Hold Florida Medical Schools Accountable for Abandoning Wokeness

At least six Florida medical schools say they don’t and won’t compel anyone to accept Critical Race Theory. That’s the news out of the Sunshine State on Thursday, when 28 universities, six of which have medical schools, publicly made this promise. It’s a good sign, but it demands further investigation. Florida medical schools are doing a lot more with this divisive and discriminatory ideology, and every trace of it needs to be eliminated for the sake of physicians and patients.

This turn of events follows Gov. Ron DeSantis’ recent request that all publicly funded Florida colleges and universities disclose their spending on Critical Race Theory and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. As Do No Harm chair Dr. Stanley Goldfarb recently wrote in the Orlando Sentinel, medical schools are particularly bad offenders:

“My organization has spent the past year investigating whether and to what extent medical excellence has been replaced by political indoctrination at these institutions. What we’ve found casts doubt on the quality of education that medical schools provide to the future physicians who will treat Floridians.”

The list of offenders includes the University of Florida School of Medicine, the Florida Atlantic University Schmidt College of Medicine, and many others. Florida medical schools are injecting divisive ideology into the application process, the classroom, and faculty training.

Does the new public promise mean medical schools will abandon these deeply concerning actions? It remains to be seen, but it seems unlikely. The schools are saying they won’t force anyone to hold specific views, but that leaves plenty of room to continue beating the woke drum in other ways. Medical schools may not technically force faculty and students to be woke, but they will surely try to indoctrinate them through other means. Gov. DeSantis is right to focus on wokeness in Florida higher education. Hopefully he and state lawmakers will continue to hold colleges and universities, especially medical schools, accountable. Divisive and discriminatory ideas have no place in higher education – and any institution that dabbles in dangerous ideology deserves the highest scrutiny.