A Response to Columbia’s Pride in the Manhattan Project
By Manjistha Lakhotia
If you were ever near a tour group stationed at Pupin, you have most likely heard something along the lines of: “Fun fact: [part of] the Manhattan Project was hosted in this building.” On these tours, on Columbia-affiliated Instagram accounts, and on the Columbia website, this is framed as a proud achievement of Columbia and as a selling point for prospective students looking to study in STEM. It is an understatement to say that this is unsettling, considering that a direct ramification of this project was the United States’ massacre of a quarter of a million people in Japan (around 50K of whom were Korean war prisoners) and a nuclear arms race.
In high school, many of us were taught that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was necessary to “end World War II” and “save American lives”. While I am not able to write a comprehensive analysis of the factors that contributed to Japanese surrender in an article, this is (if not an outright lie) an oversimplification of the reasons that led to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Not only were there already indications of preparations of Japanese surrender by the end of July, but there is also historical evidence that suggests there was also considerable motivation to end the war in the Pacific before the Soviet Union intervened. This has led to debates on, not only the ethics of killing indiscriminately to end a war (which is a debate not limited to the atomic bombings, but also to the numerous firebombing campaigns of the US on Japan), but on if the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were avoidable in the first place.
Regardless of whether one believes that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was justified or not, it is indisputable that this is not a topic to be taken lightly, especially considering how the Manhattan Project and the effects thereof marks science’s absorption into the military-industrial complex. For example, the Department of Defense was given $17 billion in 2021 specifically for research in science and technology, while the National Science Foundation received $8.5 billion in total. Moreover, many of the more prestigious fellowships and scholarships are offered by the Department of Defense, most of which require employment with the DoD following graduation. With the cost of living rising, students in STEM will continue to be left with few options for their futures that don’t surround work in morally ambiguous research.
Columbia’s flippant treatment of the Manhattan Project is not isolated; it is only a symptom of a larger issue within the STEM departments: history and ethics are rarely, if at all, incorporated into the STEM curriculum. Several of my classmates and I have experienced firsthand how there seems to be a lack of understanding behind the ethical pitfalls of topics ranging from data collection to eugenics. It is not sufficient to simply say that eugenics is unethical in the classroom if we, as students, do not truly understand what eugenics is and how it has become intertwined with a societal conscience. In this way, Columbia is failing to incorporate the history of science into our studies and, in turn, failing to connect our fields of study to the larger political sphere in which they interact.
