Panel: Antisemitism and Healthcare in North America
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Dr. Marvin A. and Sharon C. Gerstein Distinguished Lecture Series
Panel: Antisemitism and Healthcare in North America
The interdisciplinary international panel explores the development of antisemitism in healthcare from both historical and contemporary perspectives. Focusing on the experiences of Jewish physicians and medical learners as well as the implications of those experiences for Jewish patients, the discussion will include strategies for addressing bigotry against Jews in the context of medicine, higher education, and larger movements for social justice.
Featuring presentations from Professor Zackary Berger (Johns Hopkins University), Professor Ayelet Kuper (University of Toronto), and Dr. Joanna Krongold (University of Toronto)
Moderated by Professor Anna Shternshis (University of Toronto)
Professor Zackary Berger (Johns Hopkins University)
"Community Health in the US: Jews, Non-Jews, and Their Relationships"
Dr. Zackary Berger is Associate Professor of Medicine in the Johns Hopkins Division of General Internal Medicine and Core Faculty at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, with joint appointment in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He has an active practice in primary care internal medicine, teaches residents and medical students, and teaches bioethics to trainees in a number of Johns Hopkins specialty programs. He is also staff physician at the Esperanza Clinic Health Center, a free clinic serving undocumented Spanish-speaking immigrants. Other special clinical interests include the care of transgender people and the particular needs of cancer survivors.
Dr. Berger is the author of two books for the lay public on doctor-patient communication and on patient preference in the context of medical evidence. Most recently, he is the editor of Health for Everyone (2022), a collection of essays on making our health systems progressive. His current interests include advocating for a just pandemic response; understanding the Covid-related experience of disadvantaged groups; and comparative historical analysis of community-based healthcare and its interactions with biomedical expertise. In a parallel life, he is a Yiddish poet and translator.
Professor Ayelet Kuper (University of Toronto)
"Reflections on Addressing Antisemitism in a Canadian Faculty of Medicine”
Dr. Ayelet Kuper, MD, DPhil, FRCPC is an Associate Professor in UofT’s Department of Medicine and practices medicine within the Division of General Internal Medicine at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. She is a Scientist and Associate Director at the Wilson Centre and is cross-appointed to the Institute for Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, to the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, and to UofT’s Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies. A child and grandchild of Holocaust survivors, she holds a doctorate from the University of Oxford in Holocaust literature in addition to her medical training. She has been teaching about equity and inclusion within the MD Program, graduate programs, and various residency programs for many years, and she sits on numerous committees related to anti-oppression and social justice for a wide range of equity-deserving groups at the Faculty of Medicine and at UofT. She has published over 90 peer- reviewed papers, many of which relate to power, equity, inclusion, and social justice, and is frequently invited to speak about those topics internationally. Between June 2022 and June 2023 she served as the Faculty of Medicine’s Senior Advisor on Antisemitism. Her pronouns are she, her, and hers.
Dr. Joanna Krongold (University of Toronto)
"Antisemitism and the Jewish Quota System at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Medicine"
Dr. Joanna Krongold is the Gerstein Distinguished Junior Scholar at the University of Toronto’s Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies, the Temerty Faculty of Medicine’s Office of Inclusion and Diversity, and the Wilson Centre for Research in Education. Dr. Krongold’s doctoral dissertation explored the use of metaphor and figurative dynamics in children’s and young adult Holocaust literature, a topic she is expanding in a new project on ecocriticism and the Holocaust. Her current postdoctoral work examines historical and contemporary antisemitism in health professions education.