A medical school spent $18,000 in a week on lecturers to spout “pure political idealogy” during a “diversity” week, critics charged.
One speaker alone, Canadian doctor and actor Evan Adams, got $3,000 to wax on about indigenous health issues in a virtual seminar for the November event at the University of Utah Medical School, which costs $35,000 a year.
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The school also doled out $15,000 in travel costs and speaker fees for public health expert Daniel Dawes to appear, according to the group Do No Harm, which campaigns against overly progressive ideas in medicine and uncovered the expenses through a public records request.
‘The University of Utah should be spending its money on something worthwhile,” Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, who heads the group, told the Daily Mail. “To indoctrinate its staff and its students in concepts that are pure political ideology isn’t fair to Utah’s taxpayers, nor will it benefit the students.”
The speakers represent a “whole industry of consultants [that] has grown up to grift off academic institutions in the name of DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion]. This nonsense needs to stop,” Goldfarb told the outlet.
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The lecturers were not paid with money from student tuition fees, according to a university spokeswoman, who added that the school wants to offer its students different perspectives on current issues.
Dawes was paid $13,000 and got a first-class flight to the school along with hotel and chauffeured rides, according to the documents.
An author and former COVID-19 advisor to the White House, Dawes gave a lecture titled “The Political Determinants of Health and How We Can Change Them,” which focused on why some Americans have better health than others.
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An architect of parts of the Affordable Care Act, Dawes has written two books, “150 Years of ObamaCare” and “The Political Determinants of Health.”
The other speaker hired by the school is a member of the Tla’amin First Nation. Adams’ lecture dealt with Canada’s struggle to address decades of violence against American Indian and Alaskan natives in the country, and the resulting impact on their health.