Commentary

Tulane Wants Med Students To Turn In Their Teachers

  • By Do No Harm Staff
  • October 23, 2022
  • Tulane University School of Medicine

The old Soviet KGB could learn something from the Tulane University School of Medicine. A tipster just sent us the school’s announcement of a new “Bias in Curriculum Reporting Form.” It’s clearly designed to get medical students to report on professors who don’t toe the woke party line.

The reporting system was designed by the “Liaison Committee on Racial and Social Justice in Medical Education,” a student-led group created in 2020 “to enhance education in racial and social justice.” Through this new form, the group is deliberately pushing Tulane’s medical education to focus on divisive identity politics instead of medical education:

“The purpose of this reporting form is to assist in the reviewing of instances of racism and bias experienced within didactics instruction and teaching sessions at the School of Medicine… The purpose is to strategically advocate for restorative change within the curriculum.”

What about the reporting system itself? It says at the outset that it’s focused on finding materials that “express bias,” including in lectures, online materials, and exam questions. It then gives students a checklist of the types of the bias they ostensibly witnessed:

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Nowhere does the reporting system define “bias,” leaving it entirely in the eyes of the beholder. That means students can report their professors for simply offending their feelings or transgressing the ever-lengthening list of woke demands. There’s no limiting principle, so medical educators will live in fear that simply teaching the facts will get them reported and punished. 

Tulane’s new reporting system ensures that professor self-censorship will surely rise, while educational standards will surely fall. That’s what happens when a medical school empowers students to turn in their professors, Soviet style – and it will hurt these future physicians and their patients.

Is your medical school silencing professors or soliciting student complaints about supposed bias? Please let us know – securely and anonymously.