To the Leadership of the Connecticut State Medical Society, the Hartford County Medical Association, the Hartford Medical Society, and the deans and faculty of Connecticut's medical and nursing schools, including the Yale School of Medicine, the University of Connecticut School of Medicine, and the Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine at Quinnipiac University:
We, the undersigned members of the Connecticut medical and healthcare community — physicians, nurses, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, technicians, students, faculty, and patients — ask your institutions to formally acknowledge antisemitism as a significant and increasing problem in healthcare, to condemn it with the same clarity your institution applies to any other form of discrimination, and to state publicly how your institution intends to address it.
The documented resurgence of antisemitic incidents and reported experiences in healthcare settings across the United States and internationally since October 7, 2023 necessitates such a response. These events and accounts have left Jewish patients afraid to disclose their identity to the people entrusted with their care, and Jewish clinicians and students afraid to be visibly Jewish in the classroom, the clinic, and the hospital.
Why This Matters
Medicine rests on a simple promise: that every patient will be seen as a human being deserving of care, regardless of race, religion, gender, ethnic background or age. When that promise is compromised by prejudice, the harm is not only symbolic. Patients have recently reported withholding their religion from intake forms, removing Star of David jewelry before appointments, and requesting that clinicians of certain backgrounds not treat them. This is not because of any personal grievance, but because they no longer trust that identifying as Jewish is safe in a clinical setting. That erosion of trust is itself a patient-safety problem, and it deserves the same serious institutional attention that medicine directs to any other threat to equitable care.
A Documented Pattern, Not Isolated Incidents
This is no longer a matter of press accounts alone. In July 2026 the Rambam Maimonides Medical Journal published a peer-reviewed narrative review by Hedy S. Wald and Steven Roth integrating the medical literature and other published sources on this subject. The authors documented an international resurgence of antisemitism in health professions education and practice, most prominently in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. The review identified studies in medical education, psychology, and social work, many surveying Jewish professionals and students, in which more than half of respondents reported experiencing antisemitism since October 7, 2023. In one nonprobability survey of 645 self-identifying Jewish healthcare professionals, only 1.9% of respondents reported that their organization's anti-bias training included antisemitism.
That result is the heart of our request. In parallel English-language PubMed searches covering October 7, 2023 through March 6, 2026, the review retrieved 61 records using its antisemitism-and-health-professions search, compared with 732 for diversity, equity, and inclusion and 3,824 for racism. Whatever the limitations of a publication count, the disparity is stark: the profession has built a far larger indexed literature for naming and answering other forms of bias than it has for antisemitism. The published record spans multiple countries and every level of training and practice:
- United States: A December 2024 congressional briefing on Capitol Hill examined antisemitism in the healthcare sector, including medical schools and major hospital systems, with physicians, medical students, and psychiatrists describing direct experiences of bias. In May 2026 a House Committee on Education and the Workforce subcommittee held a hearing devoted to politics, unions, and antisemitism in health care.
- United States – Medical Schools: In February 2025 the HHS Office for Civil Rights opened compliance reviews of four U.S. medical schools following reports of antisemitic incidents at their 2024 commencement ceremonies. In August 2025 a congressional inquiry examined three further schools over reported hostile environments for Jewish students, including an October 2022 student account of discomfort wearing a Star of David in public.
- Canada: In May 2024 testimony before Canada's House of Commons Justice Committee, a physician described calls by UBC professors and residents to exclude “Zionist” physicians from residency selection and, separately, a student petition signed by roughly one-third of the medical class. These reports raise a direct concern about exclusion from medical education based on Jewish identity or perceived Zionism.
- United Kingdom: Jewish patients and advocacy groups have reported anti-Israel posters displayed in NHS hospital facilities, and have described hesitating to wear a Star of David to appointments for fear it would affect their treatment; the government-commissioned 2026 Mann Review found the same pattern nationally. One NHS trainee surgeon remained unrestricted after a September 2025 interim tribunal concerning alleged antisemitic social media posts; a later tribunal imposed a fifteen-month interim suspension that November pending investigation. In March 2026 she was charged with four counts of inviting support for Hamas and two racial-hatred offenses, indicated that she would plead not guilty, and the case remains pending.
- Australia: A July 2026 investigation based on interviews with more than thirty doctors, nurses, midwives, and allied-health professionals reported alleged discrimination against Jewish patients and staff and that some patients concealed their religion from clinicians or admission forms. Two former Sydney hospital nurses had their registrations suspended nationally and were criminally charged after a widely shared video allegedly showed comments about refusing care to and threatening violence against Israeli patients. Both pleaded not guilty, and proceedings remain pending. Authorities reported no evidence that any patient had actually been harmed or denied care, but the remarks themselves caused national concern about patient trust and professional standards.
- Sweden: Healthcare workers, including physicians, demonstrated in hospital scrubs outside Karolinska University Hospital in July 2026, drawing criticism from the health minister and senior physicians over professional neutrality. Karolinska stated that it neither organized nor participated in the demonstration. Ten days later a Stockholm protest displayed a mock Auschwitz gate with “Arbeit macht frei” replaced by “Gaza,” condemned by the Official Council of Swedish Jewish Communities.
- Belgium, Netherlands, and Italy: Reported incidents include a Belgian hospital temporarily suspending a radiologist pending investigation after a nine-year-old patient's emergency record listed “Jewish (Israeli)” and alleged antisemitic social media posts surfaced; a Dutch police investigation into posts published under a nurse's name offering “Zionist” patients a lethal “extra injection,” which she denies writing; and two Italian health workers filming themselves placing Israeli-made pharmaceutical products in a waste bin as a boycott gesture, then apologizing and stating that no medicine was actually discarded.
These reports come from peer-reviewed medical literature, investigative journalism, congressional and civil-rights inquiries, professional regulators, and firsthand patient and clinician accounts. We recognize that individual allegations vary in how they have been verified or adjudicated, and that legitimate political disagreement about the war in Gaza is not itself antisemitism. But taken together, the volume and consistency of these reports, across eight countries and every level of the medical pipeline, from students to attending physicians, describe a genuine problem within the profession, not a series of unconnected events.
What We Ask
We ask the Connecticut State Medical Society and other relevant regional and health profession societies operating in this state as well as each of Connecticut's medical, nursing, pharmacy schools and technical training programs, to do two things.
First, acknowledge. Name antisemitism explicitly as a documented form of discrimination in healthcare today, and condemn it with the same clarity, specificity, and institutional weight you would apply to any other form of bias against a patient, student, or colleague. An acknowledgment that only folds antisemitism quietly into general non-discrimination language, without naming it, is not sufficient. Jewish patients and clinicians should be able to see themselves as clearly protected as anyone else.
Second, and more importantly, formulate a plan of response. A statement of values is only a starting point. We are asking each institution to explain, concretely, how it plans to combat antisemitism in two distinct domains:
1. Education and Training
- What will be done to ensure that antisemitism is addressed in the same curricula, orientation programs, and professionalism standards that already cover other forms of bias in medical education?
- What reporting channel exists for a student or trainee who experiences or witnesses antisemitic harassment, and what protection from retaliation does that channel guarantee?
- How will incidents involving students or trainees — including at events such as commencement, clinical rotations, or campus demonstrations — be investigated and addressed, and by whom?
- Will faculty and residency program directors receive training on recognizing antisemitism, including when political expression about Israel crosses into harassment or exclusion of Jewish colleagues?
2. Clinical Settings — Hospitals and Office Practices
- What steps will be taken to ensure clinical staff do not display political material, symbols, or commentary in patient-facing spaces that could reasonably make Jewish patients feel unwelcome or unsafe, consistent with existing standards for other identity-based material in clinical settings?
- What mechanism will patients have to report a concern that their care was affected, or that they were made to feel unsafe, because they are Jewish or Israeli — and who reviews those reports?
- How will complaints against licensed clinicians or staff involving antisemitic conduct toward patients or coworkers be investigated, and what disciplinary standards will apply?
Connecticut is home to a distinguished medical community and to institutions that have long taken pride in their commitment to equity in patient care and medical education. Nothing in this letter asks you to police legitimate political speech, and we recognize that criticism of Israeli government policy is not, by itself, antisemitism. What we ask is narrower: that antisemitism be recognized and answered as any other form of discrimination in medicine would be. No patient should have to weigh whether it is safe to be known as Jewish by the people treating them, and no student or clinician should have to weigh that question about their own institution. Acknowledging the problem, and stating plainly what you intend to do about it, is where that begins.
Respectfully,
Undersigned