by Giovanna Johnson
Bills that seeks to block med schools from receiving federal funds if they maintain diversity equity and inclusion mandates are winding their way through Congress.
“Embracing anti-Discrimination, Unbiased Curricula, and Advancing Truth in Education,” or the EDUCATE Act, would limit the availability of funds for medical schools that “adopt certain policies and requirements relating to” DEI, it states.
The bill, with similar versions recently introduced by Republicans in both the House and Senate, would amend the Higher Education Act of 1965 to ban DEI from med schools.
“Since 2020, DEI initiatives have exploded in higher education, including in medical schools. While addressing racial disparities in medicine is critical to improving quality health care, exclusionary and politically motivated methods have no place in medical school,” Rep. Greg Murphy, a North Carolina Republican, told The College Fix in an emailed statement.
“Admissions, faculty recruitment, and curricula should not be tainted with discrimination.”
Murphy, a doctor, introduced the House bill in March along with U.S. Rep. Brad Wenstrup, a Republican from Ohio who is also a doctor seeking to crack down on progressive curricula.
The House Republicans’ bill was introduced in March, and earlier this month Senate Republicans introduced a companion measure.
“Woke universities are forcing America’s future doctors to care more about race and gender than saving lives. The EDUCATE Act would make sure taxpayer dollars don’t fund medical schools that discriminate against talented students or peddle progressive nonsense at the expense of science,” stated Sen. John Kennedy, a Republican from Louisiana, in a news release.
Under the bills, med schools could not force students, faculty or staff to “personally state, pledge, recite, affirm, or otherwise adopt” DEI tenets such as oppressed versus oppressor, or that individuals should be adversely treated based on their race.
The bills would also outlaw arguing that “America is systemically, structurally, or institutionally racist, or that racism is weaved into the ‘ordinary business of society’, or that America is an oppressive nation.”
Medical schools would be prohibited from taking “any action that would deprive or tend to deprive a medical student of educational opportunities or otherwise adversely affect their status as a student, on the basis of race, color, or ethnicity.”
The Association of American Medical Colleges released a statement March 26 opposing the legislation. In a response to a request for comment from The College Fix, AAMC referred to its news release on medical school curriculum and its “Statement on Improving Health Through DEI.”
Rep. Murphy’s office explained to The College Fix that the purpose of the act is to “preserve academic merit and excellence, protect free speech, and prohibit political ideology from being pushed in the classroom.”
“Physicians should be aware of both internal and external factors of a patient’s health, but inviting discriminatory social theory into practice is harmful both at the bedside and to the integrity of medicine.”
Harvard Medical School, Tufts University School of Medicine, and Boston University School of Medicine did not respond to The College Fix’s request for comment.
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College Fix contributor Giovanna Johnson is a student at Gordon College in Massachusetts studying political science. She is a senior editor of the student publication The Gordon Review, and her writing has appeared on Future Female Leaders and her blog Sustained By Grace.
Photo “Congressman Greg Murphy” by Congressman Greg Murphy, MD. Background Photo “Operating Room” by Jonathan Borba.
