The administrations Department of Health and Human Services, now headed by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has opened a civil rights investigation into the American Psychological Association following allegations that the nations largest professional body for psychologists has become a hub for anti-Semitic ideology and discrimination.
According to Western Journal, the probe was triggered by a detailed complaint from the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, a legal advocacy group that focuses on combating anti-Semitism on campus and in professional institutions. Jewish News Syndicate reported, The Brandeis Center filed a complaint with HHS on Aug. 8, 2025, alleging that the APA has become one of the worst purveyors of antisemitism and extremist ideology in healthcare. The complaint states that the association, which has more than 172,000 members, receives millions of dollars in federal funding annually.
At the heart of the complaint is the charge that an organization entrusted with safeguarding mental health has instead allowed radical politics to infiltrate its conferences, training, and internal communications. The complaint also alleged that the associations conferences have featured sessions portraying the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel as attacks on military targets.
The Brandeis Center further contends that internal APA listservs have become conduits for open celebration of terrorist violence and demonization of Israel and its supporters. It further cites messages sent by association members through listservs that glorify Hamas, call for boycotts of Israel, compare Gaza to the Warsaw ghetto and pray for Israels destruction.
In a news release issued Wednesday, the Brandeis Center said its filing urges HHS to review the APAs conduct as a recipient of federal funding, citing evidence that the organization promoted discriminatory and anti-Semitic practices, including Decolonial Therapy, a treatment model increasingly used to frame Zionism as a mental illness and encourage patients to reject it; anti-Israel and anti-Semitic messaging disseminated through official channels; anti-Semitic continuing education and conference programming; and the marginalization of Jewish and Israeli psychologists. For critics of the modern lefts identity politics, the very notion of labeling Zionism the belief in a Jewish homeland as a pathology underscores how far professional guilds have drifted from neutral science into ideological activism.
The HHS Office for Civil Rights has now formally agreed that the allegations warrant federal scrutiny under existing civil rights law. In a June 2 letter to the Brandeis Center, OCR [HHS Office for Civil Rights] stated that it had determined there was sufficient authority and cause to investigate whether the APA engaged in discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, the news release noted.
Kenneth Marcus, chairman and CEO of the Brandeis Center and a former top civil rights official at the Department of Education, argued that federal intervention is necessary when a powerful professional body allegedly turns a blind eye to bigotry against Jews. Kenneth Marcus, chairman and CEO of the Brandeis Center, said in response, When one of the nations most influential psychological organizations permits anti-Semitic discrimination and marginalizes Jewish professionals, federal civil rights scrutiny is entirely appropriate. We commend HHS for taking these allegations seriously and investigating whether federal law has been violated.
The Brandeis Centers attorneys say the problem is not limited to stray comments but extends to the substance of what is being taught to future and current mental health practitioners. Rebecca Harris, an attorney at the Brandeis Center, told Jewish News Syndicate, You have anti-Israel activist psychologists teaching courses about psychic militancy and teaching about how to incorporate the resistance or the Palestinian liberation struggle into the clinical practice of mental health care.
Harris emphasized that the goal is not to strip the APA of federal funding but to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not underwriting discrimination against Jews or the delegitimization of Israel. Harris stated, Our hope is that HHS will ensure that if APA is going to continue to be a recipient of federal funds, that it comes into compliance with its obligations under the federal civil rights law, that its not discriminating against its Jewish members, that its not promoting discrimination of Jews within the broader mental health profession.
The ideological battle over Zionism lies at the center of this dispute, with activists on the left increasingly casting support for Israel as inherently oppressive. Zionism is defined as a political movement that supports the Jewish peoples right to have a nation-state in their ancestral homeland, according to Britannica.
The Brandeis Centers complaint lands at a time when public opinion in the United States is shifting in ways that should concern supporters of Israel and those wary of rising anti-Semitism. The Brandeis Centers complaint against the APA comes as Gallup reported in February that more Americans now sympathize with Palestinians than Israelis.
While many Palestinians seek a nation-state alongside Israel, the loudest voices in the movement including terrorist organizations openly call for the eradication of the Jewish state. Palestinians want a nation-state separate from Israel. Terrorist groups like Hamas and its supporters want the Jewish state eliminated entirely from the river to the sea in other words, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
Gallups polling shows that Americans still view Israel more favorably than the Palestinian Territories, but the margin has narrowed. Gallup found that in terms of the actual geographic lands, 46 percent view Israel favorably, while 37 percent view the Palestinian Territories that way. Some 57 percent of Americans support a separate Palestinian state, which nearly matches the high-water mark set in 2003.
The most striking shift is in the question of sympathy, where Palestinians now edge out Israelis in the overall numbers. Forty-one percent of Americans now say they sympathize more with the Palestinians in the Middle East situation, while 36% sympathize more with the Israelis. The five-percentage-point difference is not statistically significant, but it contrasts with a clear lead for the Israelis only a year ago (46% vs. 33%) and larger leads over the prior 24 years, the polling firm said.
Gallup noted that this erosion of support for Israel has been underway for several years, predating Hamas Oct. 7 massacre and the subsequent war in Gaza. Gallup added, From 2001 to 2025, Israelis consistently held double-digit leads in Americans Middle East sympathies, with the gap averaging 43 points between 2001 and 2018. However, public opinion began narrowing in 2019, several years before the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza.
Beneath the topline numbers lies a stark partisan divide that mirrors broader cultural and ideological polarization. Drilling deeper into the sympathy question shows a wide partisan divide.
Among Republicans, support for Israel remains overwhelming, even as it has slipped from historic highs. Seven in 10 Republicans (70%) say they sympathize more with the Israelis, compared with 13% who sympathize more with the Palestinians. Although this remains a substantial gap, sympathy for the Israelis among Republicans has declined by 10 points since 2024 to its lowest level since 2004, Gallup said.
Democrats, by contrast, now lean decisively toward the Palestinian side, reflecting the influence of progressive activists who routinely denounce Israel as a colonial or apartheid state. Meanwhile, 65 percent of Democrats said their sympathies lie more with the Palestinians, while 17 percent are with the Israelis.
Against this backdrop, the HHS investigation into the APA is more than an internal professional dispute; it is a test of whether federal civil rights law will be applied consistently when Jews are the target of discrimination. As the Brandeis Center presses its case, the outcome will signal whether powerful institutions that embrace Decolonial Therapy and similar ideological frameworks can continue to receive taxpayer funding while treating Zionism as a mental illness and marginalizing Jewish professionals in the name of progressive politics.
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