Many schools have simply renamed DEI programs and offices without meaningfully changing their approach.
Colleges and medical schools in states where diversity, equity, and inclusion programs are banned have continued to promote DEI ideology in overt defiance of the law.
Universities in red states such as Florida, Tennessee, Iowa, Texas, Indiana, Kansas, and Utah continue their DEI efforts even though each state has passed anti-DEI laws, according to watchdog group Do No Harm.
Do No Harm, an organization opposed to DEI and gender ideology in the medical field, released a report last week based on publicly available information. The report mostly focuses on medical institutions but also makes note of undergraduate programs, totaling over a dozen educational institutions overall.
“Exposing how medical schools resurrect divisive DEI policies at every opportunity is an important part of improving the quality of medical care,” said Do No Harm chairman Dr. Stanley Goldfarb.
“Rebranding DEI as ‘health equity’ or other such terms is a clear effort to skirt state law in the name of woke ideology. Med schools should drop their DEI agenda. Instead, they should focus on merit as the basis for recruitment and admission decisions, and lawmakers should target schools that fail to comply with state law,” he added.
Do No Harm’s report identifies DEI programs at undergraduate and medical schools in each of the red states in what it calls “zombie DEI.” The report seeks to shine light on loopholes in state level DEI laws and strengthen their enforcement.
An example of “zombie DEI” is the University of Tennessee’s Health Science Center (UTHSC), which changed its Office of Inclusion, Equity, and Diversity to the Office of Access and Compliance and removed references to DEI awards and programming from the office’s public page.
The UTHSC also changed the names of its DEI newsletter, implicit bias trainings, engagement program and its diversity award. But the materials of the programs remain the same, despite the name changes.
UTHSC’s inclusive engagement program, a revamped version of its diversity passport program, “advocates self-discovery and/or using various resources to expand one’s understanding of intersectional ideas regarding unique aspects of human experience.” Intersectionality is a left-wing term referring to a hierarchy that identifies individuals as part of oppressed or oppressor groups based on their demographic traits.
The UT Health Science Center’s Student Social Justice and Diversity Healthcare Leadership Award was rebranded to be its Student Impact and Advocacy Leadership Awards, but it continued listing DEI as one of its “foundational priority areas.”
Additionally, the school offers DEI research guides that provide access to popular academic work in the DEI field, including author Robin DiAngelo’s infamous book “White Fragility” and historian Ibram X. Kendi’s “How to be an Antiracist.”
Another example of “zombie DEI” contained in Do No Harm’s report is the Indiana University School of Medicine (IUSM). The school maintains its ‘Health Equity, Advocacy and Leadership,’ competency in its curriculum and concentrations in “ethics, equity, and justice.” Health equity is a “foundational” aspect of the school’s mission and its residency programs are still committed to the debunked claim that racial concordance leads to better health outcomes for patients.
IUSM also promotes DEI in its graduate medical education toolkit, which offers a list of definitions commonly used in DEI and a course designed to help a student understand how DEI will impact recruitment. In February, Willie Miller, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Faculty Affairs at Indiana University, emailed staff about its revised promotion and tenure standards to adjust to the state’s changing political landscape. He added intellectual diversity to the “institutional value of DEI” and told scholars they could continue DEI-related work.
Neither UTHSC nor IUSM responded when asked for comment.
Critics of DEI often contend that the left-wing programs under its banner divide people by obsessively focusing on race and other demographic characteristics instead of merit and achievement. DEI became mainstream across American life during the summer 2020 Black Lives Matter riots after the murder of George Floyd.
“While substantial progress has been made by state legislatures and governors to rid their public colleges and universities of divisive and discriminatory DEI rhetoric and radical ideologies, additional action is needed to close loopholes and augment existing laws,” the Do No Harm report concludes.
The Trump administration is investigating dozens of colleges and universities for alleged racial discrimination in their DEI programs. The probes are part of the administration’s larger goal of rooting DEI out of influential American institutions and prioritize meritocracy instead of group identity.