Antisemitism in Medicine: An Interview
Antisemitic incidents have been on the rise since the attacks of October 7. Many members of the Jewish community are confronting bias in places they never expected, such as their workplaces. We spoke with Dr. Seth Cohen, a member of our Jewish Community Relations Council, about how antisemitism is affecting the medical field and what he is doing to fight back.
Q: Where are you from, and what brought you here?
A: I grew up in Chapel Hill. My parents are both from Chicago, and we moved to the Triangle when I was five. My father is also a doctor, and he came here to practice. I went to undergrad and medical school at UNC and then Vanderbilt University for my residency and fellowship. After that, I returned here and joined the faculty at Duke.
I’m a head and neck surgeon who focuses on voice, airway, and swallowing disorders. I’m a Professor of Head and Neck Surgery & Communication Sciences at Duke University Medical School and conduct research in these areas.
Q: What is your involvement in the Jewish community?
A: I grew up going to Judea Reform Congregation in Durham, where I had my bar mitzvah. I’ve been a member of Beth Meyer Synagogue since I returned to Raleigh in 2006, and I’m on the board of the Jewish Federation of Greater Raleigh. I’m passionate about supporting our Jewish community, being proudly Jewish, and helping our JCRC, which has been very rewarding. I have also joined the board of NC Hillel.
Q: Before recent events, had you encountered antisemitism in the medical field during your study and practice?
A: I didn’t personally encounter antisemitism in my practice prior to October 7. Sometimes patients ask me where I am from, and saying “Chapel Hill” or “Chicago” just leads to more questions. It’s happened enough times to know what they mean. I don’t hide my identity and tell them I am Jewish. I’ve also had patients who were extremely supportive. After the Pittsburgh shooting, many patients asked how I was doing. They really cared.
In the medical field at large, there’s always been quotas for medical students and doctors. That’s why there are specifically Jewish hospitals in major cities with names like “Mount Sinai.” Jewish doctors created opportunities that they were denied in other places.
Q: How has that changed since October 7?
A: Since October 7, antisemitism has exploded among organizations, medical schools, and individual healthcare practitioners. Institutions have been boycotting and cancelling anything related to Israel, such as collaborations in research and fellowships.
We have seen an increase in attacks on individual healthcare professionals. There was one incident that made the news where a group of Jewish therapists were “doxxed.” Someone came into a Facebook group and asked who would be willing to treat a patient with Zionist beliefs. When therapists volunteered themselves in good faith, they ended up being added to a blacklist that claimed to warn patients of white supremacist therapists. While I cannot share the details, I personally have experienced antisemitism within the healthcare setting since October 7.
There have also been social media posts by doctors, nurses, and medical students that are extremely hateful in nature. Individuals have made posts denying sexual assault by Hamas terrorists on October 7. These are your future care providers. They are making hateful, outrageous statements, and these are people who are going to be caring for you. This is scary.
We know that medicine is not immune to terrible beliefs and being involved in terrible things. Physicians were one of the most common professions to support the Nazi Party during the Holocaust. That’s why it is of vital importance to stop hate when we see it among colleagues.
Q: What have you been doing to respond to antisemitism in medicine?
A: I’ve joined a new, amazing organization called the American Jewish Medical Association (AJMA), and one of their main missions is supporting all Jewish healthcare professionals including healthcare learners from residents, medical students, and now pre-health students and fighting antisemitism in healthcare fields. They have great resources, and I’ve met incredible medical student leaders and other healthcare professionals both nationally and at UNC and Duke who are involved locally. AJMA raises awareness, provides valuable advocacy, supports educational and scholarly efforts, and collaborates with many organizations such as JFNA, Hadassah, and the Brandeis Center, to name a few, to address antisemitism to keep hate out of healthcare. For example, the Federation of Israeli Medical Students was expelled from the International Federation of Medical Student Associations. AJMA was instrumental in efforts that reversed this exclusion. Locally, we’ve responded to problematic incidents at universities.
I’ve also joined the board of the American Healthcare Professionals and Friends for Medicine in Israel (APF). This is an organization of US and Canadian healthcare professionals dedicated to safeguarding Israel’s emergency preparedness and helps Israeli healthcare providers to train in North America and then return to leadership positions within Israeli medical institutions. I went on a medical mission trip to Israel with the APF February 2024 and spoke about my experiences at a panel hosted by the Jewish Federation. The mission was one of the most meaningful things I’ve ever done. The medical specialty training in the US and Canada is vital as subspecialty training requires innovation and high volume patient care. This training includes Israelis of all backgrounds. My department at Duke also has a relationship with the Hadassah Medical Center Department of Otolaryngology – Head & Neck Surgery. I had an Israeli Arab resident rotate with me for four weeks at the beginning of the war, and an Israeli Jewish resident is coming for two weeks in August. It’s hard for Israelis to collaborate, because they have been excluded from many professional organizations and opportunities.
I have also joined the Duke Provost Initiative on the Middle East where I have tried to use my voice as a Professor at Duke to make things better. I have been able to voice concerns to Duke leadership with positive response and action. I also served on a panel where I shared the impact of October 7 on Israeli society, especially the remarkable medical response with its resilience and humanism, with healthcare teams of Jews, Arabs, Christians, and Druze caring for all patients regardless of who they are.
On November 11, 2025, I’m bringing in Dr. Hedy Wald of Brown University to give talks to our students, faculty, staff, and greater community. She’s an expert on the role of medicine in the Holocaust, and she will be speaking about this and its contemporary relevance with support from the Duke University Provost’s Initiative on the Middle East, Center for Jewish Studies, and Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine. I’ve really enjoyed collaborating with and learning from her, and I’m excited for other people to benefit from her expertise.
A few months ago, Dr. Wald and I had a paper published in Bioethics Today. The topic was “Safeguarding Humanism in Healthcare: No Space for Antisemitism in Medicine.” Getting this and other related topics published in non-Jewish outlets has been very challenging.
Q: How can medical professionals get involved?
A: Support the American Jewish Medical Association. Any healthcare professional or learner of any field can join. It’s an amazing group of people and a supportive environment. They have scholarly articles, essays, connections with other organizations, and can connect you to webinars and mission trips to Israel. They have facilitated talks on topics like October 7’s impact on Israeli academia, sexual violence in the aftermath of October 7, and traumatic invalidation in the Jewish community. We have a North Carolina chapter of AJMA, and I’d love to find more local healthcare providers to join. I also recommend supporting the APF. Israel is a small country, and to have top notch healthcare, Israeli fellows need to go somewhere where they can have high volume exposure in their area of expertise. APF has been supporting that for decades. They’ve got a nurse practitioner program, which is a new field in Israel, and we have to help train and build these collaborations which are more important now than ever.
Q: What do you want our readers to understand?
A: The job of the healthcare provider is to take care of the patient in front of you. We need to make sure that we have the moral clarity to continue to do that and to continue to train providers to do that. Antisemitism threatens all of that. Research collaborations are being cancelled, and boycotts are affecting programs and innovations that benefit everyone. We need to call it out and make sure that we are upholding our most important values as healthcare providers.