Female activists have played crucial roles in various social, political, and economic movements throughout history.

Emmeline Pankhurst focused on women’s right to vote in the early 20th century. Rosa Parks took a courageous stand against racial injustice. Malala Yousufzai advocates for girls education. Gloria Steinheim continues to advocate for gender equality, reproductive rights, and social justice.  Tarana Burke founded the #MeToo movement, which seeks to raise awareness of and combat sexual harassment and assault, especially in the workplace.

Helene welcome to Four Columns. Please, tell my audience a little about you.

I am a scientist. I started my career in the 1960s when women were not welcome as scientists and were expected to spend their time at home looking after the house and caring for the children. I was fired from my first job in academia because I stood up for the other women on the University of Colorado Medical faculty where I was working. There were few women on the faculty, most were stuck in non-tenured positions and were shockingly underpaid. When I reported my findings about this to the Dean, I was called into my chairman’s office and told I would not be promoted and would have to leave. It went downhill from there. At my next
appointment at Washington University in St Louis, I was denied tenure because I stood up to a dictatorial and unfair head of my research group. Some years later, while on the faculty at the NJ Medical School in Newark, I was shunned and demeaned because I caught a research fellow fabricating data and his supervisor declined to believe me even though he could not repeat the fellow’s findings after six attempts. This he failed to report and was the recipient of several undeserved honors.

Talk to me about the secret to living and thriving at this amazing age.

You just have to believe in yourself regardless of what others say or how they treat you.

Walk me through how it was to do your master’s and PhD program and the resistance you faced.

I never had any problems in graduate school at Brandeis University. My supervisors in the Biology Department were very supportive of me and I count my 8.5 years there as the most productive and rewarding during my career. I skipped the master’s and went straight for the PhD.

You talk about qui tam what is it all about?

Qui tam is a lawsuit in which I, as a relator, sued the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey as well as my colleague, Dr. Roger Howell, and his post-doctoral fellow, Dr. Anuapam Bishayee of defrauding the Federal Government by fabricating data on a grant application to the National Institute of Health. Our evidence of fraud is extremely strong. However, it was based on statistical considerations that were not understood by the Judges who sat on the case, and they also ruled that Dr. Howell did not know that data had been fabricated at the time that he filed the grant. But, of course, he had to know later but even up to this day, he has not retracted the eight publications that he must know contain fabricated information. The data of which I speak are presented in a book that I wrote: Hidden Data: The Blind Eye of Science. It is available on Amazon.

Help me understand some of the lessons you want women in academia to learn from you.

I think you need to stick with your guns. If you know you are right, don’t ever give up! I want to know a little about the scientific and medical cover-up. What I have said about it should pretty well cover the question. However, it’s important to know that both Howell and Bishayee have gone on to bigger and better things. Howell was the Faculty Member of the Year at the NJ Medical School and also received an award from the scientific organization in which he is a member. Bishayee has climbed the academic ladder at the Pharmacy School in Florida in which he is a member of the faculty. He has published a couple of hundred articles that are listed in PubMed.

Why should we read your book and what are the lessons we can learn?

I think you will find my book interesting. It will open a window into the Academic World that you never thought existed. I hope it will inspire other women in science to have the gumption and desire to stick by their guns whatever happens. Don’t give up!

Talk to me about the importance of family and a little bit about your family.

My family is critical to me. However, I am very much afraid that they got the short end of the stick when they were growing up because I was so involved in the challenges that confronted me at work. I hope that times have changed and that women who have careers will be able to have enough support at home so that their families don’t suffer.

What does women’s empowerment mean to you?

Women can do anything they want if they set their mind to it.

Talk briefly about the city you live in and why we should visit.

I would love it if other women would come and visit me here in Baltimore. Like all cities, Baltimore has its ups and downs. But the climate is great, not too hot in summer (most years) or cold in winter. Baltimore has several fine art museums, a first-class symphony orchestra, and great restaurants.

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Toxic masculinity in academic and media circles refers to cultural patterns that are linked with harm to men and society. The machismo boilerplate of men as assertive socially, along with attributes such as misogyny, homophobia, sexual assault, and domestic violence are toxic as it promotes violence. The normative pattern of violence and the cliche that boys will be boys is anathema in modern-day society.

Psychologists in the last three decades have noticed a direct correlation between depression, stress, alcohol, and substance abuse with emotional repression and self-reliance.

The attributes of working hard, excelling in sports, and providing for the family is not toxic.

Monday is family day for me. I cook dinner for them and watch TV with my wife.

As a result, we decided to watch A Million Little Things.  It is about the four best male friends. In the first episode, one of them commits suicide. Another is sleeping with his best friend’s wife. As the three are sitting in a bar after the suicide, one of them says that he does not really know them because they are not real. One of them is struggling with depression and was also about to kill himself. He has told no one.

Last year in January, every female friend of mine was posting the Gillette commercial on their social media. The ad encourages men to become involved in dealing with toxic masculinity.

For the first 12 years of my life, I lived with my grandparents, two aunts, and two female cousins. My grandfather also rented out a few homes. One of the renters always yelled, screamed, and beat his wife openly in front of everyone. As I look back on my life, this was my first exposure to toxic masculinity.

As I spent a few years in a co-ed, a boy’s boarding school, and residence at college, I realized a lot of toxic masculinity was ingrained in us. I saw it in the restaurant and hotel business and it hit a crescendo on Bay Street. The change only happened when we got a female branch manager, a female head of credit, and a female compliance officer.

In the last fifteen years, I noticed a trend among my male friends and clients. I was the best man at a friend’s wedding and he split up. I was in seven wedding parties and four of them have split up. I have yet to meet a male who has walked out on his marriage. Just recently two very close friends of mine are splitting up after two decades of marriage. Both initiated by the women.

In the last three years, two things happened that threw me off course. One of my closest friends on Bay Street for 16 years passed away due to cancer. We sat opposite each other, we spoke every evening. He only opened up about his cancer, in the much later stages. Another close friend from university was found dead in a bar on a Monday night. We had spoken Monday morning. We were supposed to do lunch on Thursday. He never ever opened up what was going inside.

After those two events, I took two weeks off and sat on a beach. As I got back, I called all my close male friends and said either be real or I am sick and tired of this flakiness. Trust me the men opened up.

As a society, we need to have an honest conversation around masculinity. For instance, the Marlborough Man, Clint Eastwood in the Western’s, Jack Reacher, and many other macho heroes were lonely, distant, and emotionally reserved. I do not believe that talking about our feelings is a sign of weakness. We should not put our feelings aside. There is nothing wrong with expressing our feelings and emotions. We need to hug each other more often and say ‘I love you”.

I have spoken to so many women who are divorced and the number one reason they gave me was that they could not connect emotionally with their man.

As a society, we need to talk about men’s mental health and how we can help.

Finally and the most important issue is we need to talk about the physical, emotional, sexual, and mental violence against women. We have to start in schools, colleges, universities, the workplace, and every other place.

The #MeToo movement started for a reason. It has allowed many taboo topics to come to the forefront.

Let us all join together and make a difference in making women feel safer.

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