This episode originally aired on August 6, 2020.

Historian Susan Reverby’s latest book offers a complex portrait of Alan Berkman, a doctor who was radicalized in the 1960s and joined a clandestine struggle for change, was imprisoned for nearly a decade, battled cancer several times over, and ended his life of activism with a successful campaign to make AIDS treatment more widely available in developing countries.

Today, she joins Allen on the program to discuss the remarkable life and times of Dr. Alan Berkman and what we can learn from the hidden aspects of recent history.

Susan Reverby is a professor emerita of history and women’s and gender studies at Wellesley College. Her major research has centered on American health care, women, race, and public health with a focus on equality and ethics. She is the author of Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy (University of North Carolina Press, 2009) and Co-conspirator for Justice: The Revolutionary Life of Dr. Alan Berkman (University of North Carolina Press, 2020).

Cover photo courtesy of Columbia University Medical Center’s Health Sciences Library Archives & Special Collections

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