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WHY THE UNDERSIGNED APA MEMBERS WILL NOT

ATTEND THE ANNUAL MEETING IN HAWAII
Exercising her prerogative as president, Dr. Carol Bernstein has invited Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa to deliver
the principal address at the Convocation of Fellows during the Annual Meeting of the APA in Hawaii in May 2011. This
selection is one of the highest honors the APA has to bestow. We shall not be going.

Mr. Tutu is well known for having been awarded a Nobel Prize for his reconciliation work in South Africa after the end of
the apartheid regime. What is not well known is his persistent vituperative stance regarding the State of Israel and those
who support it. He has repeatedly called Zionism racism and Israel an apartheid state. He, who knows what apartheid
really is, has chosen to ignore Israel’s million and a half Arab citizens with full rights, the thousands upon thousands of
black Ethiopian Jews rescued and resettled in Israel, and the granting of a safe harbor and citizenship to Vietnamese boat
people and Christian refugees from Darfur.

His latest attack upon Israel, in 2010, was to urge the Cape Town Opera to cancel its visit to Israel (it did not) and to call
for an academic, artistic, social, and political boycott of Israel including the severing of research cooperation on water
purification between the University of Johannesburg and Ben Gurion University in Israel. APA is on record with a Position
Statement opposing all academic boycotts. That alone is reason not to have invited him.

In a speech in Boston, Mr. Tutu directly attacked the Jewish supporters of Israel as being in effect traitors to America,
controlling U.S. foreign policy for the benefit of Israel and to the detriment of America. In that speech he compared Amer-
ican Jewish supporters of Israel to Hitler, Mussolini, Idi Amin, Milosevich, Stalin, and Pinochet. This kind of scurrilous
attack has iniquitous roots in history and the name for it is Anti-Semitism.

We doubt that the APA would choose for a singular public honor a person who is outspokenly racist or anti-gay despite
having accumulated honors elsewhere. That would be wrong as well as offensive to a sizable minority of our membership
and therefore unacceptable to a majority of their colleagues. Tutu’s pending APA honor is offensive to us and to many
others who support the existence of the State of Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people and as the only country in the
Middle East respecting democracy, a free press, minority rights, and religious freedom. We believe that it also should be
unacceptable to a majority of our colleagues.

We have petitioned Dr. Bernstein, the Board of Trustees, and the Assembly to rescind the invitation to Mr. Tutu, to no avail.

For these reasons, the undersigned are outraged at this appointment and feel betrayed by their valued organization and
its use of our dues to honor this man, by whom we feel personally attacked and defamed. We want no part of an Annual
Meeting that features such a speaker, and at least some of us are seriously considering whether we want to continue to
belong to the organization that is honoring this man. Others, who agree with the undersigned but plan to attend the An-
nual Meeting, are considering various kinds of protests during the meeting.

If you feel as we do, we urge you to let Dr. Bernstein know, at cbernstein@psych.org. If you would like to support the
cost of this ad or join the ad hoc group below, contact any one of us. We can be reached through the APA at central office:
1-888-357-7924, or the online Membership Directory at www.Psych.org. If you will be attending the Annual Meeting and
want to join a protest there, email Dan Shrager, M.D., at dan@shrager.net.

Ronald Abramson, M.D., DLFAPA
David Axelrad, M.D., DLFAPA
Joseph Berger, M.D., DLFAPA
Barry Chaitin, M.D., DLFAPA
Janis Chester, M.D., DFAPA
Robert Feder, M.D., DFAPA
Robert Gorkin, M.D., Ph.D, LFAPA
Brian Greenfield, M.D., DFAPA
Frank Guerra, M.D., DLFAPA, FACA
Thomas Gutheil, M.D., DLFAPA
Mark Hauser, M.D., DFAPA
Barry K. Herman, M.D., M.M.M., DFAPA
Alfred Herzog, M.D., DLFAPA
Gary Jacobson, M.D., DLFAPA
Bernard Katz, M.D., DLFAPA
Marvin Koss, M.D., DFAPA
Lawrence Miller, M.D., DLFAPA
Robert Pyles, M.D., DLFAPA
Arnold Robbins, M.D., DLFAPA
Anthony Rothschild, M.D., DFAPA
Jerome Rogoff, M.D., DLFAPA
Stephen L. Schwartz, M.D., DLFAPA
Roslyn Seligman, M.D., DLFAPA
Gary Shomair, M.D., FRCPC, DFAPA
Ronnie Stangler, M.D., DFAPA
Wandal W. Winn, M.S., M.D.
Peter Wohlauer, M.D., FAPA

This ad does not necessarily reflect the views of Psychiatric Times, its editors, or its editorial board, and is run without any implied
endorsement or denial of its central claims regarding Bishop Tutu, the APA, or decisions by the APA’s leadership.

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