Ex-Yale Faculty Member Who Commented On Trump's Mental Health Fails To Get Rehired

A former faculty member at Yale University has failed to get her job back over her controversial remarks against ex-president Donald Trump and his loyalists two years ago.

Brandy Lee, who worked in the Department of Psychiatry in the School of Medicine, had filed a lawsuit after her termination in 2020, which was recently dismissed by U.S. District Judge Sarah A.L. Merriam, the New York Post reported.

Lee had argued in the lawsuit the Ivy League school's retaliation was in response to her "exercise of free speech rights" about the dangers of Trump's presidency.

In 2020, Lee had tweeted "just about all" Trump's supporters suffered from "shared psychosis," including Alan Dershowitz who, according to her, "wholly taken on Trump's symptoms by contagion."

Lee was fired after Dershowitz sent a complaint letter to Yale administrators, saying the tweet was in "a serious violation of the ethics rules of the American Psychiatric Association." Lee then filed an "unlawful termination" lawsuit.

Upon receiving Dershowitz's letter, the chair of the Psychiatry Department, John Krystal, sent a warning email to Lee, according to court documents. He said the department would be compelled to terminate her teaching role if she continued to make such public statements, reported Yale Daily News.

However, Lee continued making similar public comments, which resulted in her termination in May 2020 on "breached psychiatric ethics." In the letter she received, it was stated she was being terminated from the formal teaching role.

Her statements went against the American Psychiatric Association's rule that prohibits professional commentary on undiagnosed public figures, according to her own admission. She also stated she hasn't been a member of the organization since 2007.

The university denied Lee's reappointment on account of its reservations about her judgment, professionalism, and fitness to teach after she made widely disseminated diagnoses of Trump and his supporters without the benefit of having ever met or spoken with them, reported the Hartford Courant.

"I want to emphasize that you did not make these statements as a layperson offering a political judgment; you made them explicitly in your professional capacity as a psychiatrist and on the basis of your psychiatric knowledge and judgment," Dr. Krystal told Lee in a 2020 letter.

"For that reason, the committee decided it was appropriate to consider how these statements reflected your ability to teach trainees," he further noted.

After Merriam's decision Tuesday, a spokesman for Yale said the school "does not consider the political opinions of faculty members when making appointment decisions" and "is gratified that the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut has agreed with Yale that Dr. Lee's lawsuit had no legal basis."