When Harvard Medical School Started To Go Wrong

This week, Do No Harm is launching a major advertising campaign around Harvard Medical School’s graduation. We’re shining a light on the school’s dangerous slide toward woke ideology. So it’s worth asking: When did America’s most prestigious medical school turn toward division and discrimination?

A big part of the answer can be found in the school’s “Task Force on Diversity and Inclusion Report.” Released in 2020, the document is breathtaking in its embrace of identity politics. The report lays out a comprehensive plan to make woke ideology central to the school’s work. That includes wholesale changes to student and faculty recruitment, the promotion of faculty and administrators, and the entire infrastructure of Harvard Medical School and its affiliated hospitals and research institutions. 

To start, the plan calls for a dramatic expansion of “the frequency, quality, impact, and reach of current unconscious bias training” for faculty. That includes “greater and regular re-engagement” to ensure that faculty are constantly forced to “discuss and learn about unconscious bias and microaggression.” It also calls for the school to “support efforts” focused specifically on “social justice,” while making race, not merit, a key consideration in the students it recruits. 

The plan also urges the school to create “protected time for diversity-related work” (meaning less time for medical education and research) as well as “financial support for programs that directly address diversity, inclusion and belonging strategic priorities.” It also demands “official groups and committees focused on monitoring diversity efforts” school-wide. Practically speaking, that means a vast bureaucracy charged with forcing ideology on students, faculty, and beyond.

The report even attacks Harvard Medical School’s home city. It says Boston is a “deterrent” to its diversity goals because the city “has had a history of being viewed as racist and noninclusive.” Boston residents may be interested to know what Harvard Medical School thinks about them – and how this flagship institution has a plan to let divisive political activism crowd out real medical education.

Harvard Medical School also has launched an “anti-racism initiative,” which embeds discriminatory ideology in student admissions, faculty advancement, and the school’s curricula. One of Harvard Medical School’s teaching hospitals, Brigham and Women’s, has announced it will use race as a factor in determining who receives access to certain medical care. Residency programs have deliberately lowered standards in the name of diversity. Professors have backed reparations as a form of “medical restitution.” Harvard has pushed “unconscious bias training” on employees and students. Numerous other examples of HMS’ embrace of divisive ideologies and practices can be found here. 

Watch our recent video that discusses why this is such an important issue:

Our campaign calls these actions what they really are: Unacceptable and dangerous. And it calls on graduates, faculty, employees, and affiliates to help us draw attention to what Harvard Medical School is doing.

If you’ve seen radical ideology corrupt Harvard Medical School – or any other medical school or teaching institution – let us know immediately. We want to hear your story and help you fight back.