Medical school mission statements are becoming increasingly laden with diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and social justice language, a report released Monday found.
Do No Harm, a medical advocacy organization working to keep DEI and other political topics out of medicine, reviewed 158 medical school mission statements and found that 77% could be classified as “woke” in 2024, a number that increased substantially from 68% in 2021, according to a report first shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation. The report also found that “Higher ranked medical schools were more likely to increase the wokeness of their mission.”
“There are desirable qualities to diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice, but when these terms are presented together in the context of a mission statement, they are markers for a particular worldview,” the report reads. “That ‘woke’ worldview indicates a significant departure from the traditional American emphasis on individual responsibility and equal treatment in favor of emphasizing differentiated treatment by group identity and social rather than individual justice.”
Columbia medical school’s previously benign statement once promised to “prepare graduates to be leaders and role models who define excellence in patient care, medical research, education, and health care policy,” according to DNH. In 2024, the statement expanded from 87 to 567 words to include a swath of leftist terms such as “Anti-Racism, Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity.”
“In 2021, we formally launched the [Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons] Anti-Racism Coalition (ARC), an interdisciplinary effort by students and staff to promote a sustainable culture of inclusion and diversity,” the statement boasts. “Its ongoing goal is to create, adopt, and strengthen anti-racist educational systems and practices and to support equity and justice throughout the VP&S learning environment.”
Similarly at the University of Massachusetts, the once-straightforward, science-focused statement now details a commitment to “the elimination of health care disparities and the establishment of health equity” and “diversity and inclusion,” DNH found.
The University of Arkansas Medical School’s 2024 statement, which was previously concerned simply with its “fourfold mission to teach, to heal, to search, and to serve,” now asserts a “commitment to diversity and health equity,” the report stated.
“There is a clarion call for the promotion of social justice, diversity, equity and inclusion in our society. We concur with this well-known statement: If not us, who? If not now, when?” the University of Maryland’s medical school mission statement reads. “Together, we will continuously listen and educate ourselves about systemic racism and structural barriers to success for all, legislative and policy matters, economic inequalities, health care access, and all forms of bias that contribute further to cumulative disadvantages for marginalized groups.”
At the University of California, Davis Medical School, prospective students must “take a university provided training related to diversity and inclusion, implicit bias, and anti-racism” and uses a “holistic admission evaluation” which “utilizes a socioeconomic disadvantaged score … to attach a numeric value to each applicant’s perseverance, grit, and distance traveled,” DNH found. In its statement, the school claims it “supports all students with a focus on groups historically underrepresented in medicine, working to cultivate a safe learning environment in which diversity can be nurtured in an inclusive, accepting and productive manner.”
The UC Davis statement also contains a spelling error, writing “lead” instead of “led,” DNH found.
DNH also found that the statement from Georgetown University School of Medicine “refers to ‘justice’ five times but does not once mention research, excellence, or truth.’ The statement also declares a “commitment to social justice” and says it is “Led by our values of racial justice and health equity, we are steadfast in our ongoing commitment to eliminate racism in all forms across our campus.”
“The fact that dozens of medical school mission statements became significantly more woke between April 2021 and December 2024, and that dozens more have almost reached maximum wokeness, raises questions about whether it is possible for medical schools to maintain the intensity of this woke focus. And if they do sustain this woke fervor, what will be the cost to medical care?” the report concluded. “Promoting a social and political agenda among medical students comes at the expense of excellence. At some point, patients, hospitals, and insurers will become alarmed if doctors have a stronger command of ideological doctrine than medical science and will demand a rebalancing of priorities.”
“People want their doctors to have a command of the latest scientific evidence and assume that medical schools share this priority,” Jay Greene, senior fellow at DNH and author of the report, told the DCNF. “Unfortunately, medical schools have been consumed by political activism distracting from the scientific focus of medical training. Policymakers, alumni, and donors need to push medical schools to restore their focus on scientific training and to dispense with their forays into political activism.”
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