When Former Members of the US Military Asked APA to Drop the Nuremberg Defense From Its Ethics Code
Lest we forget, 14 years ago, the American Psychological Association was splintering around what to do about psychologists' involvement in torture. The organization has not fully healed.
Fourteen years ago, I was not yet on Twitter, but APA listservs were ablaze with psychology’s crisis of conscience around the ethics of psychologists supervising the torture of prisoners.
I was getting in trouble on several APA listservs for posting material I obtained elsewhere. I was explaining why we should all oppose psychologists’ having any involvement in the enterprise of torturing prisoners who were being held captive, some without ever being charged as terrorists.
I don’t think that I was still attending the annual APA convention so I could not be accused of participating in disruptive demonstrations or doing anything illegal. I was simply using the listserv to express my opinions and share inconvenient facts.
I would later be expelled from three listservs, one of them the APA listserv for positive psychology that former APA President Marty Seligman had founded. APA had posted rules for listservs that defined a due process by which members of the listserv could be disciplined…