‘Recreating Wakanda’: LSU’s Med School Directs Students to ‘Defund the Police’ Site, Calls for Racial Discrimination

When a prospective or current Louisiana State University (LSU) School of Medicine student visits their school’s website, they’re likely looking for information related to their studies. Resources that can help them become better healthcare professionals.

But instead, when students visit the School of Medicine Department of Physiology’s web page, they are immediately greeted with a massive banner including statements such as “BLACK LIVES matter,” “FEMINISM is for everyone,” and “IMMIGRANTS are welcome.”

And underneath that banner is a link to the department’s “Fight Against Racism” page, which contains links to a bevy of radical political resources. Many of the links appear to be dated from the summer of 2020 during the Black Lives Matter protests and riots.

For instance, one site, “Defund12.org,” provides visitors with the contact information of municipalities across the country and sample email text calling on them to defund their police departments.

“Email and mail government officials and council members to reallocate egregious police budgets towards education, social services, and dismantling racial injustice,” the site reads.

Another link directs to a podcast from The Intercept titled, “The Rebellion in Defense of Black Lives is Rooted in US History. So Too is Trump’s Authoritarian Rule.” The podcast is a critical take on the government’s attempts to crack down on the violent riots that swept the country following the killing of George Floyd.

“Police forces across the U.S. are functioning as violent militias equipped with military gear,” the description reads. “Operating like a violent counterinsurgency force, the government has used drones and is using other military and intelligence-grade surveillance systems on protesters.”

Why, one might ask, is a medical school of all places promoting this content? What does a debate about authoritarianism and use of force have to do with medical education? Why is the university’s priority to promote radical political activism instead of, you know, resources about medicine?

There are no good answers to these questions. LSU is, unfortunately, another example of an institution captured by identity politics that has abrogated its duty to honestly teach medicine in favor of DEI activism.

What’s more, the web page links to authors such as Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo, whose work each centers around implementing racially discriminatory policies and engendering racial paranoia among white and Asian individuals in the name of “anti-racism.”

Then there’s a link to an article published in Nature titled, “Recreating Wakanda by promoting Black excellence in ecology and evolution.”

The article is about what you’d expect; it invokes a comic book character to argue for racial discrimination in order to “elevate” black scholars.

Here are a few choice excerpts:

“In the Marvel comic series Black Panther, a universe is imagined in which the intellectual, cultural, social and scientific contributions of Black scholars are celebrated. In this fictional nation of Wakanda, the contributions of Black scholars are elevated, emphasizing that global scientific and technological advancements are realized in a world welcoming of Black excellence. To fully realize the beauty and power of Wakanda in our own universe, we must employ anti-racist policies and actions.”

“Most importantly, institutional policies must be married with individual interrogation of biases and privileges, placing accountability at the core of authentically practicing anti-racism pedagogy and doctrine.”

Since Do No Harm began, we’ve cataloged our fair share of medical schools endorsing woke identity politics.

But these examples are especially egregious. There is not even the pretense that they relate to medical education. Rather, LSU is content with its medical school becoming a vehicle for political activism.

If LSU wants to show its sincerity to medical education, it should remove this page and clarify its mission to impact medical knowledge to future practitioners.