Concussed

 The world craves elite examples of courage

 from selfless crusaders

 who genuinely care first about the needs of others.

 Dr. Omalu is that man…

-Ben Utecht, musician, author, and former NFL player

The life of Dr. Bennet Omalu reads something like a parable. A man from the humblest of beginnings, destine to share his knowledge with the world. “Omalu”, short for Onyemalukwube, his Nigerian surname meaning “he who knows, speaks” proves to be more than happenstance. This predetermined beneficent quality is at the core of who Bennet Omalu is. He takes it with him in all of his work. The world eventually took notice of this unsung hero, and thus Dr. Bennet Omalu was sprung from the world of research and academia unto the center stage of American media. The story behind Dr. Omalu’s fight against the National Football League (NFL) is one of conspiracy, greed, values, and the pursuit of truth.

After months of studying and spending time with the man he would eventually portray in the major motion picture Concussion, Will Smith had this to say about Dr. Omalu:

If you want to understand Dr. Bennet Omalu, don’t look at the acronyms that come after his name or read the papers he’s authored; listen to his laugh. It’s the laugh of someone who possesses the freedom that can only come when you know that you are doing exactly what you were destined to do.

From an early age Omalu knew he had within him what it took to change the way people thought about the world. In his most recently published book, Truth Doesn’t Have a Side, Dr. Omalu repeatedly refers to himself as “my father’s son”. Bennet Omalu is the son of an orphan who was saved by a missionary and worked tirelessly in pursuit of gaining a higher education against all odds. This type of resilience and love for learning is in Dr. Omalu’s blood. Being a Nigerian born physician, forensic pathologist, and neuropathologist completing groundbreaking research in America is no easy feet in and of itself. But even that would not prove to be his most difficult work.

Dr. Omalu first moved to the United States to complete an epidemiology fellowship at the University of Washington in Seattle. Then, after completing his residency at Columbia University’s Harlem Hospital Center he was formally trained in forensics under distinguished forensic consultant Cyril Wecht (Wecht most notably worked on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy) (Omalu and Tabb). It was Dr. Omalu’s autopsy of Pittsburg Steelers all-pro lineman Michael “Iron Mike” Webster in 2002 and his neuropathic research findings thereafter that brought him into the realm of the public intellectual. Although Webster’s brain looked normal at autopsy, Dr. Omalu knew something was not right. Webster had died suddenly and unexpectedly following years of struggling with cognitive and intellectual impairment, destitution, mood disorders, depression, drug abuse, and suicide attempts. After further independent examination, Dr. Omalu began to notice an accumulation of tau proteins in Webster’s brain matter. This later became one of the principle indicators of CTE (Omalu).

With his eight advanced degrees from distinguished universities all over the world there is no doubt that Dr. Bennet Omalu merits the title of “intellectual”. But there are plenty of intellectuals who never share their knowledge with anybody outside of their own field or really have the chance to change perspectives outside of the world of academia. This is where the “public intellectual” lives. Sharing intellectual content with a large audience, who may or may not be well versed in the field of study, to change or shape perspective. With the widely popular film Concussion staring Will Smith as Dr. Bennet Omalu, as well as his two popular books, Truth Doesn’t Have a Side and Play Hard, Die Young, on the dangers of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a disorder he discovered and coined, Dr. Omalu certainly falls in the category of a public intellectual.

In Stephen Mack’s essay The Supposed Decline of the Public Intellectual he rejects the notion previously put forward by Yale University Press director John Donatich that America has an “anti-intellectualism” bias that creates a “smugly theoretical concept of a ‘conflict’” between the average citizen and the elitist public intellectual. I argue that, at least in the case of Dr. Bennet Omalu, the theory of there being “conflict” between the public intellectual and the average American citizen holds some truth. So far Omalu has personified this “conflict” twice in his life. First, he took on the mega business of professional football in America with his work on CTE. Then, years later he took on the San Joaquin County where he had been a tenured medical examiner to expose mal practice and wrong doing by the county’s Sherriff (KQED). The clearest manifestation of this “conflict” is the backlash that Dr. Omalu received from not only the NFL as an organization, but also the huge American football fan base. Unfortunately, harsh words like “’who are you, an outsider, an African—not even an African American—to cast such a cloud over America’s most popular sport?’” sounds a lot like conflict between an academic attempting to share his work and the general populace. The never ending assault on not only his work, but his whole career didn’t stop with the death threats in the mail. When Dr. Omalu “decided to go public with what [he] discovered in [his] autopsy of Mike Webster in 2002, [he] naively believed America and the National Football League would welcome [his] findings…[instead, his] findings were not welcomed by the NFL, nor were they embraced by American society as a whole…[in fact] the NFL tried to destroy [his] career” (Omalu). Dr. Omalu knew that his findings on the long term health consequences of playing football would change the perspective of a lot of naïve people. And frankly, he was unapologetic with the way in which he presented it. Once he realized much of America was against him he began to write in more clear and effective ways. For example, the preface to his most recent book Truth Doesn’t Have a Side is titled “God Did Not Intend for Human Beings to Play Football” and the afterword is titled “I Bet My Medical License That OJ Simpson has CTE”. This type of verbiage is precisely why he is a public intellectual. Attention grabbing, but simple and easy to understand is the name of the game for a public intellectual.

Dr. Omalu is not one to shy away from a conflict that he believes is worth fighting. Besides his culture-changing work on neuropathic trauma he faced another public challenge that he knew would be a hard fight. After working as the chief medical examiner for the San Joaquin county for 10 years he suddenly resigned. During his resignation process he came forward to expose a county sheriff who doubled as a medical examiner in the morgue. Omalu accused him of tampering with dead bodies and altering evidence to protect law enforcement officers. He knew he would lose the trust of the other officers in his county so he nobly resigned and is now a professor of medical pathology at the University of California, Davis. Coming forward against your peers is not easy, but serves as another testament to the kind of man Dr. Bennet Omalu is.

Historically, norm challenging science is not taken well by the public. This narrative is no different for Dr. Bennet Omalu. Thankfully, by grabbing the attention of Hollywood and garnering a major motion picture explaining his journey to discovering the dangers of CTE he was able to cast a light on something that had been ignored and swept under the rug for so long. The ultimate public intellectual is able to change the way the public thinks about a certain topic. Whether they like it or not.

“What You Don’t Want to Hear” is a blog about challenging topics, wicked problems, that challenge the norms and values of everyday life. Starting it off with the expose of Dr. Bennet Omalu is ironically fitting. I write this as a student first, but athlete second. I am in love with the sport of rugby and will continue to play it for as long as my body will allow me to. Studying CTE and Dr. Omalu is exactly what I did not want to hear. I write these very words coming off of a severe concussion. If knowledge is power, then one can not restrict themselves to the easily digestible topics. Challenging what and how you think will either change your beliefs or reaffirm them in a much deeper way. This is precisely what I believe public intellectuals strive to do with their work.