Hedy Wald
American medical educator and psychologist
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Hedy Wald is an American medical educator and psychologist. Wald is a Clinical Professor of Family Medicine at Brown University. She is known for her Holocaust curricula and her activism against antisemitism in healthcare communities.[1][2]
Early life and education
Wald's father survived three concentration camps, including Auschwitz, and lost his parents and siblings in the Holocaust.[3] Wald grew up on Long Island, New York. She obtained her B.A. from Clark University and her Ph.D. from Yeshiva University.[4]
Career
Wald directed the reflective writing curriculum at Brown University medical school.[3] She serves as a commissioner for the international Lancet commission on Medicine and the Holocaust.[5][6] She developed a Holocaust and medicine course at several campuses.[7][8][9][10][11] Her creative writing has included her experiences as caregiver for her husband, a neurologist who self-diagnosed his lethal brain tumor at age 57.[12]
Activism
After the October 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel, Wald objected to medical articles[13][14] which she perceived as “political indictment cloaked in academic language.”[2] She connected surging anti-Israel rhetoric with an increasingly hostile environment for Jewish students and faculty at medical schools,[15][16][17] noting that the lead-up to the Holocaust also featured the persecution and ostracizing of Jewish doctors.[2][16] Wald has characterized a letter to US President Joe Biden from a group of doctors who worked in Gaza during the Gaza war as antisemitic, and included the wearing of keffiyehs as an antisemitic act in her studies.[2] She cited examples of medical students and faculty tearing down hostage posters, accusing Jewish students of complicity with genocide,[18] engaging in Holocaust distortion and inversion,[19][20][21] and disrupting commencement ceremonies.[22]
Wald advocates for 4 E's to combat antisemitism, which can be incorporated into DEI programs: education, engagement, empathy and enforcement. These include disseminating information about the historic roles of Nazi and Nazi-supporting doctors[23][24] and nurses;[25] fostering respectful dialogue and personal connections in medical communities; and establishing policies to oppose hate speech and promote nondiscrimination.[2][26]
Awards
- 2014-2015 Dean's Excellence in Teaching Awards, Brown University[27]
- 2013 Gold Humanism Foundation Harvard-Macy Scholar[28]