Sent: Friday, To: jtakamura@columbia.edu; provost@columbia.edu; ,
Cc: Daigo Shima; Adrienne Carey Hurley, Prof
Subject: Regarding Ms. Eli Painted Crow, Prof. Helen Benedict and the School of Social Work

Dear Dean Takamura, Assistant Dean Yoshioka, and Provost Steele,

My name is Brent Lue and I recently received word of a particularly offensive capstone project assigned by the Columbia University School of Social Work from my mentor, Adrienne Hurley, an activist and professor at McGill University. In particular, I (and many others) couldn’t help but be outraged when we heard that Ms. Eli Painted Crow (a Native American veteran and the subject of this particular capstone project) was to be “diagnosed” by students using only the limited testimony recorded and penned by Prof. Benedict in her 2009 book, The Lonely Soldier. Furthermore, I am appalled to hear that part of this final project required posters of Ms. Painted Crow’s image and name be created so as to promote these so-called “interventions”, all without her consent.

I am neither a legal scholar nor an expert on the mental health approach taken by Social Work, but I am not blind to what is right and wrong. And as both a survivor of sexual assault and as someone who has received the generous help of mental health professionals in my own healing process, I am sincerely baffled by this project’s pedagogical approach to “diagnosis” and Prof. Benedict’s grievous violation of the trust graciously offered to her by Ms. Painted Crow. Though I have only been a patient and never a physician myself, I have come to embrace a firm belief that mutual communication between therapist and patient is at the core of competent mental healthcare. As such, I fail to see how coercing students to “diagnose” a living trauma survivor--using solely the written testimony recorded by Prof. Benedict--is invaluable in training them to help and treat real, dynamic people with feelings, emotions, dignity and intelligence who can freely communicate both their sufferings and strengths.

Frankly, the single-sided approach to diagnosis emphasized by this project seems to have more in common with telephone psychics, online Viagra prescriptions, and selling copies of Prof. Benedict’s books than really helping anyone here. Furthermore, I will go ahead and venture to say that this project’s insistence that Ms. Painted Crow’s image and real name be plastered on posters to promote these “interventions” is not only telling of Ms. Benedict’s unfortunate insensitivity and potentially exploitative intentions, but also plainly inexcusable in light of Ms. Painted Crow’s ongoing civil and judicial protests against such defamation.


This entire affair stinks of a journalist who views the wounded as playthings and lab rats and has zero qualms about using them to further their career. This pungent stench leads me to also profoundly question Prof. Benedict’s numerous publications in fiction, the latest of which, Sand Queen, seems to incorporate a good deal of her actual research on female soldiers. Be as it may that scholars of literature often employ psychoanalysis on fictional characters, they are (usually) careful not to march into hospitals and begin one-sidedly “diagnosing” real people with mental disorders. Despite Ms. Benedict’s journalistic research on living humans, I wonder if her endeavors in fiction have allowed her to lose sight of the very real emotional damage and discomfort she has caused Ms. Painted Crow by allowing the assignment of such a callous and exploitative project.

Dean Takemura, Dean Yoshioka, and Provost Steele, I am sure that if any of us were to offer our most painful experiences to educate future generations, we would all feel extreme discomfort at being “diagnosed” and scrutinized by 400+ future mental health professionals without our consent or input. No human being deserves to be so dis-empowered, least of all a veteran who has fought for and protected others for 22 long years of service. And as people of color, I hope we ALL can appreciate Ms. Painted Crow’s struggle against being silenced and defamed by people in positions of significant power.


If it has not yet been carried out, I join the call for a full and thorough investigation into how on earth this major capstone project was conceived and approved, in addition to a clear response from the University to prevent such a thoughtless assignment from ever being forced upon Columbia students again. Professor Benedict must be strictly reminded that people of color are not her playthings, and the committee who put this project together must be made to reflect on what examples they are setting for their students.

If I remember the first and primary tenet of the Hippocratic Oath, it is to “do no harm”. How can I—or we, for that matter--trust the Columbia University School of Social Work if the capstone project assigned by the school has already inflicted irreparable and unnecessary emotional harm upon the very person they are ostensibly trying to help?

I humbly await your reply.

Sincerely yours,
Brent Lue