Hedy Wald

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Hedy Wald is an American medical educator and psychologist. She is a Clinical Professor of Family Medicine at Brown University and is known for teaching about the Holocaust and speaking out against antisemitism in healthcare.

Wald grew up on Long Island, New York. Her father survived three concentration camps, including Auschwitz, and she lost many relatives to the Holocaust. She earned a B.A. from Clark University and a Ph.D. from Yeshiva University.

In her career, Wald directed the reflective writing curriculum at Brown Medical School. She serves as a commissioner for the Lancet Commission on Medicine and the Holocaust and developed Holocaust and medicine courses at several campuses. She has written creatively about caring for her husband, a neurologist who self-diagnosed a lethal brain tumor at age 57.

After the October 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel, Wald spoke out against medical articles she saw as politically biased. She linked rising anti-Israel rhetoric to a harsher environment for Jewish students and faculty in medical schools, comparing it to the persecution of Jewish doctors before the Holocaust. She criticized a letter to President Biden from doctors who worked in Gaza as antisemitic and noted that wearing keffiyehs can be an antisemitic act. She highlighted examples of hostility toward Jewish students, such as posters being torn down, accusations of genocide, distortion of the Holocaust, and disrupted ceremonies. Wald promotes four guiding ideas to fight antisemitism in DEI programs: Education, Engagement, Empathy, and Enforcement. These include teaching about Nazi-era medical roles, encouraging respectful dialogue, and creating policies against hate speech and discrimination.