Walter Reich

Walter Reich was the 2003 recipient of the Award for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility.

Background

Reich was an Australian Jew born in Poland. Because he was a Jew and living during the Holocaust era, in 1938 he escaped the Nazis and ended up in Cuba. Cuba was actually meant to just be a stop but he never made it to America and thus settled there. He started his career by selling furniture.

Today Reich lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland, with his wife, the novelist Tova Reich. They have three children.

Appointments

In the past, Reich held the roles of: Director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (ensuring it’s establishment as an educational institute with serious scholarship) at Yale University, a resident in Psychiatry, working at the National Institutes of Mental Health in Washington, DC; and was Co-Chair of the Committee of Concerned Scientists.

He currently holds the positions of: Yitzhak Rabin Memorial Professor of International Affairs, Ethics and Human Behavior at The George Washington University; a Contributing Editor of the Wilson Quarterly; Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; a Lecturer in Psychiatry at Yale University; and a Professor of Psychiatry at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. As well he is an Associate Fellow of Davenport College at Yale, where he was a Lustman Fellow.

Reich set up the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, monitoring the establishment of its Committee on Conscience. He became the first occupant of the Yitzhak Rabin Memorial Chair at GW following its 1998 creation.

Controversy

Reich has never been reluctant to voice his opinions, irrespective of how controversial they might be. For example, he has authored articles on physician assisted suicide, urging human rights organizations to examine themselves for possible biases. He also publicized the abuses in psychiatry in the Soviet Union and been a pioneer in a worldwide effort to condemn these practices, via the World Psychiatric Association, expelling the Soviet Union from the Association.

Awards

In 2003-4 Reich received the Scientific Freedom and Responsibility (SFR) Award for his “longstanding devotion to human rights issues, particularly his role in making known the abuses of psychiatry in the Soviet Union and spearheading an international effort to condemn such practices.” He received the Human Rights Award from the American Psychiatric Association in 2004. In 1998 Reich was awarded a Special Presidential Commendation from the American Psychiatric Association “in recognition of his distinguished leadership and scholarship as Director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. , and of his being a renowned champion of Human Rights.” He also was received the Solomon A. Berson Medical Alumni Achievement Award in Health Science from the New York University School of Medicine.

On receiving the AAAS award, Reich said: “This award means a lot to me because human rights mean a lot to me. If the AAAS believes that I’ve contributed something to protecting those rights, then I can think of no honor more gratifying.” According to Harry Harding, dean of the GW Elliott School of International Affairs, Reich was “very worthy” for the achievement.

Education

Reich has a BA from Columbia College and an MD from the New York University School of Medicine. He also studied at the National Hospital for Neurological Diseases of the University of London and at the Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic alongside Anna Freud.

Publications

Reich wrote A Stranger in My House: Jews and Arabs in the West Bank (published by Holt), a co-wrote State of the Struggle: Report on the Battle against Global Terrorism (published by Brookings Institution Press), and edited Origins of Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies, States of Mind (co-published by Johns Hopkins University Press and Woodrow Wilson Center Press). He has also contributed to various journals including: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Commentary and The New Republic.