Medical Students Shouldn’t Swear Woke Oaths

With a new academic year set to start, the University of Minnesota is pushing medical students to swear an oath to divisive woke ideas (archived link). It’s the latest example of the woke conquest of medicine and a sign of what’s coming to every medical school.

The oath at the Twin Cities campus starts off on an explicitly ideological note. It states, “We, the students of the University of Minnesota Medical School, a state funded institution located on Anishinaabe and Dakota land…” This language reflects the woke obsession with grievance politics, with an implicit apology for the expansion of the United States across the continent. Never mind that today’s medical students weren’t alive and are studying medicine, not history.

It gets worse. The Twin Cities campus oath includes even more divisive language:

I recognize that racism and discrimination have pervasive effects in healthcare today. Traumatic events involving police brutality, COVID-19, and climate change have illuminated the many inequalities that remain. I am cognizant of my privilege and social responsibility. I pledge to recognize and disrupt oppressive systems that allow the continuous social reproduction of disparities in marginalized communities. I pledge to be actively anti-racist. I pledge to be a mentor who fosters future generations that challenge inequitable and systemic biases.

The oath for Duluth students is similar, though less on the nose: “We will embrace our roles as advocates for patients by engaging in systemic change to ensure equity in medicine.”

What do privilege, police brutality, climate change, and other politicized topics have to do with medical school? Nothing, and that’s the point. The school is deliberately turning future medical professionals into political activists. And by making students pledge to be “anti-racist,” it’s pushing tomorrow’s physicians to engage in racially discriminatory practices, such as preferential care.

The University of Minnesota Medical School is doing a profound disservice to students and the patients they will eventually serve. This new oath should never be uttered or adapted at any medical school, period.

Does your medical school want you to swear a woke oath or be “anti-racist”? Please let us know, securely and anonymously.