Jeremiah Poff writes for the Washington Examiner about a disturbing development in the Lone Star State.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts have become an integral part of the institutional fabric of a number of Texas medical schools, featuring in admissions practices, university programs, and academics, a new report found.
The report was compiled by the medical watchdog group Do No Harm, which used publicly available information to detail the extent to which the University of Texas system, Texas A&M University, Texas Tech University, the University of Houston, Baylor University, and Texas Christian University incorporated DEI principles into their medical schools.
“Although the Lone Star State is often associated with more traditional values and ideals, its major universities are not immune to the spread of the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and anti-racism dogma that is so familiar in more progressive parts of the United States,” the group wrote in its report. “These destructive philosophies have worked their way into medical education. Medical students are indoctrinated with the idea that the entire healthcare industry is systemically racist, everyone in it is steeped in implicit bias, and its entire structure is designed to inflict harmful inequities and health disparities onto specific patient populations.”
The DEI practices detailed in the report include a number of programs and initiatives at the five University of Texas medical schools, ranging from maintaining no minimum standards for applicant GPA or MCAT scores at two campuses, promoting resources linked to critical race theory, and using a pass-fail system rather than a traditional grading scale.
At the Baylor College of Medicine, admissions committee members who interview applicants are required to complete an implicit bias training and an orientation program that covers “which qualities are to be evaluated” for each applicant. The school also created a “Race in Medicine Task Force” that says its goal is to “incorporate anti-racism curriculum content into all levels of education for Baylor medical students.”
