Colin Sheridan: How a Harlem-born intellectual influenced a generation in Ireland through television

Alvin Poussaint’s work on race, mental health, and media shaped perceptions far beyond America—including in Ireland

Pioneering social psychologist Dr Alvin Poussaint.

This weekend in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a memorial will be held for Dr Alvin F Poussaint, who died late last month at the grand old age of 90. 

You’ve likely never heard of Dr Poussaint, but, assuming you had a television growing up in Ireland, you most certainly came across his work. Poussaint was a Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and his work as a psychiatrist, medical professional, writer, civil rights activist, and public intellectual was seminal in how Americans — especially African Americans — thought about race, class, and justice.