Campaign to Endow Chester Pierce Human Rights Award Exceeds Target

The endowment campaign for APA’s Chester M. Pierce Human Rights Award raised more than $113,000 in gifts and pledges in six months, with the American Psychiatric Association Foundation contributing a matching $50,000 to endow this award in perpetuity.

The endowment campaign, which began in April, was led by a six-member work group: Ezra E.H. Griffith, M.D., David C. Henderson, M.D., APA Medical Director and CEO Saul M. Levin, M.D., M.P.A., Samuel O. Okpaku, M.D., Ph.D., Eliot Sorel, M.D., and Cynthia Turner-Graham, M.D. The endowment will be used to provide recipients of the Chester M. Pierce Human Rights Award with an honorarium and related expenses to present a lecture at the Annual Meeting.

In a statement to Psychiatric News, Pierce’s family expressed gratitude to APA, the APA Foundation, and the work group that established the endowment campaign. “The entire Pierce family is greatly honored that an endowment fund has been established to support APA’s Human Rights Award,” the family said. “As those who knew him will understand, Chester M. Pierce was such an unassuming person that he would have expressed astonishment upon receiving this recognition. His work was focused on the future and the world, but he was also a kind and generous man who enjoyed TV Westerns and Mad magazine. We deeply appreciate and thank the Foundation for this significant addition to his legacy.”

Originally established in 1990 to raise awareness of human rights abuses, the human rights award was renamed in 2017 to honor Pierce in recognition of his dedication as an innovative researcher on humans in extreme environments; an advocate against disparities, stigma, and discrimination; and as a pioneer and visionary in global mental health.

Pierce’s influence as a writer, thinker, clinician, and researcher is profound. In 1968, he and other Black psychiatrists founded the Black Psychiatrists of America, and the following year Pierce and his colleagues confronted the APA Board of Trustees about the need to address racism as a public health issue. He wrote and spoke widely about racism and published dozens of articles on how Black and White people interacted with each other, first coining the term “microaggressions.”

He was the senior advisor on the creation of the acclaimed children’s television show “Sesame Street.” Pierce spent the majority of his career as a psychiatrist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a professor of psychiatry and education at Harvard Medical School. He was the first African American full professor at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), where in 2009 the MGH global psychiatry program was named after him.

Though the campaign has ended, individuals can still support the award by designating a gift at the APA website here or via mobile phone by texting CHESTERPIERCE to #44321. ■

Information about the endowment campaign and an oral history of Pierce recorded in 1970 is posted here.