“Would he call his wife or his daughter a freak of nature?” wonders Nyakim Gatwech, the 29-year-old model targeted in a racism scandal that shook an Ivy League university. “His words are not just affecting me, but dark-skinned girls in general, dark-skinned girls who go to Columbia too or even a dark-skinned girl who is wishing to go there. It can affect her in a way that none of us can imagine – especially coming from a psychiatrist.”
Jeffrey Lieberman has ranked among the US’s foremost clinicians for more than two decades. As the longtime chair of Columbia University’s psychiatry department, he was especially respected for his research and published discoveries about schizophrenia. But last month, the former president of the American Psychiatric Association became known for something else.
