rescind the action, pointing to the stream of opposition letters and membership resignations.

However, in a letter to King, Secretary Harlan Smith argued that it was not obvious to him that a strong majority disapproved of the motion. After the initial announcement of the ERA action, the council tallied opinion letters as an informal ‘vote’ for or against the resolution. At the time of Smith’s letter to King, 52% of the letters had been in opposition to the motion, but only 24% of the AAS had responded for comment. Smith concluded that only about ⅛ of the AAS voted for recession of the action, asserting that the few in opposition to the motion seemed much more vocal in council meetings and thus were “much more likely to have troubled to vote.”

Solidarity Emerges

The letters in support of the council’s ERA action are much shorter in nature. I infer that those writing to the council in favor of the ERA motion simply wanted their opinion registered. Many already felt understood by the council---they did not need to convince the council of a different action. I was also struck by how many more notes in support of the action were handwritten rather than typed. A long list of University of Washington faculty signatures stands in support of the vote. A shorter list of support signatures comes from the Lowell Observatory in Arizona and an independent faculty letter from UC Berkeley.

Letters from women astronomers all over the country stood in solidarity with the council’s actions. In the vast majority of letters from women astronomers, there is a recognition that gender discrimination in astronomy was still prolific and uncompromising during this period. A formal AAS Committee for the Status of Women in Astronomy would not be established until June 1979.

I was especially impacted by two letters. Ann Boesgaard , then president of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP), reached out to Burbidge on March 14, 1978, encouraging Burbidge to maintain courage in the council action. Boesgaard and Burbidge were both the first female presidents of their respective societies, a fact that Boesgaard is bluntly aware of in her letter to Burbidge. Attached to Boesgaard’s letter is a similar action taken by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Boesgaard explains that while she wished she could take similar action with the ASP, she feared the Berkeley axis would be too strong in her organization to push the resolution through. In Boesgaard’s words, “I don’t consider the action to be political—rather it is a question of human rights and civil rights.”

The other letter I was struck by was from future AAS president David Helfand , then a research associate at Columbia University. Helfand argues that “ratification of the ERA is not strictly a political issue. It will very directly affect the lives of the individuals who are members of the society in both professional and personal contexts.” He then goes on to attest that the “AAS is not strictly an apolitical organization,” either, pointing to the recent office move to DC for increased political lobbying power. Helfand cuts to the core of the pro-ERA action arguments: that politics, in some cases, could not help but be inextricably tied to the pursuit of science.

Official Council Action

By March 29, 1978, the AAS was officially registered with ERAmerica as part of the boycott against states that had not yet ratified the ERA. In the Preliminary Announcement of the 152nd AAS meeting in Madison, Wisconsin, Burbidge wrote the following circular entitled “The Equal Rights Amendment”:
However, the ERA was quickly becoming a dead issue. The ERA would not receive ratification in any more states until after both the original 1979 deadline and the extended 1982 deadline. While legal challenges to push the ERA through Congress continue to this day, the ERA controversy of the AAS seems to have gotten buried. By the 154th AAS meeting’s Preliminary Announcement, the ERA is a sub-bullet; by the 155th Announcement, the issue had practically disappeared. In 1984, the AAS began to once again meet in states that had not ratified the ERA.

An Open Research Question

The ERA’s effects on AAS remains an open research question. I was able to analyze all the letters associated with the ERA and AAS held in the NBLA, but some materials remain untouched by my research. Hopefully further research will be able to analyze the number of dues revoked from the AAS and the membership loss caused by the ERA controversy. Additionally, a box of cassette tapes potentially housing audio recordings of the council meetings during the ERA controversy period remains undigitized (and thus unplayable) in the NBLA archive. Other organizations under AIP — such as APS — had similar controversies over the ERA. Many of those records open new avenues for exploration.

It is truly amazing how much history is stored at NBLA. Sometimes, all it takes is glancing at a record box for a dormant history to fall out.

References

Box 1, Folders 9-11, Records of the American Astronomical Society, 1897-1988 (bulk 1920-1980), Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics.

Box 2, Folder 1, Records of the American Astronomical Society, 1897-1988 (bulk 1920-1980), Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics.

Box 7, Folder 10, Records of the American Astronomical Society, 1897-1988 (bulk 1920-1980), Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics.

Box 10, Records of the American Astronomical Society, 1897-1988 (bulk 1920-1980), Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics.

Box 11, Folder 13, Records of the American Astronomical Society, 1897-1988 (bulk 1920-1980), Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics.

Box 20, Folders 8-14, Records of the American Astronomical Society, 1897-1988 (bulk 1920-1980), Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics.

Box 25, Folders 2-3, Records of the American Astronomical Society, 1897-1988 (bulk 1920-1980), Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics.

Box 29, Folder 7, Records of the American Astronomical Society, 1897-1988 (bulk 1920-1980), Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics.

Box 2, Records of the American Physical Society, 1899-1989, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics.

Box 28, Records of the American Physical Society 1899-1989, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics.