In the days following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led invasion of Israel, a particularly memorable headline from the Babylon Bee exclaimed that “Ivy League Student Leaves Lecture on Microaggressions to Attend ‘Kill the Jews’ Rally.” Someone should alert the leadership of the American Psychiatric Association that the site is satire and not a manual.
Back in March, the APA — a 40,000-plus strong medical specialty organization that represents psychiatrists around the globe — announced Johns Hopkins professor Mansoor Malik as the 2026 recipient of the Chester M. Pierce Human Rights Award. Malik was supposed to deliver an acceptance speech at the APA’s annual meeting in May. Instead, according to Malik’s account published in Mondoweiss, the lecture titled “From Microaggression to Mass Violence: Psychological Autopsy of the Gaza Genocide“ was “canceled” (later to be presented digitally on a rescheduled date) due to “organized outside email campaigns and pressure from advocacy groups.”
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That the title of the lecture features a blood libel offers some insight into why the lecture was rescheduled. The lecture — now publicly available since it was delivered to the group Doctors Against Genocide and published on YouTube in June — as well as email correspondence shared with me between Malik and Jewish psychiatrists, should invite additional criticism. That is, why was Malik ever selected as the recipient of a “humanitarian” award that takes the namesake of the psychiatrist who introduced the concept and term “microaggression”?
In the approximately 50-minute lecture, Malik compares Israel to the 9/11 hijackers as well as Nazi Germany and compares the Holocaust to the “Nakba” (the displacement of Arabs in Israel after Arab armies failed to conquer the nascent Jewish state). He justifies these comparisons by claiming that evidence of the Holocaust is “fragmented and incomplete,” whereas the falsely alleged genocide in Gaza features “unprecedented real-time documentation.”
If that’s not enough historical revisionism, Malik also peddles the happy dhimmi myth that Jews were treated well in Arab countries in the centuries that preceded the founding of modern Israel.
Malik understands the comments are controversial. He assertively dismisses the idea that “criticism of a foreign state credibly involved in atrocities and plausible genocide is somehow antisemitic” and asserts that American Jews “overwhelmingly” agree on this point.
Of course, both of his strawman arguments are correct: Americans (Jewish or not) would overwhelmingly agree that criticism of a government plausibly involved in genocide is not antisemitic. However, according to the commonly adopted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism — a definition with which American Jews overwhelmingly agree — Malik’s Holocaust inversion plainly reaches the threshold.
The lecture delivered to the APA and Doctors Against Genocide was not the only occasion in which Malik, who received his medical training in Pakistan, insisted on defining or identifying antisemitism, despite the objections of Jewish colleagues. In emails shared with me between Malik and Jewish colleagues, he repeatedly dismisses concerns about his conduct and rhetoric and downplays concerns about antisemitism.
In a revealing encounter, Malik downplays antisemitism concerns by noting that “Most of the victims of hate crimes are Black and LGBT individuals.” This claim, while technically true, is disingenuous. FBI data show that anti-Jewish hate crimes account for nearly 1 in 5 incidents, despite Jews comprising just 2% of the U.S. population — making them far more likely victims on a per capita basis. Such selective outrage exposes the insincerity of an activist who otherwise claims to be deeply concerned about “microaggressions.”
In another encounter, Malik claims, “If anti-Zionism is such a uniquely dangerous force, where is the evidence?” Evidence is abundant for those who choose to see it. The “genocide” he laments began with the assault of Hamas, a terrorist organization that explicitly dedicates itself to the destruction of Israel. Meanwhile, Hamas’s primary ideological sponsor, Iran, stockpiles missiles and enriches uranium toward the goal of annihilating the “cancerous tumor” that is Israel.
Indeed, the APA has achieved such levels of absurdity and unseriousness that it is handing out awards in the memory of the psychiatrist who coined the term microaggressions — subtle and often unintentional identity group-based alleged slights, such as claiming “anyone can succeed if they put in the work” or mistaking a coworker for someone else of the same racial background — to an activist who traffics in Jew hatred while denigrating those who notice.
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This episode reveals something deeper and more troubling about the APA’s trajectory. It’s clear that the APA has signaled that its commitment to “human rights” is not principled but ideological. A professional medical organization dedicated to psychiatric care and scientific integrity has allowed itself to become a platform for fringe political activism and historical revisionism.
The APA — and all medical organizations — should heal themselves of their narcissism. Psychiatrists are smart, but they are not foreign policy experts. The APA should stick to treating actual mental illness rather than manufacturing geopolitical delusions — and perhaps schedule a group session on its own glaring blind spot.
Ian Kingsbury is director of the Center for Accountability in Medicine at Do No Harm.
