Bandy X. Lee, MD, MDiv is well known among those who follow books, articles, and television coverage of how Donald Trump's psychopathology makes him, as the book she edited proclaims him, a dangerous case.
She is currently in the news.
click above to enlarge
|
| This all began with her with a legal case which began with the following which was precipitated by the media hog par excellence, thin skinned, and “cancelled:” at Martha’s Vineyard Alan Dershowitz : |
Now some 10 months later the case has been adjudicated. This is the legal result as reported in The Yale Daily News:
“I won’t stop,” said the psychiatrist, who had alleged wrongful firing over tweets about Alan Dershowitz and tied her case to broader issues of academic freedom.
This was reported, I suspect with some satisfaction, on Rupert Murdoch's NY Post as follows:
UPDATE: I missed the obvious which the first commenter alk9090 noticed right off. The NY Post misspelled Dr. Lee’s first name!
|
| One aspect of her association with Yale which has been reported I wasn't aware of. I thought she was a regular paid member of their faculty working at least as an adjunct professor not on the tenure track. I don't know if she had a formal teaching role but this was reported: The reason the school said she was eventually let go was due to lack of a formal teaching role, the New Haven Register reported. Importantly, Lee responded to this in this tweet: |
(a) 80-90% medical faculty are voluntary; and (b) “no teaching role” was decided on after firing, not before.
It was reported in The Hartford Courant (subscription required) but referenced by the NY Post:
While Lee wasn’t paid, she claimed the Yale gig was worth potentially tens of thousands of dollars in perks and exposure that allowed her to consult globally, the Courant reported.
Bandy Lee often referenced her association with Yale and this, in my opinion, gave her a great deal of credibility. Here's a 2020 article about her from The Yale Daily News:
In fact, Dr, Lee was the driving force behind a conference back in 2017 where mental health professionals presented on subjected related to why Trump represented a danger to democracy. See article:
These credentials certainly lent substantial bonafides to their opinions especially compared to other mental health professionals like me who have published opinions whose educational backgrounds are more pedestrian. For example, I was a clinical social worker and the director of a small mental health center who received my MSW degree from Michigan State University.
Bandy Lee's website which has many informative links doesn't have any about this ruling (at least not that I can find):
As of this writing the news coverage section of her website hasn't been updated with this latest unfortunate development. However Dr. Lee has tweeted her response:
|
|
I don't know how much of a chance an appeal of this decision will have. I'll leave that speculation to those with a modicum of legal expertise. My own off-the-cuff opinion is that the law favors the right of a university to fire any non-tenured member of the faculty whether an unpaid volunteer or a paid instructor or non-tenured assistant professor without cause. I wish it could be a free speech case and then I think she'd have a good chance of winning on appeal but I am afraid it isn't.
______________________
|
You can read my blog, modestly named halbrown.org, where I not only write hopefully original perspectives on politics but also have many photo essays of my trips into the beautiful Oregon countryside and reviews of some the the unusual restaurants I’ve come across.
