by Giovanna Johnson
Bills aimed at preventing medical schools from receiving federal funding if they maintain principles of diversity equity and inclusion are headed to Congress.
The “Adopting Anti-Discrimination, Nonpartisan Curriculum and Truth in Education Act,” or the EDUCATE Act, would limit the availability of funding to medical schools that “adopt specific policies and requirements regarding” DEI, would states.
The bill, in similar versions, was recently introduced by Republicans in both countries House AND Senatewill amend the Higher Education Act of 1965 to prohibit the apply of DEI in medical schools.
“Since 2020, there has been a surge in DEI initiatives in higher education, including medical schools. While addressing racial disparities in medicine is critical to improving the quality of health care, exclusionary and politically motivated approaches have no place in medical schools,” said Greg Murphy, a North Carolina Republican. College amendment in an emailed statement.
“Recruitment, faculty recruitment and curriculum should not be tainted by discrimination.”
Murphy, a physician, introduced the House bill in March together with U.S. Rep. Brad Wenstrup, an Ohio Republican who is also a doctor, is seeking to challenge progressive curriculum.
House Republicans’ bill was introduced in March, and Senate Republicans introduced a section earlier this month companion measure.
“Woke universities are forcing America’s future doctors to care more about race and gender than about saving lives. The EDUCATE Act will ensure that taxpayer dollars do not fund medical schools that discriminate against talented students or spread progressive nonsense at the expense of science,” Senator John Kennedy, a Republican from Louisiana, said in a press release.
Under the bills, medical schools cannot force students, faculty or staff to “personally state, pledge, recite, affirm, or otherwise adopt” DEI tenets, such as the oppressed versus the oppressor or that individuals should be treated unfavorably because of their race.
The bills would also ban the claim that “America is systemically, structurally, or institutionally racist, or that racism is woven into ‘ordinary social affairs,’ or that America is an oppressive nation.”
Medical schools were prohibited from taking “any action that would deprive or tend to deprive medical students of educational opportunities or otherwise adversely affect their status as a student on account of race, color or ethnic origin.”
The Association of American Medical Colleges published a document titled: statement March 26 opposing the legislation. In response to a request for comment from college amendment, The AAMC addressed this Press Release on the medical school curriculum and itsStatement on improving health through DEI.”
Rep. Murphy’s office explained this College amendment that the purpose of the bill is to “preserve academic merit and excellence, protect free speech, and prohibit the promotion of political ideology in the classroom.”
“Physicians should be aware of both internal and external factors that influence a patient’s health, but implementing 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 College Fix’s request for comment.
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Giovanna Johnson, co-author of College Fix, 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 articles have been published in Future Female Leaders and on her blog, Sustained By Grace.
Photo “Congressman Greg Murphy” by Congressman Greg Murphy, M.D. Cover photo “Operating Room” by Jonathan Borba.
