By Jessica Russak-Hoffman, JNS
“I’m scared of what's going to happen now,” Miri Bar-Halpern, a Jewish psychology lecturer at Harvard Medical School, told JNS. “I can already predict the backlash.”
Jewish psychologists who raised concerns about antisemitism within the American Psychological Association say a new congressional report validates their experiences but leaves them fearful of professional backlash, as they call on the group to acknowledge the harm and rebuild trust.
The House Committee on Education and the Workforce released a report on Thursday detailing allegations that APA leaders dismissed Jewish members’ concerns, resisted efforts to address Jew-hatred and allowed anti-Israel activists to influence the organization’s policies and response to Oct. 7.
“No one should have to turn to Congress to ask their own profession to practice empathy,” Miri Bar-Halpern, a Jewish psychology lecturer at Harvard Medical School, told JNS.
“I’m scared of what's going to happen now,” she said. “I can already predict the backlash.”
Bar-Halpern told JNS she gets “quite a lot” of antisemitic messages and threats. But for every hostile message, she also receives “three or four messages from people thanking me because they couldn’t speak up,” she said.
“This has been hard,” Bar-Halpern said. “This has been really hard.”
Dean McKay, a psychology professor at Fordham University who testified alongside Bar-Halpern at a September hearing before the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, which advises the U.S. Department of Education on accreditation, told JNS that people he had approached for help were implicated in the report.
“There are people named in the report who I met with as part of our efforts to try and address the problems in the organization back last year, who theoretically were trying to operate in good faith with us,” he said. “They were actually operating against us behind the scenes.”
McKay said that is “a particularly heartbreaking finding.”
“I had hoped that these were people who were actually working on our interests in a genuine way, rather than what I think is a duplicitous way,” he told JNS.
The tax-exempt association with more than 190,000 members sets policy “for how professional psychologists are expected to conduct themselves,” McKay said. “They’re the largest professional psychology organization in the world, and so they exert enormous influence.”
Bar-Halpern told JNS that “as a Jewish psychologist who has received hate for speaking up, this report is both validating and heartbreaking.”
“Behind those warnings are people who have risked their careers, relationships, and sense of belonging to ask their profession to confront harm within its own ranks,” she said. “I love this profession. That is why I spoke up, and why these findings hurt so deeply.”
McKay said the problems predated the Oct. 7 attacks.
“We got here through a consistent pattern of neglect and, frankly, ideological purity,” he said. “It didn’t start on Oct. 7. This has been going on for years, where Jewish pain has been dismissed, when Jewish identity has not been understood.”
Bar-Halpern told JNS she does not want the association to lose its tax-exempt status. Instead, she wants the association to “repair.”
She called for consequences for those responsible and “transparency” about the steps taken, urging the association to “go above and beyond to repair the trust.”
“Leadership needs to apologize,” she said. “They need to acknowledge the harm.”
Eveline Shekhman, CEO of the American Jewish Medical Association, told JNS that her organization “commends the Education and Workforce Committee for releasing this important report on the rampant antisemitism within APA.”
“It confirms what Jewish psychologists have been saying for years,” she said. “APA has cultivated an environment where Jewish members matter less: their complaints go unanswered, their safety is an afterthought and their concerns are treated as a nuisance.”
JNS sought comment from the APA.
