Critical Research Journal | Graham Wilson
Dr Graham Wilson on Friday, November 12, 2021 at 2:58 pm
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“Kudos for the by-line on this article. I don’t think I have ever seen an intern fully credited on a news item before. While I suppose I should have expected it from HR Review, it still came as a surprise. Well done, Megan – good article and may your career flourish.”
This will be a strange article. I say that because there are details I can’t share, but I still want to pay tribute to someone who taught me something very important.
Lewis Wolpert, who died in January this year, was my Head of Faculty in Anatomy at the Middlesex Hospital Medical School in 1984, when I landed a little prematurely as a post-doc researcher. He was an overtly intelligent man, who was also clearly a highly capable politician in the circles of academia. I had very little to do with him and his work, and there was an equally highly regarded academic between us in the line management ladder.
One day, something happened. I cannot say what it was, but suffice to say that it was shocking. An extraordinary lack of judgement by a class of medical students. Possibly also a lack of intervention by their teachers and demonstrators too, but that wasn’t the issue. As soon as Lewis discovered what had happened, he demonstrated a powerful model of leadership. Sometimes you have to act decisively.
Every student, most members of staff, and many others, were ‘instructed’ to be in one of the larger lecture theatres the following morning in academic dress (an exceptionally rare event in the University of London).
Lewis delivered a powerful lecture on ethics, practical conduct, and the responsibility of being a medic. I am sure that generation will never have forgotten that morning. To be honest, I wasn’t among them – I was two floors down in the building in my study. But I heard almost every word!
Far more recently, you may have seen Lt Gen Jay Silveria, Superintendent of the US Air Force Academy, who stood all his 4,000 cadets (and the staff) at attention one day in 2017 to deliver a message on racial slurs found written on message boards at the academy’s preparatory school. His words were, interestingly, very similar, though from a different context: “If you can’t treat someone with dignity and respect, then you need to get out”.
So, I want to pay tribute to Lewis, because sadly, today, I found myself in a similar albeit much smaller situation. A group of students will not, I hope, ever forget the mini-lecture that they got about malicious rumours, the potentially life-threatening impact that they have on their victims (intended or otherwise), and the responsibility of bystanders to take action to prevent them being spread.
Thank you, Lewis. RIP.