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Doctor Defended

UMD medical school stands by Israeli surgeon after CAIR played role canceling his talk

The university was reportedly concerned about security risks after CAIR mounted a pressure campaign to block the lecture

CPO John Grandin

U.S. Navy Surgeon General Rear Adm. Bruce Gillingham hosts Surgeon General of the IDF Brig. Gen. Elon Glassberg during a professional exchange at Bureau of Medicine and Surgery Headquarters October 7, 2021.

The University of Maryland School of Medicine is pledging to stand by a renowned Israeli trauma surgeon whose scheduled lecture to the school’s department of surgery was canceled this week due to unspecified security threats. 

Dr. Elon Glassberg, who until last summer served as the surgeon general of the Israel Defense Forces, was slated to give a talk about saving lives on the battlefield.

“The School of Medicine has invited Dr. Glassberg to speak at a future date while working to ensure a safe learning atmosphere for our surgical teams,” Deborah Kotz, a spokesperson for the medical school, told Jewish Insider on Friday. “We are committed to hearing all voices when it comes to saving lives.” 

Kotz declined to say if the lecture had been rescheduled for a particular date.

“We were obviously troubled when we first heard that the speaker wasn’t going to be moving forward,” said Howard Libit, executive director of the Baltimore Jewish Council. “My understanding is they are already working to schedule a new date and to ensure there’s proper security for that, and I understand and respect their decision.” 

The Maryland Legislative Jewish Caucus, representing Jewish state lawmakers in Annapolis, said they heard from the university that an invitation “has been reissued,” after the officials reached out to the university to express concern. 

Glassberg’s planned Jan. 16 lecture was canceled two days beforehand amid a pressure campaign spearheaded by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, who claimed victory over canceling the talk. CAIR said that its supporters had sent more than 6,000 emails to the medical school. 

“This swift community response demonstrates the power of collective action to uphold justice and accountability,” Zainab Chaudry, CAIR’s Maryland director, said in a statement. “We commend UMSOM for listening to their students and campus community and retracting this invitation.” 

But the security threats were “legitimate,” according to Libit, and unable to be dealt with in just a matter of days.

“We learned that they [UMSOM] received a number of emails that included threats to the speaker and to what was going to be happening,” Libit said on Friday. “They didn’t feel like they could put adequate protections in place in the short window of time they had to ensure the protection of both the speaker and all the people who would be attending his lecture.”

Glassberg is a leading trauma surgeon who has taught at Bar-Ilan University in Israel and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Maryland, a medical school that trains U.S. military doctors. His planned lecture was titled, “From bed to battlefield and back: Insights from the IDF in advancing care, saving lives and improving outcomes.” 

The program “was intended to focus exclusively on medical advances in trauma care,” said Kotz. “The focus will remain on sharing knowledge that advances life-saving care for our patients in the city of Baltimore and the state of Maryland.”

Since leaving the IDF last summer, Glassberg has spoken about his work lowering the IDF’s “case fatality rate,” a metric that measures the number of wounded soldiers who medics fail to save after evacuating them from the battlefield. 

In the Second Lebanon War, the case fatality rate for the IDF was 15 percent. In the first six months of the Gaza war, that number fell to 6.5 percent, he told the London Jewish Chronicle

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