HMS Prof Dies, Leaves Activist Legacy

Professor Emeritus of Social Medicine Leon Eisenberg, a leader of Harvard Medical School’s affirmative action program, died last week at the age of 87.

Arthur Kleinman, a colleague at the Medical School, called Eisenberg “one of Harvard’s greats,” and said that he would leave behind a legacy in both psychology and social activism.

Eisenberg’s career was filled with ground breaking work in his attempts to integrate the study of disease with social experience, and he actively researched autism and attention-deficit hyperactive disorder.

But colleagues said that Eisenberg would be most remembered for advancing social equality at the Medical School.

Shortly after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968, Eisenberg played a leading role in establishing the Medical School’s affirmative action program to help underrepresented groups, according to Neurobiology Professor Edward A. Kravitz.

Kravitz began working with Eisenberg on this issue and remembered Eisenberg’s boldness when designing an affirmative action policy for the Medical School. The portion of minority students at the school increased to 20 percent of the class, according to Kravitz.

Alvin F. Poussaint, a professor at the Medical School, said that Eisenberg was most proud of his accomplishment of expanding the Medical School to include underrepresented groups.

Kleinman added that Eisenberg was “extraordinarily generous in assisting young scholars in finding financial support for their research and projects,” and that he pushed to improve ethical standards at the Medical School.

Kleinman said that Eisenberg advocated strict guidelines for faculty members accepting monetary endorsements from pharmaceutical companies because he felt that conflicting interests would be dangerous for the Medical School.

“He was an extremely courageous man who was not afraid to speak out,” said Kleinman.

Colleagues said that Eisenberg’s social activism and innovations in his field were fueled by his intense intellectual curiosity.

As a testament to Eisenberg’s brilliance and dynamism, Kleinman remembered one instance when Eisenberg had been conversing with a renowned ecologist about the behavior of speckled trout at a medical conference in the early seventies, only to be mistaken for an ecologist and not a psychologist.

“Leon was an absolute brilliant scholar who read widely across many fields in a way that is more usual in the past than it is today,” said Kleinman.