In 2017, Dr. Allan Josephson was at the top of his game—which is what made his downfall all the more disturbing and his vindication so sweet.
The University of Louisville hired Josephson in 2003 to lead its Division of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, which, at the time of his hiring, had only six full-time faculty who rarely produced national presentations or published scholarship, and the department struggled with unstable finances.
Josephson used his distinguished career experience to turn the department around. He balanced the budget, doubled the faculty, and more than doubled the patient load while establishing a glowing national reputation for the program. As the school’s renown grew, so did Josephson’s, including being awarded the American Psychiatric Association’s prestigious Oskar Pfister Award.
Josephson remained at the forefront of the best child psychiatric practices, which is why in 2014, he began voicing concerns about how some within the medical community began to see cross-sex hormones and so-called “social transitioning” as essential treatments for children exhibiting gender dysphoria. To Josephson, these were unproven, fast-tracking methods that created lifelong medical patients while failing to address underlying issues, such as mental distress caused, many times, by years of abuse and neglect.
A Curriculum Driven by Activists, Not Experts
Starting in 2016, Josephson served as an expert witness, on his own time, in cases involving gender dysphoria, which initially didn’t cause any issues with his superiors. He continued his stellar work at the school, resulting in perfect scores on his annual evaluations for three straight years.
As the cultural winds shifted toward accepting radical gender ideology, U of L decided to place its chips all-in on appeasing ideologues. The school ran a pilot program called “eQuality,” which the university describes as an “integrated educational model that incorporates content” focused on LGBT-identified patients “throughout required medical curricula,” with a goal of promoting “institutional change.” The “LGBTQ curriculum” was “based on medical education competencies from the Association of American Medical Colleges” and was a model for implementation at the national level. The school’s LGBT Center participated in the development in the curriculum despite their complete lack of medical expertise, and they failed to include Josephson in their discussions despite his leadership.
But university officials soon showed their commitment to this program outweighed their commitment to evidence, academic freedom, and even patients.
Inside the Campaign to Push Josephson Out
In October 2017, Josephson spoke at a Heritage Foundation panel in Washington, D.C., where he discussed how gender dysphoria is a socio-cultural, psychological phenomenon that cannot be fully addressed with drugs and surgery. A far left-wing blogger wrote a dishonest screed against the panel. A U of L administrator saw the post and sent it to the university’s LGBT Center director. The director alerted the medical school dean, Toni Ganzel, who replied at 1 a.m. to condemn Josephson’s views as contrary to “the culture we are trying so hard to promote” and instructed Josephson’s dean to schedule a meeting to “discuss next steps.”
The “next steps,” it turned out, was a whirlwind effort to silence Josephson. They spent little to no time listening to his panel remarks or discussing the situation with him. When he asked for the new curriculum, his department chair had to ask the LGBT Center to provide it. One of his junior colleagues, who once accused him of “betraying” her for questioning why she was instructing a troubled teen on injecting cross-sex hormones on her second visit to the university’s gender clinic, started leaking information of his discipline to Lambda Legal to discredit him as an expert witness.
After several weeks of agitation, the department chair informed Josephson that his remarks at the Heritage Foundation event were at odds with the majority of faculty, and that he should resign his position as leader of the division, or they would “unilaterally remove” him. Presented with an impossible choice, he stepped down from his position as division lead.
But the harassment wasn’t over. Faculty members solicited complaints from students, coaching them on what to say, and the complaints were never seriously investigated. They kept an “Allan tracking document,” part of what one faculty member described as an effort to generate “strong documentation” to “avoid Allan’s reappointment.” Eventually, in February 2019, they delivered the final blow and refused to renew his contract despite over 16 years of incredible service.
Putting Children’s Well-Being Above Activism
Thankfully, the story doesn’t end there. Alliance Defending Freedom, where I serve as the director of the Center for Academic Freedom, represented Josephson for over six years in court. The longer the process took, the more these details came to light, and eventually, the courts backed Josephson’s argument that this case should go to trial. Rather than let that happen, the university decided to settle to the tune of nearly $1.6 million, bringing the case to a close in April.
The university gambled on “eQuality” and lost. Time and research have validated Josephson’s concerns as medical experts across the world are calling for a more thorough analysis of a person’s deep-seated psychological trauma before pumping him or her with hormones and removing otherwise healthy body parts.
All of this is preventable, and Josephson’s eventual win shows us how we can move forward to a future where children flourish instead of being further victimized by doctors putting “eQuality” over evidence.
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