Medical schools are woke
Most medical schools are woke, according to a report published this month by Do No Harm.
The organization analyzed the mission statements of 155 medical schools nationwide between 2021 and 2024. It found that 77% were committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) ideology in 2024, up from 68% in 2021. Over those three years, 78 schools had altered their mission statements—36 made them more woke, 32 maintained the level of wokeness, and 10 reduced their commitment to woke orthodoxy.
“These results indicate that between 2021 and 2024, dozens of medical schools scrambled to rewrite their mission statements to signal how committed to woke values they were. They were not scrambling to signal how focused they were on science,” said Do No Harm. “As our previous research on woke and scientific terms in medical school curricula indicates, the dramatic rise in emphasis on wokeness is inevitably pushing out the focus on scientific rigor in medical education.”
Columbia University
Columbia University’s mission statement in 2021 expressed a commitment to medicine and patient care:
The mission of Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons is to prepare graduates to be leaders and role models who define excellence in patient care, medical research, education, and health care policy. Their experiences at VP&S will enable them to shape the future and set the standards of medicine in the United States and the world. Their guided exposure and training will allow them to exhibit the highest principles of humanism and professionalism in their responsibilities to their patients, to their community, and to society.
By 2024, the mission statement had become a lengthy pledge focusing on DEI:
At VP&S, we aspire to educate the next generation of physician leaders to serve our neighboring, national, and global communities using the lens of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice to promote the health and state-of-the-art care of patients.
The school added that it had changed its curriculum to better align with DEI and boasted that it was pushing the ideology as a “culture”:
In 2021, we formally launched the VP&S Anti-Racism Coalition (ARC), an interdisciplinary effort by students and staff to promote a sustainable culture of inclusion and diversity. 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.
University of Massachusetts
The University of Massachusetts Medical School’s mission statement in 2021 was short and direct:
The mission of UMMS is to advance the health and well-being of the people of the commonwealth and the world through pioneering advances in education, research and health care delivery.
Three years later, the mission statement mentioned DEI several times, saying it was “woven into all courses and rotations”:
Our graduates will contribute in a meaningful way to the elimination of health care disparities and the establishment of health equity in Massachusetts and beyond. Our Office of Admissions implements the mission through holistically reviewing each eligible application and placing highest value on applicant characteristics which align with the UMass Chan mission such as commitment to health equity, diversity and inclusion and service to the community. Our VISTA curriculum has an innovative, integrated structure based on foundational, clinical and health systems sciences. The longitudinal focus topics of health equity, societal forces in health and disease and health systems science are woven into all courses and rotations.
University of Arkansas
In 2021, the University of Arkansas Medical School’s mission statement read:
In relentless pursuit of excellence, every day; summarizes the essence of the school’s fourfold mission to teach, to heal, to search, and to serve.
By 2024, it had changed to focus on DEI:
Core values include commitment to diversity and health equity supported by diversity of UAMS leadership, faculty, staff, and learners to reduce health care disparities in our state, and honor the unique contributions provided by a diversity of values, beliefs, and cultures.
University of Maryland
The University of Maryland’s medical school is an example of one that did not change its mission statement between 2021 and 2024, though it had already achieved what Do No Harm refers to as “maximum wokeness”:
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? We will engage in ongoing strategic and intentional actions to advance in a measurable way our vision for social justice, civil rights and civil liberties for all members of our School of Medicine, University and their communities across the United States. 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. We will undertake these actions, with cultural humility, in all school missions to include education, research, clinical care and community engagement. We have committed ourselves to be an organization that embodies diversity, equity, inclusion and in which all members of our community are encouraged to respectfully and empathically voice their opinions, while embracing and supporting the diversity in background and thought of the entire community. In these ways, we will work to create safety and build trust across our community and prepare to face all future challenges with socially just solutions.
University of California (UC) Davis
The UC Davis Medical School’s mission statement had also achieved “maximum wokeness.” It noted that DEI was embedded in its admissions process and, as if to emphasize its lack of commitment to excellence, misspelled the word “led”:
The Office of Student and Resident Diversity 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. This unit is lead [sic] by our newly appointed Associate Dean for Diverse and Inclusive Education and Associate Dean for Diverse and Inclusive Learning Communities.
Georgetown University
The Georgetown University School of Medicine emphasized its commitment to fighting “racism” in its mission statement:
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. We are grateful to the members of the Racial Justice Committee for Change, a dedicated group of students, staff and faculty, for pursuing sustainable change at the School of Medicine and throughout the medical center.
DEI vs. Medical Excellence
The observance of DEI ideology in medical schools has come at a cost of reduced medical competence. Officials at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, for example, have blamed the school’s illegal diversity practices for an alarming drop in medical competence among students. The school’s acceptance rate was just 1.3% in 2023, which was reserved for the creme-de-la-creme. But while a 3.8 GPA and an MCAT score in the 88th percentile might be a standard for White students, the school has been openly admitting Black and Hispanic students who fall short of that standard, simply because of their skin color.
Since then, the medical school plummeted from 6th place to 18th place in medical research, a 300% drop. In some cadres that were admitted, over 50% of the students failed standardized medical tests after their clinical rotations. The national failing average is 5%.
"I have students on their rotation who don't know anything," an admissions committee member said. "People get in and they struggle."
Immediately after taking office, President Trump signed an executive order to withhold federal funding from any institution that observes DEI orthodoxy.
