N.y.c. Human Rights Commission Releases Report on Einhorn Case; Blames All Parties

A high-level investigative team of the City Commission on Human Rights in a report released today was critical of all major parties in last year’s dispute over the removal of Dr. Arnold Einhorn as chief of pediatrics at Lincoln Hospital. The Commission said it would work with all the parties and with the Health and Hospitals Corporation in an effort to help reduce community tension in the city’s hospitals. Dr. Einhorn’s transfer from the post he had held for 12 years took place in November, 1970 amid reports that the Albert Einstein College of Medicine which employs Lincoln’s medical staff, had acceded to demands by youthful physicians on his staff and community groups that he be replaced by a Puerto Rican. The incident, one of a number of recent controversies involving the relationship between Lincoln Hospital and the predominantly Puerto Rican area of the South Bronx serve by it, caused an angry outcry from many who believed Dr. Einhorn had been discriminated against because he is Jewish.

The Commission team reached these major conclusions after an eight month investigation: Despite a memorandum signed by Dr. Einhorn and Dr. Labe Scheinberg, Dean of the Einstein College, asserting both ” political ” and ” ethnic” reasons for the transfer, the action was not taken because of ethnic discrimination but ” because the College felt that a rebellious pediatric staff and community unrest had produced a complex political and administrative situation which was not being adequately resolved and which was adversely affecting the pediatrics program at the hospital. “Although ” opinions on all sides make it quite clear that Dr. Einhorn was an outstanding medical practitioner, ” he had not dealt successfully with ” insurgent staff and community pressures ” because of ” a fundamental and irreconcilable disagreement over philosophy and goals “with the Pediatrics Collective, as a group of young physicians–white and predominantly Jewish– who served under him called themselves, Whatever the origin of the “ethnic” statement in the memorandum–and the investigators conceded they could not firmly establish whether Dr. Einhorn or the College had proposed the wording–It “was used for purposes of protecting Dr, Einhorn’s medical reputation” and to indicate “that Dr. Einhorn was a victim of circumstances unrelated to his duties.” The report called the judgment to couch Dr. Einhorn’s removal in political and ethnic terms “both wrong and incredibly naive.” The administration of Einstein College “contributed heavily to the debacle” by “vacillating in its decisions, and reversing it self repeatedly in response to the demands of various power blocs” “In attempting to protect Dr.Einhorn.” said the probers, “the administration used faulty judgment and brought on the resulting controversy.”