Commentary

The University of Minnesota’s Discrimination Runs Deep

  • By Do No Harm Staff
  • November 2, 2022
  • University of Minnesota Medical School

Remember how the University of Minnesota Medical School is forcing students to swear oaths to woke ideology? It turns out the school’s commitment to divisive and even discriminatory ideas runs even deeper. That’s why Do No Harm has filed three complaints against the school with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

Our civil rights complaints target three explicitly discriminatory things at the medical school:

  1. The “Diversity in Pediatrics Visiting Student Elective Award.” This award, which offers funding and mentorship opportunities, is sold as a way of creating a more diverse student body. Yet to quality, students must belong “to a historically excluded group (under-represented in medicine) including Black/African-American, Latinx/Hispanic, Native American, Pacific Islander, Native Hawaiian, Filipino, Hmong, Vietnamese, and/or mainland Puerto Rican.” Such discrimination cannot be squared with the Constitution or federal law.
  1. The “BIPOC Faculty and Staff Welcome and Reception.” This event (archived link), which occurred in September, was only open to “faculty and staff that identify as Black, Indigenous, or a person of color.” The name for that is racial discrimination, and that’s illegal.
  1. The “CTSI/Medical School Early Career Research Award.” This award aims to increase diversity in tenure-track faculty and includes more than $500,000 in funding. Yet applicants must “be from an NIH-recognized URM group defined as Black or African American, American Indian, Alaska Native, Hispanic or Latino, Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islanders, and those with disabilities, defined as physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities.” Such discrimination cannot be squared with the Constitution or federal law.

It’s no surprise that a medical school that requires woke oaths also discriminates by race in pursuit of woke goals. If the University of Minnesota doesn’t change course, then the federal Office for Civil Rights should force it to.