In this short piece, Dr. Lee a well-respected, doctor and former – professor at Yale points out the very hypocritical way she was treated by the administration at Yale, a school she had been teaching at for 17 years. She edited a New York Times Bestselling Book, on how dangerous the then President Trump was to our very way of life. She was a victim on many levels, and something she never expected. She starts off our section on Women’s Issues, continues the Victim Report and brings us to another level in our quest for changes to how victims are treated in the legal system. Make no mistake, this is Institutional Retaliation, and it must be fought whenever possible.

 

The quotes at the end are from her friends and colleagues on social media.

In Her Own Words on the Occasion of Bringing Suit Against Yale

Bandy X Lee MD MDiv (@BandyXLee1)

I filed a lawsuit with a heavy heart because I never imagined that Yale, my alma mater and institution for 17 years, would not uphold its principles.  The lawsuit can be read via this link.

Other than some training I received at Harvard Medical School, I have been devoted to Yale since 1990, and in fact turned down a Harvard faculty position to return to Yale in 2003, precisely for its principles.  These principles reflected those of my grandfather, a renowned physician and inspiration for my entering medicine, who held medical ethics to be of utmost importance—and spent his career caring for the poor and fulfilling his obligation to society as much as to his patients.

I spoke up when I believed my country needed me.  The book I edited went on to become a New York Times bestseller, and the ethics conference I held to deliberate its launching invited me to the halls of the U.S. Congress.  I have been called a whistleblower, first for warning against the dangerous psychology of the president, who subsequently caused hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths and the near-loss of our democracy, and second for exposing the American Psychiatric Association’s distortion of ethics to silence all mental health professionals, unlike any other medical specialty or any other field of expertise.  Yale silenced me, too.

I tried to serve my nation and my profession by protecting the public’s health.  I would like to emphasize that, unlike the accusations against me, I have not broken “the Goldwater rule” by diagnosing.  I do not even believe diagnosis is possible without full medical records; however, on matters where we have more than enough information, I do not believe it is ethical to withhold it, either, especially when danger is involved.

Further, I should not be subject to “the Goldwater rule,” since I have not belonged to the APA since 2007.  After being active as a fellow at one time, I resigned after learning that it took a third of its funding from pharmaceutical companies.  I believed that its stances reflected this, heavily emphasizing drug treatment over patient interests.

See the following article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/12/washington/12psych.html

See this article on its previous principles I had admired:

https://psychnews.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/pn.40.16.00400003

With the Trump presidency, I learned that the APA strengthened “the Goldwater rule” to protect its federal funding, as noted in the article below:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-anti-trump-psychiatrists-are-mobilizing-behind-the-twenty-fifth-amendment

It is noteworthy how the APA boasted only once about increases in federal funding in press releases in the four years preceding its intervention (when it accused us of “armchair psychiatry” and “the use of psychiatry as a political tool” for “self-aggrandizing purposes”—without examination or consent, when we were already in the light of public attention) but boasted of the same a half-dozen times in the three years since.

Additional evidence of government funding playing a role is here:

https://www.madinamerica.com/2020/04/muzzled-psychiatry-time-crisis/

https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2020/09/silencing-psychiatry-goldwater-rule-doing-more-harm-good-ahead-us-2020-election

It has also insisted that we were misapplying a “duty to warn” in the narrow Tarasoff sense (warning non-patients when a patient is dangerous).  To be clear, we were warning society as our primary responsibility.  Should a psychiatrist not protect her patient when the patient is in danger?  It is the same with society, since the APA itself says in its ethics that we are to recognize a “responsibility to patients … as well as to society” (Preamble). I have also taken seriously its mandate that psychiatrists “recognize a responsibility to participate in activities contributing to the improvement of the community and the betterment of public health” (Section 7), and that we “serve society” (Section 7.1).

So when Mr. Alan Dershowitz complained about my speech about him and the president he was defending, and Yale dismissed me, I filed the lawsuit.  If I can be silenced, then professionals and intellectuals are imperiled everywhere. I care about Yale, and it is a matter of academic freedom, the obligation to share our knowledge in our civic contribution to society, and freedom of speech that is our protection against authoritarianism and dangerous leadership.

 

Lee’s attorneys are Robin Kallor, Cindy Cieslak, and Melinda Powell of Rose Kallor, LLP, in Hartford, CT:
https://www.rosekallor.com/

 

“This is a disgusting way for any university to act. Dr. Bandy Lee should never have been fired.”
– Prof. Lawrence H. Tribe, Harvard Law School

“Yale blundered badly by siding with the APA’s gag rule rather than the right—indeed responsibility—of its faculty to speak out against a dangerous president.”
– Prof. Jeffrey D. Sachs, Columbia University

“I wholeheartedly stand in solidarity with Bandy Lee, a brilliant and wonderful sister and professor!”
– Prof. Cornel West, Union Theological Seminary

“Lee has played a constructive and necessary role in warning about the consequences of vesting political power in persons who might abuse it.”
– Prof. Richard W. Painter, University of Minnesota

  • You can sign a petition by the World Mental Health Coalition here.
  • You can sign a petition by a member of the public here.