A division of the American Psychological Association has descended into rank antisemitism. Never mind virtue signaling; this is pure vice.
The APA’s Division 39 is the Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology. Its members are “professionals who identify themselves as having a major commitment to the study, practice and development of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy.”
A glance at Division 39’s materials reveals a tired preoccupation with leftist buzzwords.
For example, the group’s “Call for Submissions for the 2027 Spring Meeting” invites potential contributors to consider such matters as “colonial domination; imperialism; [and] westernization,” as well as “(dis)ability; capitalism; neoliberalism; social and economic class/mobility; white supremacy; proximity to whiteness; intelligibility; race; gender; sexuality; age; feminist studies; madnesss [sic]; [and] critical race theory.”
Yet these vogue concerns might occasion mere eye rolling were it not for the presence of even less savory commentary. As a note from the conference chair makes clear, this year’s call for submissions was intentionally sent on “Nakba Day,” the May 15 anniversary of “the Nakba of 1948 — an event of mass killing, disablement, and dispossession of the Palestinian people of their homeland.”
This is grotesque behavior.
To begin with, it is historically illiterate. The “Nakba” (literally, “catastrophe”) observed by Palestinians and their sympathizers refers to the 1948 displacement of Arabs from the Holy Land. But this event occurred only because Arab armies invaded Israel, and hundreds of thousands of Jews were thrown out of Arab countries at the same time.
However, even if Division 39’s rhetoric and timing were historically or ideologically defensible, the group would still have no business wading into choppy political waters. The work of the APA is to “promote psychological science and knowledge to benefit society and improve lives.” It is not to engage in preening political commentary.
This is not the APA’s first foray into antisemitism. As materials from the House Committee on Education and the Workforce’s ongoing investigation of the APA allege, “Jewish APA members have reported being harassed and ostracized by their colleagues within the APA and at APA events because of their Jewish identity, their efforts to speak out again antisemitism, and their Zionist beliefs.”
Additionally, the APA “has offered educational credits for members to attend conferences where speakers endorsed ‘violence against Jews and Israelis; antisemitic tropes; Holocaust distortion; minimization of Jewish victimization, fear, and grief; and pathologizing of Jewish people’s connection to their indigenous homeland.’”
Not for nothing did the Anti-Defamation League and the Academic Engagement Network urge the APA to address its antisemitic practices in a May 2025 communication. As that document points out, “APA Division 39 President Lara Sheehi defended the D.C. shooting that killed Israeli embassy staffers Sarah Milgram and Yaron Lischinsky, outrageously describing the attack as a justified response to what she called a ‘genocidal’ state.”
These are not the actions of an organization and division that are thinking clearly. Rather, they illustrate the surrender of an institution to its worst impulses and voices.
The time has come for the APA to clean up its act. American psychologists, their patients, and the public deserve better.
