Professor Daniel Kammen
Professor Daniel M. Kammen has resigned as President Donald Trump‘s Science Envoy.
Kammen, a professor at the University of California-Berkeley, issued his resignation letter to Trump via Twitter on Wednesday. In it, he said the reason he decided to quit is because of Trump’s post-Charlottesville comments in which he said “both sides” were at fault for violence that led to the death of 32-year-old Heather Heyer.
“I am resigning from my position as Science Envoy for the the Department of State of the United States,” Kammen wrote. “My decision to resign is in response to your attacks on core values of the United states. Your failure to condemn white supremacists and neo-Nazis has domestic and international ramifications.”
Kammen became yet another person from the administration to abruptly step down following Trump’s controversial response to the white nationalist rally.
Last week, several top business executives announced their intent to resign from Trump’s Manufacturing Council due to his comments. With more and more execs stepping down daily, Trump decided to abruptly put an end the council and disband it.
Rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople of the Manufacturing Council & Strategy & Policy Forum, I am ending both. Thank you all!
But there was more to Kammen’s note than just a typical resignation letter. As other Twitter users noted, there’s quite a hidden message inside of it.
Each letter of the starting word of each paragraph, when combined together, spells out the word “I-M-P-E-A-C-H.”
Read Kammen’s full resignation letter below:
Mr. President, I am resigning as Science Envoy. Your response to Charlottesville enables racism, sexism, & harms our country and planet.
Kammen serves as the Class of 1935 Distinguished Professor of Energy at Cal. He was selected to be the U.S. Science Envoy by the Department of State on February 26, 2016. He’s originally from Ithaca, New York and is the son of Michael Kammen, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and Cornell University professor. He received a bachelor’s degree in physics from Cornell and then went on to earn his master’s degree and PhD in physics from Harvard University.
In 2010, Kammen was appointed as the chief technical specialist for renewable energy and energy efficiency at the World Bank.
Learn more about Kammen by clicking below.