Katz Fired From Oil-Spill Team Due to 'Controversial Writings'

By Katarzyna Klimasinska and Jessica Resnick-Ault
Bloomberg
May. 20, 2010

May 18 (Bloomberg) -- Jonathan I. Katz, a physics professor at Washington University in St. Louis., said he was fired from the team of scientists chosen by U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu to help BP Plc control the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

“Some of Professor Katz’s controversial writings have become a distraction from the critical work of addressing the oil spill,” Stephanie Mueller, a spokeswoman for the Energy Department, said in an e-mail today. “Professor Katz will no longer be involved in the department’s efforts.”

Chu brought Katz to Houston last week along with four other experts, Richard L. Garwin, a physicist and IBM Fellow Emeritus, George Cooper, a civil-engineering professor at the University of California at Berkeley, Alexander Slocum, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and Tom Hunter, president of Sandia Corp., which manages research for the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration.

While Katz’s early work focused on astrophysics, he now consults on a variety of physics puzzles, he said. Katz wrote articles on his personal website, including, “What Is Political Correctness,” “In Defense of Homophobia” and “Why Terrorism Is Important.”

“I don’t self-censor myself,” Katz, 59, said in a phone interview today. “There’s no doubt there are things on my webpage that’ve been there for many years that are fairly controversial.”

He was fired from the panel this morning, he said. He declined to specify which articles triggered the dismissal.

To contact the reporters on this story: Katarzyna Klimasinska in Houston at [email protected]; Jessica Resnick-Ault in New York at [email protected]