PhotoIt is one thing for outside scientists to call for the removal of Rebekah Mercer — a leading Trump donor who supports groups that deny climate science — from the American Museum of Natural History, as several did in a letter released on Thursday. Now tenured curators within the museum have also raised their voices in protest. In a letter dated Jan. 19 and addressed to Michael J. Novacek, the museum’s senior vice president and provost of science, 28 curators expressed their “profound concern” about Ms. Mercer’s alliances with and donations to organizations that they say “challenge and politicize climate change science.”The messages of those groups, like the Heartland Institute in Illinois and the Heritage Foundation, the letter said, “directly contradict the museum’s mission and impede our ongoing efforts to educate the public about the science of past and future climate change.”A spokeswoman for the museum, Ann Canty, said that the museum’s president, Ellen V. Futter, would not comment beyond the statement issued by the museum Thursday in response to the letter from the scientists who called on the institution to remove Ms. Mercer from its board and “end ties to anti-science propagandists and funders of climate science misinformation.”The signatories on the curators’ letter include Susan Perkins, a curator in molecular systematics; Peter Whiteley, a curator of North American ethnology; and John G. Maisey, the curator-in-charge of the division of paleontology.

Source: New York Times January 26, 2018 18:45 UTC