Morton (Mort) P. Birnbaum

Judith L. Birnbaum Graduate Student Award Fund

Clinical psychologists Judith (Judy) L. and Morton (Mort) P. Birnbaum spent most of their working lives in the Boston area, but the foundations of their careers were laid at Michigan. Both Judy and Mort received PhDs from the U-M Department of Psychology and performed their clinical internships in Ann Arbor. Their first child, Joel, was born here too. 

After the young family moved to Massachusetts, their daughter Shana was born. In addition to being a loving mother, Judy became a clinician renowned for her work with men, women, couples, and the LGBTQ+ community. She also became known as a “psychologist’s psychologist” whose clients included many other therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists in the region. Mort focused his work on children and their environment: families, schools, inpatient units, and community agencies. He has held teaching appointments at the University of Massachusetts and Harvard medical schools. After Judy passed away following a battle with Alzheimer’s disease, Mort decided to honor her legacy with a gift to establish the Judith L. Birnbaum Graduate Student Award Fund.

Mort explains that the fund, which provides non-tuition support to Clinical Science PhD students, is a way to simultaneously celebrate Judy’s career and ensure that groundbreaking, social-justice-oriented work like Judy’s is carried on by future generations of psychologists. Judy’s dissertation, “Life Patterns and Self Esteem in Gifted Family Oriented and Career Committed Women,” was widely cited in both popular magazines and academic publications. It was then published as a chapter of the book Women and Achievement: Social and Motivational Analyses (1975). That book also included early work by U-M researchers such as Lois Hoffman, Sandra Tangri, and Martha Mednick, and it was cited by later investigators such as Abby Stewart. For several years, Judy was sought out as a popular speaker on women’s self-esteem during the Women’s Movement. Her unwavering pursuit of equality and justice, particularly for women, continued throughout her career. Consequently, the fund prioritizes support for students conducting research on women’s development, identities, and wellbeing.

But the U-M Department of Psychology was important to the Birnbaums for more than its role in their professional lives. For one thing, the couple first met and fell in love while they were graduate students here in the early 1960s. 

Of their initial meetings, Mort recalls: “Judy started at U-M a year earlier than I did—in 1961. I got there in ’62. We first met when we were practicing, as part of our coursework, diagnostic testing with patients at Ypsilanti State Hospital. Days later, we met again on the Diag, Judy pausing her bike ride to chat. I knew then that I was going to marry her. She was sparkling, connected, bright, playful, and just wonderful!”

The same warmth, wit, intelligence, and creativity that captivated Mort also made Judy an extraordinary therapist who was beloved by those she counseled. Upon learning of Judy’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis, former client Idit Klein even wrote a short piece that was first published in The New York Times: “I mailed my former therapist a Rosh Hashana card but never expected a reply. My heart leaped when I received one. When I opened the letter, I saw that it was from her husband, not her. My brilliant, quick-witted, huge-hearted therapist had Alzheimer’s. Her memory was so sharp that she never took notes during sessions yet could remember every detail. Now her mind failed her. I read the last line in her husband’s card a hundred times: ‘I think I have some sense of how important you were to one another.’”

Klein, who is now the CEO of national LGBTQ+ rights organization Keshet, also contributed the following statement when she learned of Mort’s decision to establish a fund in Judy’s honor: “Judy was one of a kind — deeply warm, brilliant, and so funny. It is impossible for me to say what was more extraordinary — her prodigious mind or her enormous heart. It felt like the most painful irony when I learned that she had Alzheimer's. For me, she will always be the therapist who saw and understood me to my core and never, ever forgot a single thing.”

Klein was only one of many people whose lives Judy changed. During her career she received numerous letters of gratitude. And after her death Mort received many others, often from people Judy had worked with many years earlier. These letters described Judy’s crucial role in helping her clients navigate challenges including early trauma, the transitions into adulthood and parenthood, career difficulties, relationship issues, struggles with gender and sexual identities, and marital issues and divorce. 

Mort’s generous gift of $35,000 will establish the Judith L. Birnbaum Graduate Student Award Fund as a long-term endowment, distributions from which will continue to support Clinical Science graduate students for years to come. Mort hopes that the fund will foster innovative research, both quantitative and qualitative, that advances the causes Judy championed throughout her career. Of that future research, Mort says, “I am just very pleased that Judy’s career and values will be honored by future Award recipients and their work.”

If you would like to contribute to the Judith L. Birnbaum Graduate Student Award Fund, you can do so on our giving website.