Am I a Whistleblower?

I Never Considered Myself One; Now I Do

If anyone had asked me, “Are you a whistleblower?” “No, the thought never even occurred to me”—would have been my answer in April 2017, when I organized the Yale School of Medicine Conference that led to the book, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.   “No”—I would have said when I was meeting with many members of Congress and speaking up on many public forums in the years that followed.   “No”—I would have continued to say when we began issuing our “Prescriptions for Survival” the very first month of the Covid pandemic.

Now, my answer has changed: I would say, “Yes, I guess I am”—because of what I have learned and experienced since 2017.  I have learned what can happen when corrupted, on-the-take professional organizations like the American Psychiatric Association (APA) are used and bought off with big money, including government funding.  And secondly, I have experienced that my own institution and alma mater could be pressured by Alan Dershowitz and others associated with Donald Trump, as administrators fear alienating large donors, as when it abruptly decided to terminate me because I was unrelenting in my efforts to fulfill my professional and civic responsibilities.

I didn’t start out intending to be a whistleblower.  That was never my intent or self-image.  But I now feel compelled to blow the whistle louder: the APA and Yale should be investigated in depth.

We should call out institutions that stifle and repress one of the most important safeguards for our society: the freedom, indeed the special responsibility, of recognized experts to speak up about threats to public health and safety—especially when inconvenient.