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United States of PTSD
Season One: Mental health concerns are on the rise in the United States. This podcast will look at the influencing factors contributing to the decline of our culture. With the rise of school shootings, political divisiveness, increasing levels of hate, and a chronic war of peoples' rights, we have entered a domestic war that never ends. Our podcast will look at whether this is done by design or is it an abject failure. We will discuss it from a clinical and common-sense perspective. Secondarily we will discuss ways to protect yourself from being further traumatized. Hosted by Matthew Boucher LICSW LCDP (licensed in RI) who has over 20 years of experience working with people who have addictions and trauma with a specialty of pregnant/postpartum women. Co-host Wendy Picard is a Learning and Development consultant with 15 years of experience, lifelong observer of the human condition, and diagnosed with PTSD in 1994.
Season Two: Is joined by Donna Gaudette and Julia Kirkpatrick BSW. Julia is currently working on obtaining her MSW and her LCSW. She is a welcome addition to the podcast.
Season Three: Cora Lee Kennedy provided research and worked as a temporary co-host. Dr. Erika Lin-Hendel joins as a co-host for season 3.
United States of PTSD
S 3 E:8 Veterinary Voices: Advocacy, Diversity, and Human Rights Challenges Part 1
Please welcome back Dr. Ericka Hendel as their input is incredibly valuable and profound.
This episode reveals the intersection of veterinary medicine and human rights, highlighting the struggles of students advocating for marginalized voices, particularly concerning Palestine. Panelists discuss issues of tokenization, selective empathy, and the moral responsibilities of veterinarians in confronting social injustices.
• Discussion on the responsibilities of veterinary professionals for animal and human rights
• Insights on student experiences with tokenization in education
• Examination of selective empathy within the veterinary community
• Personal accounts of student activism and the impacts of faculty hostility
• Calls for accountability from veterinary educators and institutions
• Reflection on the veterinary oath in the context of current events
• Emphasis on the need for a unified stance in advocating for all beings
Thank you for tuning in, and remember, advocacy starts with understanding.
Since we have recorded this episode, there has been a preliminary ceasefire agreement that has been signed that will go into effect on Sunday, January 19th. Although there is great celebration and joy for the hope for reprieve from the continuous and indiscriminate Israeli bombardment of Palestinian civilians, this is a precarious first step that is a bare minimum. Indeed shortly after the announcement, at least 12 Gazans were killed in an Israeli strike on a residential area in North Gaza, and additional strikes have continued. Israel killed a total of 82 Palestinians the day of the announcement. Even if a permanent ceasefire is negotiated after the second phase of this temporary ceasefire, there is no guarantee that desperately needed humanitarian aid blocked and restricted by Israel will be able to enter Gaza. An end to the genocide will only be possible with the end of the occupation, the blockade, of apartheid, and the ending of violations of Palestinian human rights and international law
It should also be noted that Tiktok was banned in the US within the same time as the ceasefire agreement. Although it was reactivated shortly after, it is important to note the importance of keeping Tiktok alive as many people in the US only found out about the genocide via Tiktok.
https://animalwag.org/
Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
https://uppbeat.io/t/hartzmann/no-time-to-die
License code: S4CEQWLNQXVZUMU4
Artwork and logo design by Misty Rae.
Special thanks to Joanna Roux for editing help.
Special thanks to the listeners and all the wonderful people who helped listen to and provide feedback on the episode's prerelease.
Please feel free to email Matt topics or suggestions, questions or feedback.
Matt@unitedstatesofPTSD.com
This podcast is not intended to serve as therapeutic advice or to replace any professional treatment. These opinions belong to us and do not reflect any company or agency.
Speaker 3:Hello everybody, this is Matt and welcome back to another episode of the United States of PTSD. I did want to do a little apology because obviously with the holidays I didn't do recording for the last couple of weeks and right now I am on my own as a solo person with Donna as an occasional guest speaker, so might be a little bit of delays between episodes until I get a permanent co-host. So I have an awesome person back with me today. We have Dr Erica Handel back. Thank you so much, erica, for being here. Erica was on the episode we did about veterinarian care and the high rates of suicide within the veterinarian world or any other world that deals with animal work and we have a whole bunch of speakers today.
Speaker 3:I'm super happy about this. We have a whole panel pretty much here today. I'm just going to, if you want, give you a minute to just do like a quick introduction about who you are and we can take it from there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 1:I have some colleagues and future colleagues with here today.
Speaker 1:We're going to talk about Palestine and why it is so important for veterinary professionals and other people working with animals to understand that they have a larger role to play in advocacy and human rights organizing, and we're going to hear from some tremendously talented individuals who are doing work, and I am here as, like, a named person.
Speaker 1:Of course, we have to take in consideration the safety and well-being of organizers, especially in anti-genocide work, because that does put targets on people, and so, therefore, I am here as a person, openly, with my name and my reputation within the veterinary industry and allyship and solidarity, to say I am the name here and you can trust me that the people who are about to share with us are who they say they are and that the conditions are as such, and this is an important reality that we are facing that speaking up for the human rights of Palestinians has consequences and that there are people who are targeted because of this advocacy. And so I will hand off to allow everyone to introduce themselves. And, yeah, and if you want to know my name, you can Google me and find out who I am. All right, so I'm gonna hand it off to our students, and we've got E and S here with us, and however you two want to introduce yourselves, please do so.
Speaker 2:Hello everybody. I am student S. I am a senior veterinary student, very excited to graduate and not be a student anymore. Yes, and I am a Muslim woman one of very few in our field and I'm just so excited to be here and talk to you guys and be in such amazing company.
Speaker 4:Hi everyone. I'm student E and I'm a second year veterinary student. I'm still in the trenches of didactics, can't wait for clinicals, but, yeah, I'm really excited to be here. I'm really happy and honored to be able to speak about this, something that I'm very passionate about, and, yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1:And then we also have Dr Q with us. Dr Q and I do some organizing together and I can't wait to have her talk about this.
Speaker 5:Hi everyone, Thank you for having me. I'm Dr Q. I am a veterinarian in the US, I'm Palestinian and I just completed a residency.
Speaker 3:So happy to be here thank you all so much for being here. I have to say, erica, when you were introducing yourself, the irony behind you talking about bringing awareness to a genocide will bring a target and put a target on your back like hearing that out loud. Just the irony behind that trying to stop people from being killed that makes you a target. It's just, it's so disturbing. I also want to thank all, all of you for your work that you do too, and as an educator, I know being a student is really difficult sometimes and I know the work that all of you do is very intense work and labor intensive, and so it's. I give you a lot of credit, so thank you I.
Speaker 1:I'm someone who really advocates strongly around students and educational justice and the concept of power dynamics. So our students are the most vulnerable population in our industry and I've been organizing around this a long time. So, especially when there was increasing restrictions on students around diversity, equity, inclusion efforts, having BIPOC students that I have been working with and supporting come to other organizations that I've worked with and say there's discrimination happening and we can't even talk about it anymore. Been happening, you know, over the past couple of years. And then, of course, the students have led calling out what was happening, as they have in multiple movements. So I really want to express to E&S about how proud I am of you all and how devastated I am how little support you have received from your own institution and how much I hope that we can change that. So thank you. Like this is real, like student movements are big deal.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they really are, and you guys have the energy to do it. I think the passion.
Speaker 1:I don't know how, oh my God.
Speaker 3:It's hard to keep those energy reserves, but I'm glad that you do. Now I know one of the topics we also want to cover maybe we can start off with that was the student tokenization that you had brought up. Stuck off with that was the student tokenization that you had brought up and a student asked you we talked about that there's not a lot of Muslim women in veterinarian work, or just not a lot of Muslims in veterinarian work.
Speaker 2:I wasn't sure which.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I meant Muslims in general.
Speaker 2:But within the United States it's this conversation that we have in VetMed over and over again, that it is, you know, one of the whitest professions in our country, or the whitest profession in our country, and we discuss it ad nauseum, basically how this is a problem, how it's impacting the care that we deliver to our communities.
Speaker 2:And our schools will talk on and on about how they want to recruit more diverse student bodies, how DEI is really important to them. They do all of this and kind of pat themselves on the back whenever the statistics change at all, without any acknowledgement of the responsibility that they have to diverse student populations and students of color once they're actually there at the school. So it's hard not to feel tokenized when we've been recruited, when pictures of hijabi women or diverse groups of students are on school websites, and then when we go to our administrators and we say, hey, these faculty have targeted us or hey, you're not letting us communicate about things that impact our communities, and we kind of get a shrug and say, well, sorry, there's nothing that we can do for you.
Speaker 3:When you were talking about being targeted. What are some of the ways that that plays out?
Speaker 2:There have been quite a few incidents, especially over the last year and a half of organizing, that all of us here on this panel have experienced. One of the most egregious events that happened was last year at a walkout for Palestine. Several tenured faculty members staged a counter-protest and screamed obscenities at students for almost an hour, threatened to record them, put it on social media and after that event those faculty members, as far as we're aware, have not been disciplined in any way. Many of the students immediately after the walkout had to go to class with them. Those faculty members were trying to identify which students were at the protest. I don't know if either of the other two veterinarians or students who are here want to chat about that a little bit more and the impact that it's had, but that was kind of one of the big events where we were shown that we are not taken care of by our administration.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's definitely like a big event.
Speaker 4:That happened, for sure, and I think, just in general, there's been a lot of instances of repression, whether it be through, you know, communications within the school and the ability to advertise certain events.
Speaker 4:Sometimes there are roadblocks that are put in the way to ensure that, you know, certain messages can't be displayed, such as Palestine, something that makes people on campuses feel uncomfortable about for some reason that hopefully we'll get into.
Speaker 4:But, yeah, I think that that has definitely been a roadblock in the activism that I've experienced since I've been in vet school and just like actually getting the message out there, and I think there is this overall kind of atmosphere of fear in the sense that what can happen because we're in professional school at the end of the day, you know, we've been working towards this career for our whole lives and most of the people in this field, I'd like to say, are incredibly passionate and love what they do. It's a scary thought to kind of weigh like will my advocacy, will me speaking up, possibly cause some sort of will this take away that dream of mine? And you know that's something real that you know all of us that engage in activism have to kind of engage with and talk to about ourselves and with our loved ones, and it's also something that a passerby or student has to think about as well, especially if you're in an environment where you already see repression happening and you already see that faculty have no limits in what they'll do to their own students.
Speaker 3:As an educator, it's really disturbing to hear that, but I also know it's true because, as a student, the only thing I can compare this to is when I was in graduate school there was a faculty member that was sexually harassing me and it was actually witnessed by multiple students in the class. I mean, people were complaining about it. When I brought it to the chairperson at the time it was the final year of my graduate program, so literally it was the last semester I was about to graduate year of my graduate program. So literally it was the last semester I was about to graduate and I brought it to them in a way that I was told was going to be confidential, because I just really wanted to know what my options were. So I said, hey, this is what's going on, I'm really concerned about it. And they said, well, you should file a complaint. And I was like no, I don't know if I comfortable with that right now. By the time I get home she had called me up and said I made a mistake. Actually it's a mandatory report. I messed up. So I actually had to report it and I'm like, seriously, like you showed me it was confidential number one.
Speaker 3:And then how it played out was I was getting pressure from the school to file a complaint because it wasn't the first time that it happened. But then, when I said, well, is there any sort of protection that I have that is going to ensure that I'm not going to suddenly fail like in the 11th hour and not graduate, the school basically said, yeah, we can't protect your grade. I said, ok, so you can't protect my grade and you want me to risk my entire career to do this, but you're not willing to put any support behind it. And they said no. So and of course, I couldn't expect any of my students that were in the class with me at the time. I couldn't expect them to put their grade on the line either. So the amount of power that is that prevents people from going forward and making changes is really it's huge.
Speaker 2:So I mean I can relate to it on that sense and what that's like. What you just mentioned about not being able to rely on your fellow students to also make that sacrifice or take that risk is something that has been really tough for us too, because when we're met with the reality that administration is not going to take the risk of disciplining a tenured faculty member, fellow faculty are not going to cause a problem, we have to turn to our peers. But that's it's like an impossible ask to turn to anyone who is powerless like you and say hey, I know it's really scary to tell you that we need your help to stand up for X, y, z. I can't guarantee that your grade won't be impacted. I can't guarantee that you won't get a letter of. You know your letter of recommendations won't be impacted.
Speaker 2:You know vet med is a small field. People know people. You know vet med is a small field. People know people and there's no guarantee that if someone was to speak up it wouldn't mean that you know they're not going to get a job later or word's going to spread. So, as tough as it is to not always get support from our peers, I can hardly blame them Because really it should be coming from people who actually have some power and who are not so vulnerable within our field no-transcript.
Speaker 1:This because, um, you were in a scenario leading some organizing in residency program, which is one step further down the commitment within this industry as far as, like, financial, you know, and professional risks, and so, um, because you are also it's, it's another form of student education that is like in an entirely different place, existence of residency and interns of which have no support structure within administrative spaces that are not heavily influenced by office hospital politics. We'll say so if you wouldn't mind, also kind of chiming in or adding your thoughts to this part of the discourse.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I was kind of in a like funny position because I wasn't a student, like I didn't have not that there's a lot of benefits to being a student, but didn't have those and but I also wasn't a faculty, I was a temporary staff, not even like a full staff member as a resident. The reasons that we were discussing for, like, my future would my future be impacted if I spoke out Like, would I be able to find a job or am I going to get blacklisted, especially because the veterinary world is so small and everybody knows everybody, and so it put me in a difficult situation. But but really, I mean I don't know what I would have done without these wonderful students and like finding them gave me a community and gave me hope and gave me restored a little bit of faith in humanity, Because at first I felt very alone, especially like I thought I was the only person who cared about what was happening and the only like Palestinian voice there. So, yeah, we don't underestimate the impact that students can have.
Speaker 1:I want to take a moment especially to have a specific call out. Hey, if you're a veterinary educator who happens to be listening to this podcast, this is something that is very important. I spent several years within the context of a volunteer and board member at Not One More Vet which I'm no longer affiliated with, but over that time students, interns and resident mental health was like one of my focus areas and it is shocking in support systems, in trauma-informed practices, in the fact that we have faculty members who verbally abuse students without consequence and this is our future right? Students are our future and so if you have faculty members that are tenured, who are verbally abusive to students and using intimidative practices towards students, we are actually undermining the future of our industry. So a very, very serious, pointed statement dedicated out to the veterinary educators You'll be hearing more from me. Let's make this change.
Speaker 3:Great point, erica, and that actually kind of ties into the second topic that we had about the selective empathy how we perceive that.
Speaker 3:It's interesting when we're talking about mental health, as I talked about actually I think it was either on the last episode or the episode before.
Speaker 3:That was right after everything happened with luigi mangione, and how you can see that that's the one thing that brings people together, because everybody realizes how much the health care system sucks and I just you know, I had a conversation the other day with a health care company about a client that I have that is chronically, very chronically sick and needs services, and every six months they call and try to get him to get kicked off.
Speaker 3:And it's funny because this is somebody I've worked with for years and this is somebody who they've done a five minute review and they're telling me what I should and shouldn't be doing and I'm like, yeah, okay, yeah, you certainly clearly know more than I do about this person in the five minute review. And they're telling me what I should and shouldn't be doing and I'm like, yeah, okay, yeah, you certainly clearly know more than I do about this person in the five minute phone call, but it sounds like it's the same in veterinary care and like pretty much anything related to any sort of services where you're helping people, where the people that are there I think are doing it for the right reasons, but the administrative and the stuff that oversees it is certainly not doing it for the right reasons.
Speaker 1:I've been thinking about a lot of it and I think about when we're talking about selective empathy and compassion and kind of the limits of the human behavior, veterinary professionals are very well positioned to try and expand their thinking. I think that this is something that all of us are making, this like ardent request to our field that does serious advocacy around mental health Okay cool, so you really care about mental health of veterinary professionals? Guess what? We have veterinary professionals both within our community, who are Palestinian, arab, muslim, who are deeply impacted by this, and also internationally, our global cohort and our colleagues in Gaza who are, who are being killed in horrific means, and so this selective empathy and compassion is definitely something that the students run into, that Dr Hu has run into, that I have also, like, experienced, although sometimes not as directly, and so, yeah, this, I think, the selective empathy and compassion, I think is something that our other panelists have something really important to say about how they experience the selective empathy and compassion of our field and what it means to them.
Speaker 3:So, open, dr Q can I actually add to that too? Because, to kind of go off what Erica was just saying, when I heard you say that you felt alone, I mean one. I'm sorry that you felt that way, because nobody should feel that way. How does that relate to the selective empathy in terms of what you were experiencing Among, like your colleagues?
Speaker 5:Yeah, so I guess the moment where I felt most alone was when, first of all, there was just like a lack of out, that was a solidarity statement with Israel. And that's when I like that was like a punch in the face, because I was like, how is this possible? Like not only are the Palestinians not acknowledged or mentioned, or you know what's happening to Palestinians, and and like and we're ignoring history. But yeah, so when I saw that, that was a shock and I had like a visceral reaction to it, I was like is this, are we serious right now? Like we're healthcare professionals, this is a veterinary school and we don't.
Speaker 5:We obviously don't care about, or you know who sent the email doesn't care about all of humanity the same way they don't care about, or you know who sent the email doesn't care about all of humanity the same way they don't care about Palestinians the way they care about Israelis or Americans, so that. So that's where I felt most alone and angry and I responded to that and explained why it was very wrong and and the parts that were ignored. And then that's what connected me with other people who felt the same way. But there is a very obvious like different treatment of people of my background and minority backgrounds.
Speaker 3:Have you noticed it? Is it getting worse? Is it getting better? Is it not changing at all?
Speaker 5:I think these recent events have made it more obvious, but it's always been there and it's something Erica and I talked about this before but it's something that I noticed as a vet student to almost 10 years ago. You know, something that I've always noticed like little, like microaggressions, things that people will say towards Muslims or towards aboutbs or about the middle east in general.
Speaker 3:so I think this these recent events have just brought it out more, so I would say it's getting worse dr q, do you think that when we call things because I've questioned this when we call something a microaggression, I almost sometimes wonder if that minimizes the fact that it is aggression? It's almost like all aggression is aggression right, like I don't know. What do you think of that? Like, do you think it?
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah, I can see that. I guess the things that I've heard, like I don't think people are necessarily trying to be evil. You know, I don't think they have bad intentions with what they're saying, and maybe that's. I don't know if that's the difference between a microaggression and aggression, but but it's things like like they'll just throw something out there, like, oh, we treated a dog from one of those friendly countries in the Middle East, something like that. Or like, oh, palestine is not a real country, is it so? But yeah, no, I agree, it is aggression.
Speaker 3:I just recently started to question it because I saw the same thing in trauma. Erica, you were talking about trauma-informed care earlier and a lot of times when people say that now it's just such a buzzword, I don't even believe them because it almost never matches up with the way that they're practicing. But I remember when it was kind of this like little T and big T thing, so they would say like well, people have like a little trauma, they have like a big trauma. But I think we know from the adverse childhood experiences study and multiple other studies that traumas are traumas. There is no like little trauma, there's no big trauma, like it's all how the person experiences it, right. So I just think microaggressions, I think it's ways people I don't know, I just think it's used to minimize that these are just aggressive acts, right, like people shouldn't be doing.
Speaker 3:I had when I went to Italy recently with a friend of mine and he knows I am 100% against genocide, I support Palestine, I boycott as many things as I possibly can. I mean, I've been boycotting Starbucks for a very long time now and he is fully aware of that. He sent me a Christmas card with a gift card to Starbucks and I can't help but think that that was blatant aggression, because I mean, again, I've had conversations with this person multiple, multiple, multiple times, but I just refuse to do it. I don't care if you paid for it, I'm still not using it. Does it? It doesn't matter. But I think that that made me really question the friendship because I was like, really that was there's no way. You're that stupid that you just did that in a like dumb moment. I don't know you're.
Speaker 1:You're laughing at this in a way that makes me feel like you've got something to add to this um, student e and I were just talking about microaggressions the other day actually.
Speaker 2:um, it manifests in so many different ways and we were talking about just experiencing life as like a brown person or a muslim person and you start to gaslight yourself over, like, oh, this wasn't a real thing, like they didn't possibly mean it that way.
Speaker 2:But the way you, after a certain point you kind of just have to trust your gut and be like you know what, if I get the feeling that something isn't right here, something's not right here, makes me think of what Dr Q mentioned earlier about like not even acknowledging Palestinians. And that was one of the big problems with that statement that originally went out from our administration was that they couldn't and haven't even used the word Palestine, let alone like put in any statement of advocacy. And yet we were scrolling through old emails and when things started to happen with Russia and Ukraine, it was really really easy for them to name that and put out a statement of solidarity. So things like that that are, I guess, technically microaggressions. Right that they didn't put the word Palestine in there. Like it really it hurts, you know. It just makes you feel bad and uncomfortable in a way that's really difficult to articulate to someone who hasn't experienced it.
Speaker 5:I call that aggression.
Speaker 3:I'm sorry, dr Kidd. What did you say?
Speaker 5:I was saying I would call it an aggression. I agree with Matt.
Speaker 4:Call it aggression. Yeah, I think there's a conversation to be had about you know the labeling we use in the words, the verbiage that we use, if you will. But when someone experiences a microaggression if I were to experience a microaggression when I have, like the the reaction is very visceral and it's very real. Nothing about it feels micro. So you know, I do wonder about that verbiage. But I wanted to address your question you asked a little bit earlier about how, if things have gotten a little bit better in the space of you know people feeling included in things like that, and I think it's very interesting kind of following a national, maybe international, trend of you know DEI work that has made its way into veterinary medicine as well and in some ways I think it's an incredible thing and I think that conversations need to be had and work needs to be done regarding DEI work. But I think that there needs to be a lot more work to be done within DEI work and I think that sometimes in my experience as an activist specifically about Palestine and being a Muslim American, I constantly find myself questioning the validity of the work being done because of the scope of power and influence that people hired to do DEI work have, in seats of administration, for example, or the actual resources that are being used to support students that are BIPOC. You know, black Indigenous people of color and I've actually had a lot of conversations with fellow VETS students just about their experiences. Because there is this problem that we have identified collectively us BIPOC folks, if you will where the AVMA, the American Veterinary Medical Association, and all the schools are trying to encourage hiring and admission to BIPOC students, but there doesn't seem to be any work being done to support those students once they're in our institutions and workplaces. No-transcript and incredibly difficult workload that veterinary students have to deal with is suffocating sometimes.
Speaker 4:Right, I personally, you know, moved away from home for the first time and was dealing with a lot of homesickness and removal from my community and then two months later, october 7th, happened and as a Muslim, this personally affected me and seeing statements like the one that Dr Q mentioned was definitely a punch to the gut and the lack of just naming it as it is.
Speaker 4:Till this day, you know, almost a year and a half later, it's still kind of a punch in the gut and the ways that you know, institutions kind of will repress this kind of work and this kind of advocacy is, you know, something that veterinary students that you know identify with these kinds of struggles, and it's not just Palestine. You know there's so many different things, especially that this is an election cycle, you know a lot of feelings and a lot of things are coming up for a lot of people and on top of the already like very real work that people have to do. So it's there's a lot of work to be done. Long story short, but I think that I just wanted to kind of talk about that, that the fact that DEI is being discussed so much but there's just so much still to be done.
Speaker 3:Student E, do you think that it could also have the opposite effect? So if there's all this push for DEI and then the services are not put in place and it does become something that's just about identity politics, that at the end it can actually cause more problems than were already there, because I've seen that play it out in different ways too, where um standards have changed for certain to like match certain things, and that becomes the reason for it, which I then think just perpetuates racism absolutely, I think there's, there's so much.
Speaker 4:This could be its own episode, I'm sure, and and this isn't just veteran medicine, but, um, there's, there's so much to be said about boiling down these issues to just, you know, inviting people of that ethnicity or group into a space, because if you're people are doing so many real, like historical issues, and to just have them in in on a table to, you know, discuss these things is, you know, it's very taxing, it's very, very trialing.
Speaker 4:Like you shouldn't expect to make people, you know a palestinian, talk about palestine all day long, like they're going to be very tired at the end of the day and they're already dealing with a lot, as is. And so, yeah, I think that there can be more harm than good with this kind of work. Only because if you're just inviting people in without addressing, you know, root problems and I think that can and it's funny because it's something that we talk about in our vet med curriculum right, like you don't want to treat what you see on the surface, you need to treat the root causes of issues right from a physiological medicine standpoint, and so why aren't we applying that same logic when it comes to the people that are going to be practicing this medicine. Right like why aren't you dealing with the the very real problems and offering support to these people so that they can be the best practitioners that they can be?
Speaker 3:Thank you. Thank you for answering that. I know it could be a very different topic. It's just there's so much kind of all wrapped into one that it's hard to not talk about multiple issues at the same time. But thank you, I really appreciate you answering that.
Speaker 1:Well, I think so. As someone who's been navigating or trying to figure out how to pierce through the metricization, I don't know if that's a really good word. Whatever, however that word might be, the material way in which, say, the workplace and educational space speak, that came with affirmative action. Right, it was a legal framework. Now, I think that what veterinary medicine has fallen into, like many organizations trying to talk about equity, is that the foundation of that, the principles are social justice theory and, as a social science, as well as human rights right, which brings us circles back to Palestine, right. As far as you know, I went to. Let's talk about AVMA for a moment. Avma had, I think, maybe $200,000 fund that they coordinated for animal health care in Ukraine. To facilitate that, we've had two AVMA conventions in which Ukraine has had artwork sponsoring and encouraging people to facilitate that, sponsoring and encouraging people to facilitate that and the people working in direct support of, for example, suela animal rescue it was which is an animal rescue providing care for animals in gaza who currently, right now, are barely trying, barely able to bring in food right and the, the and the resources for animal care. It's not being allowed.
Speaker 1:In addition to that, we have three veterinary medicine are not able to like, talk about it specifically and talk about it without trying to say, oh well, you know, this is a, we are not involved in politics. Or like, oh, like, this is a and this is the thing that bipoc veterinarians, veterinarian professionals, have been talking about from the beginning, like, if you're saying it's politics, well, guess what? Like my body, my, my physicality, everything about me is political. My life is political, not by choice, right? And so in some of these aspects of these frustrations, especially when we dip into our ethics as a profession, around our veterinary oath, right, how four BIPOC veterinary professionals, since before October 7th, understood that the actual material commitment to human rights is not one that veterinary medicine is able to wrap its head around, because it's still focusing on this legal and political framework to talk about human rights. And we keep on saying no, no, no, like yes with DEI, but understand that that foundation is civil rights. And if we talk about civil rights and human rights, guess what Palestine is in that?
Speaker 1:And that is like where my frustration really resides, especially considering all of the mental health, resilience and these other things I've spoken about this in other places but saying that the very mental health tools with which the veterinary profession is trying to hang their hat on to say we're going to make a difference. They come from BIPOC community. They come from Palestinian and indigenous community. These concepts of mental health, resilience and rebuilding after a continuous violation, these come from the very communities that are being erased from the discussion and, as a veterinarian, as part of my veterinary oath and they're like I will now like get off of my sofa and be like let's talk about, uh, moral duplicity, um, and the disappointment of basically looking around and being like, hey, I thought we took the same oath, where are you? That's been like the echoing thing of my like soapbox that I was a student about to take the oath and I had seen my mentors of people out in the field behaving as you've had to witness. I would be having some feelings. So, dr Q.
Speaker 5:Yeah, a hundred percent.
Speaker 5:And just for anyone who doesn't know, I'm not going to read the whole oath, but basically the oath that we take says that we agreed to use our knowledge and skills not only for the protection of animals but also for the protection of public health, the promotion of public health, and so we made this commitment to not only protect animals but also people, and we're not doing that, like we are failing to do that, by not stopping what's happening in Gaza, like it's a genocide.
Speaker 5:And, just like Erica said, the AVMA and many veterinarians not only have not spoken up about it, but have have shown support of the genocide, and so it's, of course, a huge disappointment. And also the AVMA has received several letters from several groups that have been a part of. So it's not like we can't use ignorance or lack of knowledge as an excuse. Everybody is very aware of what's happening, and the only explanation I have is that people don't view us as human. But even then, do you care about, even if you just care about, the animals in Palestine? That's enough to do something, to speak up and to do something and to stop what's happening, because it's our tax money that is going to support, that's supporting the genocide, and that's enough for us to be involved as healthcare professionals.
Speaker 3:And it's a ridiculous amount of tax money too. I mean it's absurd. And to what both you and Erica said, when I hear people groups like organizations saying we don't get political, or when I hear people saying that I just want to like slap them and say this is a genocide, you don't get to be neutral. Either you support it or you don't, like you can't take a neutral attitude towards it. And it's infuriating because I think I probably have one or two friends in my entire life that I can talk to about the genocide that's actually happening, that care and have done stuff Like either they've contacted their representatives or their senators who, in my state they don't care. In Rhode Island they don't care because they're very much in the pocket of you know, other people, as we all know. It's incredibly frustrating and I have one Palestinian friend.
Speaker 3:I call her every single day, we chat every single day, we do voice messages back and forth throughout the day, and one of the things that she told me was really disturbed me during the election was she was part of a I don't know if you recall like a phone tree where they would like reach out to registered voters and get them to.
Speaker 3:You know, like vote certain ways or just provide information about what's going on and this was to a registered Democrat who responded back to her something to the effect of that turned Gaza into a parking lot. And that's from a Democrat right, not, I mean, in our head we think Republicans say stuff like that, but it's really on both sides of the spectrum. And I know she responded back very, very diplomatically Thank you very much, I'm Palestinian and that really bothered me and that was just kind of the end. And I know she responded back very, very, um, diplomatically thank you very much, I'm palestinian and that really bothered me and that was just kind of the end of it, which was way nicer than I would have responded I, I'm gonna hold my like, learn very much as far as holding my, my range of which I am storing for other places of which I can release.
Speaker 1:But yeah, like circling back to this concept of like an oath and what it means, and students that are about to take an oath and are going to go through a little bit more training before they take that oath, like what do you have to say? Like what words can you express to the students, the fields about where you would accountability for what you're feeling now about that oath and what you've seen in our industry, and like where you would hope to see us get as an industry to re-earn your, your trust that has been, you know, violated us as students I.
Speaker 2:I feel like for us as students, it's been, it's been a huge blow to to the faith and even sometimes the love that we feel for the field to be confronted with. You know, as you put it, like this hypocrisy or like moral duplicity. Daily for the last year and a half felt at that moment at the walkout looking at a professor who the day before had, with so much kindness and compassion, shown me how to extract, you know, dog's tooth for the first time. And the next day he looked me in my eyes and he told me why don't you go visit the hospitals in gaza? I hear they're under reconstruction right now because they had all been bombed.
Speaker 2:I will never forget that moment of being like this field maybe is not what I thought it was and that was for all of us that was really heartbreaking, at least for me, who had never experienced something to that degree personally.
Speaker 2:I'm sure people like Dr Q, who had been in organizing spaces for a lot longer than me, have felt something like that. But to have come into this profession with so much love and care as all of us do we all come into this field for love and to see people who are allegedly healthcare professionals be so out of touch with our oath. It just made me feel like, looking at these people that are my mentors and who are in a position of power over me, and to just think like do you and I value life in the same way, for you to think this way and behave this way? Just a roundabout way to say that I know that we all entered this field for a similar reason to heal and because we see suffering, and I wonder where the disconnect is, that people see suffering in a place like Palestine and they brush it off as well. Things like that always happen there. Yeah, student E, I want to hear what you have to say about it too. Student E and I went through all of this together. Trauma bonded forever.
Speaker 4:Didactics right now and taking classes where we talk about you know how to be better doctors, how to communicate with clients well and how to stay aware. You know what's been on my mind the past year and a half has been the fact that we're taught to not shy away from difficult topics and to always seek knowledge and gain awareness of the world around you and your surroundings, because, at the end of the day, you know a lot of something. Veterinarians talk about a lot, or you know veterans in training talk about a lot. Is this idea that I hope that most of us have beef with the whole phrase? When someone asks you like why you want to be a vet and someone responds because I hate people, you know that's. That's simply not why we're in this field and if you're in this field for that reason, you might be in the wrong field because you're going to deal with a lot of people. And yeah, that's just been on my mind so much because it kind of goes into what we're discussing about this kind of selective compassion. You know, some people choose to just focus on animal rights issues and to just focus on animals and kind of tunnel vision in that regard, without understanding which is so crucial to being a good practitioner one day and part of your community is to understand that there are people behind these animals and those people have stories and experiences and they come from different parts of the world. You never know when a Palestinian cat owner might walk into your door. You never know who will walk into your clinic door, and it's important for you, as a veterinarian or a faculty member at an institution training the next generation of veterinarians or any field, really to understand the basic intricacies excuse me and experiences that make up these people's lives, because if you're missing that crucial component, can you really say that you're showing up for those people? Can you really say that you're providing care, and what quality of care is that really?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I just that's definitely been on my mind and I think that, looking around at the students around me and you know, faculty members, especially on my personal campus, where all of this really egregious stuff has happened, right, the silence is very deafening, right, this really egregious stuff has happened. Right, the silence is very deafening, right, and we talked a little bit earlier about how, on one hand, like me and student S, we don't necessarily blame the students for being so fearful of speaking up because of the very real consequences that could ensue and because of the you know the terrible things that have been said, as student S just talked about, you know gave a direct quote, but me also being in that position, right, like, we're also in that position, we're also putting our careers on the line. We're also putting all this stuff on the line. And you know, this idea of bravery has been on my mind because, you know, I talk about it with my parents a lot, with my trusted friends and advisors and mentors. You know people that really just wanted to see me cross that finish line because they know how hard I've worked to get here really advised me to wait until I get out, get my degree and I get out there and then I can say whatever I want and do whatever I want and use that, that well-earned position of power and privilege that I've earned, to make a difference. But as I talk to people out in the field and hearing what you have to say, erica, as well, you know, with your colleagues out in the field, like I really do think, like if you're waiting to be brave once you're in a place of power or money or position, I don't think you're ever going to be brave genuinely, because, like I don't, I think people, you know they do this with their own you know mental health, they do this their own kind of like self awareness and a lot of different things. But I think that we tell ourselves, once I get to X place, then I can do X thing, and I think that is a way for us to hold ourselves back. I think it's a way to inhibit change, because if we're all going to be saying that, then not a lot's going to get done.
Speaker 4:People that we look up to in history didn't take that position at all. The people that we honor, you know whether it's MLK Jr or anyone. You know anyone's superheroes, you know, like they did not wait for a certain scenario to be brave, they just simply were brave because that's something they had to do. And that is something that I constantly think about now and I really urge anyone in any profession, but especially in the veterinary profession, to understand that and to recognize that there will always be these risks, whatever position you find yourself in, however much money you're making.
Speaker 4:I think that it's important to look within yourself and to really figure out where your lines are and what's important to you and what you stand for in this field and think about that oath you took and be brave and do what is morally aligned, because it's the only thing we can do. And people like me and Student S, who are Muslim, and Dr Q, who are Palestinian, take these journeys upon ourselves because we feel like we have to. It's almost like a survivable tactic for some of us, a coping mechanism, if you will, and it's really hard to do the work alone. It's very upsetting to do the work alone and to make such a big statement or to do something so drastic and to not find that support behind you, because there is safety in that support for the students that are putting themselves on the front line, and so I just I would hope that people listen to this in general, kind of understand that and really like internalize that kind of understand that and really like internalize that.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much. That was well said for both of you, Student S, when you were telling what that person said to you the level of rage that that person has to be experiencing, like rage and hate, because it's such an awful, terrible, just malicious thing to say.
Speaker 1:I think that to understand I mean, this has also happened very prominently in nursing as well Our colleagues in human medicine and in mental health spaces, both student and professionals, have received like this type of language which is just like violent. This is just violent language and the concept that like for me, I both like understand this and don't understand this at the same time. But to say that a tenured professor, a faculty position who is being entrusted with the development of our future, of our industry, that we are just like okay with full-on racialized violence going unaddressed, is absolutely like morally repugnant as far as I'm concerned, and I am very, very confused at how there exists like where there is not larger outrage within the veterinary profession from people that have power and influence to like go to their alma maters and be like. How dare you allow people who are violent abuse our future? That is the message that I have for every single veterinary education like education person with influence. How dare we, how dare we leave our future to the machinations of abusers like and um, uh, this is this is like my first time having getting to have the live conversation with with student ans um, and this is like the position that I have taken in my student advocacy because I witnessed that as a student. I witnessed um sexual harassment, sexual abuse, violent behavior towards students, and I saw this experience as a student that was in the educational system, also for a PhD. So, like I really, really emphatically am trying to communicate this to our larger profession, that if we do not address this, we lose the trust of our future, and that is something that you know, veterinary medicine can do more than we're allowing ourselves to do.
Speaker 1:As far as stepping into a place of courage and I've had the privilege of working alongside some individuals within our industry and affinity organizations that are willing to take a stance and still found it insufficient. And so I do have places. I have been in places where I have been a visual reminder of the existence of Palestinian lives, in spaces where people have known that this is my position, who say, well, I keep doing what you're doing, right, please, encouraging me to continue to move forward and being like thank you for doing what you're doing, and being like I just can't because you know, fill in the blank right, and the same thing as student E, expressing that frustration to be like yes, I want to, like, you know, yes to your safety. I appreciate that and also like, can you not recognize that by just being like, oh, you're doing a great job, keep on taking the risk, like, keep on being on the front lines and like taking those hits for us, bipoc veterinary professionals are tapped out, we are burned out and we are like burned to a crisp and are like focusing on what we are focusing and we're kind of pushing people to say, now, if you want to make this industry better, you're going to have to start doing putting some skin in the game.
Speaker 1:And so it is a call in Suni. That was amazing and, of course, a complete example of why I dedicate as much as I can to student advocacy as possible, because y'all inspire me to be better every day and I learned so much from you.
Speaker 3:I think all four of you are inspirational. So, Erica, I would you know you are equally inspirational, so don't forget that. And I want to also parent what you said about what student he was talking about. It reminded me of something I saw recently that said if you ever wondered what you would do during the Holocaust, you're doing it right now. Yeah, and I thought that was a really powerful statement because it's true, Because you know, the people who are most vocal and are like here are all the things I would have done are the people who are sitting back and doing nothing. Just because of the sheer length of the episode and how much we needed to discuss, the episode has been cut into two different parts. So that was part one. Tune in next week for part two, and thank you again for listening. This is just a reminder that no part of this podcast can be duplicated or copied without written consent from either myself or Wendy. Thank you again.
