According to a recent Speech First report, the nation’s leading medical schools are controlled by Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion fanatics, who inflict beliefs such as “weight inclusivity,” racial justice, and gender ideology on their staff and students through policies, forced statements, and curricular mandates.
Filed in the fall of 2024, “Critical Condition” analyzed public records from FOIA requests from 54 of the country’s top medical schools, and the results are alarming.
For example, the University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School offers a “Developing Outstanding Clinical Skills” program that teaches students to embrace “weight inclusivity,” arguing that weight-loss strategies foster a “culture of shame.” Students are also instructed to avoid terms such as “overweight” or “obese.”
In a similar vein, the University of California, Los Angeles medical school offers a “Structural Racism and Health Equity” course that teaches students about “fatphobia,” which describes concerns about weight and body size as a form of discrimination or oppression. (You can almost picture a group of paunchy protesters, fists raised high, angrily shouting “Fat power!”)
The hypocrisy here is obvious. Excess weight or obesity increases the risk of death by anywhere from 22% to 91% and Black adults have the highest obesity rates of any race or ethnicity in the U.S. So, downplaying the effects of obesity could really be considered racist.
Duke Medical School has adopted race-based promotion guidelines that reward doctors for recruiting and mentoring “BIPOC faculty” and “targeting specific groups of people,” language attorneys say appear to violate civil rights law.
Brown University’s Medical School now prioritizes DEI over clinical skills in its promotion criteria for faculty. The standards include “demonstrated commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion” as a “major criterion” for all positions within the Department of Medicine. Clinical skills, by contrast, only count as a “minor criterion” for many roles.
Due to pushback, the DEIists are simply rebranding their efforts.
On April 23, President Trump issued an executive order stating, “A bedrock principle of the United States is that all citizens are treated equally under the law. This principle guarantees equality of opportunity, not equal outcomes. It promises that people are treated as individuals, not components of a particular race or group. It encourages meritocracy and a colorblind society, not race- or sex-based favoritism. Adherence to this principle is essential to creating opportunity, encouraging achievement, and sustaining the American Dream.”
While Trump has set the proper tone, the DEIists have changed their tactics. Like criminals trying to avoid capture, the university DEI perps use disguises and ruses to avoid being caught. DEI offices now use kinder and gentler monikers like “Student Success,” “Well-Being,” and “Access and Opportunity.”
A College Fix survey, which analyzed news reports, press releases, and institutional websites, found that at least 87 schools have undergone a rebranding process. While many universities did indeed close their DEI offices, many opted to rename or overhaul them, keeping most of the same staff and goals. In some cases, there were staff reassignments and other bureaucratic shuffling, such as integration into different departments. A few examples:
(The full survey findings, including hyperlinks to source material, can be accessed on The College Fix’s tracking spreadsheet.)
Earlier this month, Mary Grabar, a fellow at The Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization, wrote about Hamilton College, a private liberal arts school in Clinton, New York. She explains that it operates business-as-usual with politicized courses and DEI programs under the deceptively named “Common Ground” program.
Grabar notes that students can take 71 courses in the Department of Africana Studies, along with black-themed classes in other departments, such as the History Department’s “Black Metropolis” and “Race, Gender and Empire in US,” and a DEI program led by Sean Bennett, the school’s vice president for diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Any attempt to rebrand DEI is like calling a stink bomb a rose. No matter what name you give it, it still stinks.
With quality education taking a backseat to a radical agenda, it’s hardly surprising that in the real world, a January survey found that 24% of hiring managers believe recent college graduates are unprepared for the workforce, 33% cite a lack of work ethic, and 29% see them as entitled.
Additionally, 27% believe recent graduates are easily offended, and 25% say they don’t respond well to feedback.
What can people do to facilitate change?
Americans need to be proactive. While Trump’s order is a positive move, DEI’s rebranding will make it harder to solve the problem.
Seeing a doctor? Probably better not to see a recent med school graduate.
Sending your kid off to college? Ensure that no programs are tainted by DEI biases and that merit is prioritized over racial bean-counting.
Before voting for someone running for office, check their stance on DEI.
The equity monster will destroy our country if we don’t all get involved.
Larry Sand, a retired 28-year classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network—a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and the general public with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues. The views presented here are strictly his own.