Commentary

UNLV Refuses to Reveal Their Score on the AAMC’s DICE Inventory

  • By Do No Harm Staff
  • October 31, 2023
  • University of Nevada Las Vegas

For the past ten months, we have been reporting on the public medical schools that participated in the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Diversity, Inclusion, Culture, and Equity (DICE) Inventory, including the University of Nevada Las Vegas Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine. But UNLV has thwarted all our attempts to obtain a full copy of the school’s DICE Inventory responses. They’re clearly nervous about what it contains.

Here’s the background. In November 2022, the AAMC released a report showing that the vast majority of medical schools have embraced identity politics, despite their divisive and even discriminatory nature. The report was based on surveys of specific medical schools, which the AAMC didn’t list.

For the sake of transparency and accountability, Do No Harm submitted freedom of information requests to public medical schools nationwide, including the UNLV Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine (KSOM). We asked for a copy of its survey response, so that Nevada taxpayers and policymakers could learn the truth about this institution. Most other schools readily shared the Excel spreadsheets they sent to the AAMC, which provides a calculated final report with an overall score.

Yet, despite multiple requests to UNLV’s general counsel, the school refused to respond with anything other than a PDF document that does not include the scoring report. Such a refusal is a clear violation of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), but also goes against Nevada state law. This statute requires UNLV to provide the document in the format requested.

In a final attempt to obtain the Excel spreadsheet, we informed UNLV KSOM that failure to comply with the Nevada Public Records Act would result in Do No Harm seeking legal recourse. Within 24 hours, the school submitted the DICE Inventory in the Excel spreadsheet format.

But there’s one last catch: The functionality of the Excel document we received had been disabled, preventing the final scoring report from being generated:

Figure 1. Excerpt from the “Report” tab of the UNLV KSOM DICE Inventory Excel spreadsheet.

Why aren’t they proud of their DICE Inventory score?

Here’s what we can determine from UNLV’s self-reported “yes/no” survey responses and their comments:

  • It has used racially discriminatory admissions practices under the guise of “affirmative action.” This means it’s potentially lowering standards in the name of diversity, thereby threatening patient health.  It lists “CDI 10.4b” in the survey comments, presumably referring to the “holistic admissions policy” the question asks about.
  • It has a “dedicated office, staff, or resources” dedicated to DEI. This means there’s a permanent woke bureaucracy pushing ideology on faculty and students.  It reports, “The KSOM has a dedicated DEI office with an Associate Dean, Assistant Dean, Coordinator,” and administrative assistant, with its own programming budget.
  • Its administrators are active within local, regional, and national forums to promote equity, diversity, and inclusion. This means it’s wasting resources that would be better spent on real medical education. “The Associate Dean serves as a member of the AAMC Group on Diversity and Inclusion and the Nevada Minority Health Equity Coalition,” as noted in the comments.
  • It has adopted radical training and orientation programs that seek to indoctrinate rather than educate. KSOM indicated in multiple questions that is uses the “Common Read” program during first-year medical student orientation, which is the same orientation event we exposed at Mizzou Med.
Figure 2. Sample questions and responses from the KSOM at UNLV DICE Inventory.

While we cannot determine the percentage of divisive and discriminatory policies listed by the AAMC that the KSOM at UNLV has adopted, you can bet it is feeling pressure from activists and outside groups to go even further down the radical rabbit hole – doing even more damage to faculty, medical students, and ultimately, the millions of patients they’ll see.

Nevada taxpayers help fund the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV. They, and the policymakers who represent them, should ask why they’re giving so much money to an institution attempts to circumvent state and federal law, and one that’s putting divisive and discriminatory ideology at the heart of medical education.