New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Ex-Yale psychiatrist who criticized Trump, Dershowitz, sues over firing
NEW HAVEN — Dr. Bandy Lee, a psychiatrist who has been outspoken in calling former President Donald Trump a danger to the country, has sued Yale University after she was not reappointed.
Her federal lawsuit claims breach of contract, lack of good faith and wrongful termination and states she was fired for her public statements about Trump and his “inner circle,” including attorney Alan Dershowitz.
Lee claims she was threatened with termination in January 2020 by Dr. John Krystal, chairman of the Yale School of Medicine’s Psychiatry Department, after Dershowitz wrote to Yale officials stating that Lee “‘has publicly “diagnosed” me as “psychotic,” based on my legal and political views, and without ever examining or even meeting me.’”
According to the complaint, Lee’s termination letter, dated May 17, 2020, said the reason for her termination was “because she did not have a formal teaching role.”
Lee gained national attention when she held a conference at Yale in April 2017 about Trump’s mental state, which led to a book, “The Dangerous Case of
Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.”
Lee declined to comment on the lawsuit, which seeks reinstatement to the faculty, economic and non-economic damages, “including lost income, lost benefits, lost resources, lost privileges, lost indirect but significant remuneration, future economic losses, emotional distress, harm to reputation and loss of enjoyment of life” and punitive damages.
In an email to the Register, Lee did comment about her assessment of Trump: “As a violence scholar, I projected that Donald Trump was dangerous, not as much for specific acts of violence but for the groundwork he would lay for a culture of violence that would then give rise to epidemics of suicides, homicides, and mass violence. Although his election in the first place served as a barometer for a poor state of collective mental health, once in office and being kept there, he vastly exacerbated and legitimized violence.”
Lee who is not a member of the American Psychiatric Association, said the group had reinterpreted its Goldwater Rule, which states that psychiatrists should not offer a professional opinion about public figures whom they have not examined, a “gag rule of its member psychiatrists.”
In her email to the Register, Lee said, “The American Psychiatric Association, by declaring me and others who would speak up as ‘unethical,’ based on its trade association rule, arguably violated our universal pledge under the Geneva Declaration not to collude with destructive governments and its own code to serve society. It enabled the president not to be held accountable for his mental unfitness and facilitated the deaths of 500,000+ Americans, which many scientific reports now confirm were largely unnecessary.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the COVID-19 pandemic has claimed more than 539,000 lives.
In her complaint, Lee restated a characterization she made of Dershowitz, a Yale Law School graduate, in which she alleged “he has wholly taken on Trump’s symptoms by contagion” and referred to
“shared psychosis.” The comparison was an apparent reference to Dershowitz “employing the odd use of ‘perfect’” in describing his sex life. Trump has called his phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which he allegedly suggested Zelensky investigate Joe Biden, “a perfect phone call.”
Dershowitz said Tuesday that Lee “attributed to me a lot more power than I think I actually have. All I did was alert the Yale authorities to her unprofessional conduct. The facts are the facts.” Dershowitz said he has never met Lee.
He said his use of the word “perfect,” which he said merely described his relationship with his wife, preceded Trump’s.
“I think her own words prove that she acted unprofessionally, in violation of academic standards and in violation of the rules of psychiatry,” Dershowitz said. “I also think that it is unethical to falsely diagnose somebody whom she hasn’t met for political and ideological reasons.”
He said he called for Yale to investigate Lee’s conduct. “I think that Yale was right to look into it and then its their decision,” he said.
Lee’s lawsuit states,
“When Dr. Lee stated ‘symptoms by contagion,’ she was not diagnosing Mr. Dershowitz, but rather commenting on a widespread phenomenon of ‘shared psychosis,’ also known as ‘folie à plusieurs,’ which refers to the contagion of symptoms that can happen in a situation where a highly symptomatic individual is placed in an influential position. Under such conditions, the person’s symptoms may spread through the population through emotional bonds: heightening existing pathologies ... triggering personality predisposition ... or inducing symptoms in previously healthy individuals.”
The complaint continues, “Despite the English phrase, ‘psychosis’ is not always present, but the more commonly induced symptoms are delusions, paranoia and propensity for violence. Dr. Lee has extensive experience with this phenomenon, having worked almost exclusively in public-sector and prison settings, where severely symptomatic individuals often go untreated and influence entire families or gangs. She believed that President Trump’s followers were likely to be influenced to some degree by his pathology because of the level of exposure, not necessarily because of the specific use of the word ‘perfect’ but by the exaggerated sense of self and impunity they seemed to share.”
Yale spokeswoman Karen Peart said in an email, “Dr. Lee was a voluntary faculty member in the School of Medicine, and her request for reappointment was considered in accordance with Yale’s policies and practices. Yale does not consider the political opinions of faculty members when making appointment decisions.”
Peart added, “Voluntary faculty members in the Department of Psychiatry are unpaid, but, in exchange for up to four hours of departmentally-sanctioned teaching activity per week, they receive a Yale faculty affiliation.”
In her lawsuit, Lee quotes an email from Dr. John Krystal, chairman of the Psychiatry Department, which “warned Dr. Lee that the department would be compelled to ‘terminate [her] teaching role at Yale University’ if her ‘behavior d[id] not change.’”
Referring to her statements about Trump and Dershowitz, Krystal wrote, according to the complaint: “It seems to me ... that the published quotes suggest that you are not making cautious, reasoned statements qualified by the limitations of the information you have .... Worse, the recklessness of your comments creates the appearance that they are selfserving in relation to your personal political beliefs and other possible personal aspirations. … You are putting me in a position where I have to ask, ‘Is this the sort of person that I can trust to teach medical students, residents, and forensic psychiatry fellows?’”