Rutgers Dean Requests Removal of My Articles About Racism in Michigan Clinical Psychology Program
I hope she understands why I said “No” and that she will act in a manner consistent with her values.
I needed help from someone at the University of Michigan who could speak with authority and was familiar with events that occurred years ago.
This need arose from discovering an email exchange from 25 years ago between a now-deceased psychiatrist from Michigan and David Healy, a critic of psychiatry. The Michigan psychiatrist claimed I left Michigan in disgrace after my arrival 20 years, and “everyone” was relieved. This is contradicted by my receiving a salary increase and a bonus, with the freedom to spend it after I announced that I was moving to the University of Pennsylvania within weeks and that Penn had provided corporate housing in plush Korman Suites. My version of these facts is readily confirmed.
After the email inflicted considerable damage, direct quotes were left without context in circulation on the Internet's dark corners. My current family is affected by its current use in harassment and cybermobbing, even though my current family did not exist even in my dreams when the letter was written.
The email exchange occurred in 2002, a few years after I had left Michigan for Penn. Unbeknownst to me, the email was forwarded to the Penn Chair of Psychiatry to discredit me. I enjoyed considerable credit from Penn for my work salvaging a multimillion-dollar grant supporting the NCI Comprehensive Cancer designation for the Abramson Family Cancer Center.
I reached out to the Rutgers Dean because of her pivotal importance 30+ years ago as a graduate student who documented the harassment of minority students by the white psychoanalytic adjunct faculty in the clinical psychology program and its captive internship consortium. After obtaining her Ph.D. from Michigan, she served on the faculty and in administrative positions before becoming a Dean at Rutgers. My only prior contact with her before now was the brilliantly written memo that I admired for its courage and relentless principled assessment of the woes of the clinical program.
Days ago, I received an elegant email from the Dean of Arts and Letters Rutgers-Newark that I will share later in this article. She asked that I remove a memo and her name, which provide the foundation of three recent Substack articles. Honoring her request would essentially gut the articles and disable a campaign vital to restoring my well-being, the security of my family, and my moving on.
My initial reaction to the email from the Dean of Arts and Letters, Rutgers-Newark
My reply was clear in expressing my disappointment but a bit intemperate. Upon reflection, the intemperance is not enough to prompt me to rescind or apologize.
My reply included: “I’m really sorry that has come to this but my family is welfare is at stake and you obviously don’t give a shit.”
Saying “shit” to a Dean is not a criminal act. Anyone can argue that it is rude or inappropriate, but in the US, that is only their opinion and not legally important. Having some terrible Deans in my 50-year career, I have seen many occasions worthy of a comment that a particular dean did not give a shit. Sometimes, this statement was made in faculty meetings and greeted with cheers and applause. The campus police or local sheriff’s department never rushed in, wielding clubs or spraying mace to silence the rude faculty.
I first renewed contact with the Dean and mentioned the memo in February 2024. She briefly replied but did not mention that the memo was still confidential. We could have discussed that, but I wrote an abstract and three Substack articles months before she claimed it was confidential.
Her request came in April 2024, and honoring it would have been embarrassing, inconvenient, and disruptive of my efforts to protect my reputation and reduce the harm to my family. If she were so concerned, she should have responded timelily.
There are free speech issues in my being able to say, “You don’t give a shit.” I will not further dwell on the tone of my speech. However, there is a fascinating context that should be shared for anyone trying to make sense of my predicament. The Dean’s email occurred after I received an email from another former student who played a critical role in my intervention on behalf of the minority students 30 years ago and with whom I did not interact then or now until an email exchange.
The woman was now an administrator at Michigan and had occupied various positions of power after obtaining her Ph.D. As interim Dean of Letters and the University of Michigan, she delivered the 2018 State of the College address. I had never previously written to her, but I had sent her the Substack articles with a brief note. Her reply acknowledged the importance of my intervention on behalf of the minority students years ago, but she declared that “there’s no reparative action to be done now.”
An email from a Michigan friend of the Dean of Arts and Letters Rutgers-Newark that influenced my response
Dear Jim,
Thank you for letting me know about your posts. And I appreciate that you acknowledge what happened and name how inappropriate and unjust this was. I couldn't find any faculty member in the area who would do that at the time.
I'm writing to ask you to please edit those posts to redact my first name. Given how few students of color were in the program in that era, it's totally identifying even without my last name. It's been almost 40 years and because many of the people involved are dead, there's no reparative action to be done now, so I don't think anyone is served by having my name attached to these events.
Thank you.
I automatically honored her request without much thought.
I removed “Liz” from the Substack articles. I was not obligated to do so, and now I have a right to change my mind.
Replying to the arguments of the Dean of Arts and Letters Rutgers-Newark.
The Dean’s email says she wrote the memo as a student 30+ years ago. She saw it as part of her student record and never saw it as public.
This statement implies that I violated a student's privacy rights when I published it in 2024. However, she is now a Dean, a role with different ethical and legal implications compared to being a student. She may have seen it as part of her student record but voluntarily shared it.
I admired the Dean when she engaged in a reckless act of resistance against the all-white racist psychoanalytic faculty. I assume that she knew as well that if the faculty in the clinical program learned of her memo, she would have been kicked off the committee on which she served as the Black student representative.
People will search for and extract content attached to her name and misrepresent her in ways that offend her values.
This direct quote from her email that I cannot improve in any paraphrase in applying to my predicament today.
Second, in these fraught times, I find that people will search for and extract content attached to my name, alter or decontextualize this content, and use the altered or extracted material for a range of purposes that are not aligned with my beliefs or values.
On a day-to-day basis in 2024, people search for information for me (doxxing) and misrepresent what I did for the minority students 30 years ago in ways that are horrifying to me and to anyone who receives this information. Some express hate toward my family, whom they do not know, and the trolls demand the police intervene with my family.
The Dean of Arts and Letters Rutgers-Newark did not want to hurt people she cares deeply about back in Michigan.
The principle of “First do no harm” (Primum non nocere) sometimes requires taking action now and not remaining silent about the horrors of the past.
The email from the Dean of Arts and Letters Rutgers-Newark
Hi Jim,
Happy Saturday. I hope that this message finds you doing well.
My apologies for not responding to you sooner. The past several weeks have been complicated.
I have just had an opportunity to read some of the postings that you have shared. It is clear from the postings that the transition from Michigan through now has been challenging for you. I am really sorry about that. I don't know the players that you mention in your posts, and cannot pretend to be familiar with the circumstances you describe, but I hate that you are or have been in situations that feel for you like a siege.
I did read the posts where I am mentioned, and read the memo that I wrote as a student. I understand the motivation, but I do want to share that I am not comfortable with my name (particularly my full name) being used in the posts, and not comfortable with the memo that I wrote being included. I want to give you a context for this.
First, re: the memo, when I wrote that memo 30+ years ago, I never imagined it being public. I saw it as part of my student/academic record and as part of my work as a student leader.
Second, in these fraught times, I find that people will search for and extract content attached to my name, alter or decontextualize this content, and use the altered or extracted material for a range of purposes that are not aligned with my beliefs or values.
Finally, while the Clinical Area was a challenging place to be when I began my journey there in 1990, I later joined the faculty in the department (twice), and currently sit on the Dean's Advisory Committee for LS&A. I am aware of the ways that a memo that is 30 years old can be used to damage an institution and people about whom I care deeply. I do not want that to happen, and do not want it to happen in my name.
May I ask you to remove the memo and redact my name? I hope that you will understand my concerns.
Warmly,
Could the Dean of Arts and Letters Rutgers-Newark or her friend in Michigan undertake a small but strategic move?
Safely at Rutgers, not Michigan, Dean Jacqueline Mattis could provide me with an Amtrak ticket to Newark. we could have a public discussion moderated by someone whom she chooses that would allow me to dispute the relevance or truth of the email from the deceased Michigan psychiatrist or offer exculpatory evidence.
Alternatively, her friend Elizabeth R Cole, back in Michigan, could provide me with an airplane ticket and accommodations to speak in a forum at the Eisenberg Family Depression Center. That was proposed in an abstract that I had submitted to the solicitation of abstracts for keynotes. As I noted in the abstract, the event could be healing for all, and I would be in a slightly better position to move on and stem the threat to my family that has nothing to do with the unresolved mess at Michigan.
I am open to counteroffers from Dean Jacqueline Mattis or her friend Elizabeth R Cole, who is in the University of Michigan's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) office. I am open to proposals from anyone seeking peace without denying past injustices that hurt the students back then and hurt my family now.
Postscript
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