The Brad Pitt of Psychiatry

Columbia University is facing a wrongful termination action from a child psychiatrist who alleges that he was forced out of his job.  As the New York Times reports:

In the suit, filed last week in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, Dr. Peter Jensen, formerly the director of the Ruane Center for the Advancement of Children’s Mental Health at Columbia, contends that after he was hired by the university in 1999, Dr. David Shaffer, director of the university’s child psychiatry division, continually undermined his work. By making derogatory comments and subjecting Dr. Jensen’s work to unfair scrutiny, the lawsuit says, Dr. Shaffer helped force Dr. Jensen out of his job.

Dr. Jensen — who said that, among other things, Dr. Shaffer had called him “the Brad Pitt of psychiatry” — is seeking about $15 million in damages from the university.

The two men differed sharply in their professional goals and personal styles, according to several people who had been colleagues of both but who would not comment on the record because of the lawsuit. Dr. Shaffer, a renowned expert on suicide among children and adolescents, is considered restrained and scholarly by nature, and he focuses primarily on the study of biochemical causes of psychological problems, mainly depression. Dr. Jensen is, by his own admission, outspoken, a media favorite, and interested more in bringing psychiatric care to community settings than in basic research. He is best known for his work on attention deficit disorder.

Jensen also alleged that the university unjustifiably pushed ethics charges as a part of a campaign to get rid of him.  In many ways, this case is fairly typical of workplace personality disputes and shows the difference between at-will and just cause regime.  Without knowing more about his contract, I suspect that Jensen's case is a long-shot, but would be much stronger with just cause protection.

-JH