Will Lawmakers Ban DEI in medical schools?

Can we legislate medical education? A deep analysis

A new bill in the US House aims to ban DEI in medical schools. It raises the questions: What specifically is banned? Are the points valid? and Can medical education be legislated? Let’s consider these points

What specifically is banned? & Are the Points Valid?

I hate when I read lay press articles that summarize what a bill does. Almost always it doesn’t accurately summarize the language. So let me do the work of going through this in detail.

The bill will block an institution from receiving federal funds (this is a powerful deterrent, to be clear) if it does any of the following:

1. Make students pledge or recite this (note: it doesn’t say they can’t be taught this, just that they can’t chant it):

I think most Americans would not want medical students to pledge this extreme critical race theory view of the world, and I think schools should not make students chant this.

I think we all agree with this, but the authors likely have reverse discrimination in mind.

To me, it is obvious people are not responsible for things that their ancestors did, before they were even born.

I think making students hate America is bad, and has nothing to do with medicine. To me it is fair that students should be required to pledge these things. Again, some students may believe these things— I would disagree, but it doesn’t ban dialog, just incantation.

Now let us look at the other parts. Schools can’t…

I think some of this overlaps with prior discrimination law and the recent supreme court ruling. I don’t think this bans students from creating ad-hoc student groups (e.g. Black students association), but I think it bans universities from sanctioning these groups.

I think 4 will likely be easily circumvented as universities will have the same office, but rename it, and state that it is not operating the same way. I think 5 will apply to many schools, where faculty are asked to write these statements. I am not aware that writing these statements has any external benefit to anyone, and it takes time. To me 5 already seems like windowdressing.

Overall, I think most Americans would agree that medical schools should not in the business of the aforementioned. Now having said that, let us get to the last question.

Can medical education be legislated?

I think, as a general rule, it is difficult to control the ideas that fill medical school. The bill is targeting a nebulous group of ideas in a very specific way. But stopping pledges and statements won’t change the overall trajectory of medical school, which has a strong woke bias. Here are just a few ways in which this *political bias* is present

1. The DEI issue. I often hear people say “there are absolutely no genetic or biologic differences between racial groups” and also “we need to make sure we get people from all racial groups if we do genetic sequencing.” Obviously, both these things can’t be true. I think what they mean to say is that there is more variation among racial groups than between them, and clearly some variation in human appearance is genetic, but there is no basis to think there is meaningful variation in important traits.

   1. Relatedly, these days every panel organizer is careful not to have a manel (man only panel) and ideally people of different races or backgrounds, but these panels rarely seek people of different OPINIONS— diversity of thought is unwelcome.

2. The COVID policy issue. We still cannot have an honest conversation on masking, lockdowns, mandates. The media and universities are hopelessly biased. (The tide is turning though).

3. Transgender medicine. See prior posts in Sensible Medicine

These are just three domains where the “woke” political bias in medicine adversely impacts scholarship. The bill might tackle the most egregious manifestations, but it will inflame supporters, and I don’t think it addresses the core issues.

Rather than legislate with a stick, I tend to think about carrot approaches. Given that one purpose of DEI is to help poor kids become doctors, why don’t we help them get a better education when they are young (and it matters most). People like Roland Frier have ideas on how to improve the pipeline without sacrificing merit based considerations.

Additionally, to combat the broader concern of woke ideologic capture of medical schools— what if we provided specific federal funding to encourage universities to recruit and support faculty with different ideas. I admit this is a nascient idea for this piece, and I will want to think through it more (they will have to do so in a non-partisan way, but somehow acknowledging the partisan bias), but I tend to think in the long run, the only way to stifle bad ideas is to propose better ones.

If you support what we are doing here, with Sensible Medicine, become a subscriber.

Closing thoughts

Right now, university administrators are worried about this bill. They will have to move a few things around to not be in violation— obviously, no one will give up federal funds. A close read of the bill suggests that that it is pretty mainstream criticism of the woke ideology that is out of hand at universities. The problem is legislating medical education is difficult, and perhaps the real purpose of the bill to send a message to universities to knock it off. Meanwhile, to actually create a work environment where we can discuss diverse ideas— that is the holy grail of modern medical education. Each year, I work as a professor, I think we are getting further from that goal, as this ideology gains a greater stranglehold.