Harvard “Day” Marks Retirement of WFMH Secretary General
Brody Lauded as Scholar-Activist
A “Brody Day” at Harvard University on 4 November 1999 marked the retirement of Prof. Eugene B. Brody as WFMHs chief executive. The program was designed to emphasize his careers combination of international research, scholarship and teaching with advocacy and activism, especially for the human rights of minorities, migrants and people defined as mentally ill. The event was sponsored by the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma (HPRT) affiliated with Harvard Medical International, and by the University of New South Wales (Australia), as well as WFMH. The afternoon symposium at the Harvard Faculty Club and a festive dinner at the Hasty Pudding Club (a student club founded in 1795) were organized by Prof. Richard Mollica, Director of WFMH’s Collaborating Center, HPRT.
Participants in the symposium were welcomed by Prof. Joseph Coyle, Chairman of Harvard Medical School’s multi-hospital Department of Psychiatry. The first half of the program was opened by Prof. Stanley Jackson of Yale who spoke on “The Healer-Sufferer Relationship.” Prof. David Maybury-Lewis, Harvard University anthropologist and President of the organization “Cultural Survival, addressed the human rights of indigenous peoples. Ms. Annette Flanagin of the Journal of the American Medical Association discussed “Human Rights and the Medical Literature.”
The second half of the afternoon was opened by Prof. Marten W. de Vries of the University of Maastricht, WFMH President from 1997-1999, who succeeds Prof. Brody as WFMH Secretary General. His topic was “Science and Advocacy: Mental Health and WFMH in a Diverse and Changing World.” In it he noted Prof. Brody ‘s founding of the network of WFMH Collaborating Centers with the aim of providing a sound scientific basis for Federation advocacy. He was followed by Dr. Madeleine Riviere, WFMH representative to UNESCO, who travelled from Paris for the occasion and brought greetings from UNESCO and also from the International Social Science Council, where Prof. Brody has served as a member of the Executive Committee. Her topic, related to his many years of volunteer service to WFMH, was “Some Considerations about the Theory of Giving.
Next came a presentation about the controversy that surrounds psychosocial relief efforts following natural or man-made disasters: “A Multi-System Approach to Conceptualizing Persecution and Mass Trauma.” The speaker was Prof. Derrick Silove of the University of New South Wales, who came from Australia specifically for the occasion and commented that there was no one else for whom he would make such a long round-trip journey.
A panel on “Advocacy and Human Rights” was chaired by Prof. Solvig Ekblad, leader of WFMH’s Committee on Refugees and Migrants, who travelled from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm to attend. She was joined by Dr. Humberto Martinez, Chair of the American Psychiatric Associations Committee on Human Rights, which had presented its annual award to Prof. Brody earlier in the year, at the APA Annual Meeting in May. Consumer advocate Judi Chamberlin was the final speaker. She recalled that Prof. Brody had invited her to take part in a conference during his 1981-1983 presidency and that she was the first consumer advocate invited to participate in a WFMH conference. The afternoon ended with an excerpt from a videotape sent by Prof. Brody to the Federations September World Congress in Santiago, Chile, which he was unable to attend following an accident in the summer.
Personal Reminiscences
The after-dinner program at the Hasty Pudding Club featured several speakers who recalled some of Prof. Brody ‘s activities on a more personal level. Retired sociologist Dr. Robert Derbyshire, who knew him well as Chairman of Psychiatry at the University of Maryland, recalled his research and teaching in Mexico, Brazil and elsewhere in South America. Retired Harvard Professor Chester Pierce described being invited by Prof. Brody to speak at Maryland in the early 1960s “before it was fashionable to be concerned with ethnic minorities. Dean of Students for the University of Maryland’s Baltimore Health Sciences Campus, Prof. Michael Plaut, remembered being impressed by the multi-disciplinary nature of Brody’s department. He presented Prof. Brody with an etching of the administration building, the oldest North American structure used continually for medical teaching.
Other speakers included anthropologist and Prof. of Community Health, Dr. Lucile Newman of Brown University, and Dr. Henry David, who recounted anecdotes of their collaboration in Prague and elsewhere in the early 1970s. Dr. Brodys daughter, Dr. Julie Anne Brody, showed slides of Prof. Brody ‘s early life.
One of the people making long journeys to attend the celebration was former WFMH Board member Peter McGeorge of Auckland, New Zealand, who travelled 18 hours each way to spend three days in Cambridge. Another long-distance traveller was Prof. Louis Kikuchi, who came from Waseda University, Japan. The two Canadian representatives were Prof. Chuni Roy from Vancouver, who leads the organizing committee for the Federations World Congress in 2001, and Board advisor Bill Wilkerson of Toronto.
Many of those present were well-wishers and colleagues from the United States. The American WFMH contingent was led by Deputy Secretary General Richard Hunter. Dr. Thomas Bornemann, Board advisor, attended from the Center for Mental Health Services in the US Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Barry Jay, secretary of the WFMH Committee on the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children, travelled from Michigan with his wife to attend. Also present was Prof. Arthur Stone, director of the Applied Behavioral Medicine Research Institute of the School of Medicine, State University of New York, Stony Brook, a WFMH Collaborating Center. Dr. Anke Ehrhardt came from Columbia University, New York, where she is director of the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies.
Prof. Brody continues as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, the worlds oldest independent periodical in its field appearing monthly since 1874; Visiting Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School; Senior Associate at the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health; and Professor and Chairman of Psychiatry Emeritus at the University of Maryland, making weekly rounds as a consultant to the liaison-consultation service of the University-affiliated US Veteran’s Administration Hospital. As an honorary staff member at the Sheppard Pratt Hospital in Baltimore he is available to medical residents interested in international work. He will remain as a WFMH volunteer, giving the Federation approximately 10 percent time and maintaining a WFMH office managed by WFMH Associate Director for Programs, Dr. Elena Berger, in his Journal suite.