Restore Dr. Mansoor Malik’s Chester Pierce Lecture and Defend Academic Freedom in Medicine

American Psychiatric Association

Why this matters

The silencing of Dr. Mansoor Malik is not only about one canceled lecture. It is about whether medical and psychiatric institutions can honor human rights in name while censoring human rights scholarship when it addresses Palestine.

Dr. Malik was selected for the Chester Pierce Human Rights Award, an award rooted in the legacy of naming racism, psychological harm, and institutional violence. Yet when his lecture addressed Gaza, moral injury, and the psychiatric consequences of mass violence, the platform he was promised was reportedly denied.

This matters because professional silence has consequences. When institutions suppress discussion of Gaza, they deepen the moral injury experienced by clinicians, students, patients, and communities who are witnessing mass suffering and institutional denial. Psychiatry cannot claim to defend mental health while refusing to name one of the greatest sources of psychological devastation in the world today.

Academic freedom, anti-racism, and human rights must apply equally. The APA must be held accountable for this act of censorship and must provide Dr. Malik the full platform he was awarded.




To: American Psychiatric Association
From: [Your Name]

​Petition to the American Psychiatric Association

Restore Dr. Mansoor Malik’s Chester Pierce Lecture and Defend Academic Freedom in Medicine

We, the undersigned physicians, healthcare workers, academics, students, mental health professionals, and members of the public, express our deep concern regarding the cancellation or postponement of Dr. Mansoor Malik’s Chester Pierce Human Rights Award lecture at the American Psychiatric Association annual meeting following pressure over the use of the word “genocide.”

Dr. Malik was selected to receive the Chester M. Pierce Human Rights Award in recognition of his work on moral injury, human rights, minority health, and the psychological consequences of violence and dehumanization. Preventing or interrupting such a lecture after external complaints represents a disturbing precedent for censorship within medicine and academia.

Dr. Malik was not an outside disruptor. He was the APA’s own award recipient, invited to deliver a human rights lecture in honor of a psychiatrist whose work named the psychological harms of racism, institutional violence, and dehumanization. Denying his lecture because it addressed Gaza undermines the very purpose of the award and sends a chilling message to psychiatrists, physicians, scholars, and trainees: that human rights may be recognized only when they are politically convenient.

The legacy of Dr. Chester Pierce demands moral courage, not institutional silence. Dr. Pierce helped medicine recognize racism, dehumanization, and psychological harm long before these issues were widely acknowledged. To honor that legacy while suppressing discussion of mass human suffering contradicts the very principles this award was created to uphold.

Medicine and psychiatry must remain spaces where difficult ethical and humanitarian realities can be discussed openly, rigorously, and without political intimidation. Academic freedom and human rights discourse cannot be conditional on public pressure campaigns or ideological discomfort.

We call on the APA to:

*Publicly explain who made the decision to alter or deny Dr. Malik’s lecture and why.

*Restore the full title, abstract, presenters, and record of the scheduled lecture.

*Provide Dr. Malik an official APA platform to deliver the lecture in full, without censorship.

*Apologize to Dr. Malik, his co-presenters, and APA members who attended the session.

*Develop and require an educational session or formal training for APA leadership and members on anti-Muslim hate, anti-Palestinian racism, and the professional responsibility to recognize and confront these forms of discrimination

Psychiatry cannot claim moral authority while silencing those who name mass suffering, institutional denial, and moral injury. The healing professions have a responsibility to confront psychological harm, not erase it.

We stand with Dr. Mansoor Malik and call on the APA to uphold its stated commitment to human rights, academic freedom, and professional integrity.