Cable news’s favorite anti-Trump mental health quack has been fired from Yale University’s psychiatry department, a move that comes after the school allegedly warned her several times about her wild-eyed political rants and penchant for publicly diagnosing individuals she has never met.
Between this, attorney Michael Avenatti’s felony conviction, attorney Daniel Uhlfelder’s disgrace in court, and newsrooms dropping gossip columnist Michael Wolff like a bag of hot garbage, the press has done a bang-up job of foisting embarrassing anti-Trump hacks on the public. It’s only a matter of time before the phony Florida whistleblower, Rebekah Jones, is met with similar disgrace (worse than what she has already called down on her head, that is).
Dr. Bandy Lee, the physiatrist who repeatedly accused then-President Donald Trump of being mentally unstable and even once praised Adolf Hitler in comparison to Trump, has filed a lawsuit claiming Yale fired her for tweeting about Trump and his allies.
“I have tried to fulfill my societal duty,” Lee, who was at one point a regular fixture on CNN and MSNBC, told the New York Times, adding, “which is to call out signs of danger, and signs of unfitness. These are of interest to public [health], not to Donald Trump’s personal health, but to the public health.”
Lee’s lawsuit claims she was let go partly because of a 2020 tweet suggesting attorney Alan Dershowitz’s defense of Trump’s “perfect sex life” suggests a “shared psychosis” between the two men.
“Alan Dershowitz’s employing the odd use of ‘perfect’ — not even a synonym — might be dismissed as ordinary influence in most contexts,” Lee said. “However, given the severity and spread of ‘shared psychosis’ among just about all of Donald Trump’s followers, a different scenario is more likely.”
Dershowitz, a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School and himself a Yale alumnus, complained to Yale, rightly noting that the “idea that you can diagnose me, without ever having even met me, is unprofessional, irresponsible, and unacademic.”
Lee was then contacted by John Krystal, chairman of Yale’s psychiatry department, who warned that her behavior was out of line, according to her lawsuit. He warned her specifically the university would be “compelled” to terminate its relationship with her if she did not knock it off with the public diagnoses.
“You are putting me in a position where I have to ask, ‘Is this the sort of person that I can trust to teach medical students, residents, and forensic psychiatry fellows?’” Krystal reportedly said in an email.
He later met personally with Lee, whom he informed had committed a breach of psychiatric ethics when she diagnosed Dershowitz, according to the lawsuit. By May, Lee had been let go.
Krystal reportedly told Lee in a separate letter in September that her public rants raised serious doubts about her “clinical judgment and professionalism,” especially in regards to instructing medical students.
“You did not make these statements as a layperson offering a political judgment; you made them explicitly in your professional capacity as a psychiatrist and on the basis of your psychiatric knowledge and judgment,” Krystal reportedly wrote. “For that reason, the committee decided it was appropriate to consider how these statements reflected your ability to teach trainees.”
The letter added, “We recognize that without formal teaching responsibilities your appointment could not be reinstated.”
Lee’s lawsuit claims her termination, which she believes is directly related to Dershowitz’s complaint, is a violation of her First Amendment rights and her academic freedoms. Her lawsuit, by the way, also claims Yale officials told her as far back as 2017 to cut out the unprofessional diagnoses or at least make it clear her views did not represent those of the university, to which she responded simply by ignoring them.
“My goal currently is to ensure that professionals and intellectuals are not silenced,” Lee told the New York Times.
For the first time in 18 years, Lee will not be instructing Yale medical students. And she has no one to blame but herself.
The Goldwater rule is real. It exists for a reason. Mental health professionals are asked and expected to abide by the prudent guideline, which states it is both unethical and extremely irresponsible for mental health experts to render professional verdicts on subjects based only on casual observation.
Like any major, credible institution, Yale’s psychiatry department abides by this commonly accepted ethical standard. Lee broke the rules. She flouted professional standards. Her own lawsuit claims she was warned about her behavior, which even the American Psychiatric Association itself cautioned was both unethical and unprofessional. Yet, she made no effort to bring herself in line with the values of her profession or her employer, which, by the way, is a private institution (throws a bit of a wrench into her First Amendment argument).
Lee is not a victim. Her freedoms are not under attack. Lee, like so many media-enabled anti-Trump clowns that have come before her, is merely experiencing the inevitable conclusion to a public profile built entirely on anti-Trump “resistance.” Newsrooms may place a premium on unethical, partisan theatrics, but the more serious institutions clearly have no time for it.
