Commentary

How the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Came to Embrace DEI

  • By Do No Harm Staff
  • December 23, 2024
  • Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai

The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has long been one of the foremost drivers of DEI in medical education. Its curriculum and administrative policies are saturated with references to DEI and “antiracism,” and it has openly embraced racially discriminatory practices.

Like many medical institutions, the Mount Sinai Health System began seriously committing to an aggressive, DEI-centered restructuring of its core priorities in the wake of George Floyd’s death.

Per a web page recounting the system’s progress toward its DEI goals, these efforts extend beyond recruiting and hiring at the health system to pedagogy at the Icahn School of Medicine. 

The school’s DEI web page notes that its “structures, policies, and practices are aimed at advancing diversity, equity and inclusion in the areas of training and education as well as recruitment, retention, and career development of students, trainees, faculty and staff.”

Moreover, prospective students are met with a litany of “racial justice” resources and links advertising the school’s infatuation with DEI.

For instance, the school operates a program called “Anti-Racist Transformation in Medical Education” that aims to “develop the capacity of medical schools to dismantle systemic racism and bias in their work and learning environments,” and “promote shared learning on how to dismantle racism within and across medical schools.”

These efforts extend not only to the Icahn School of Medicine, but to partner medical schools as well.

Another link goes to the Racism and Bias Initiative, which aims, among other things, to “integrate teaching of anti-racist practice longitudinally across the redesigned curriculum.”

It’s concerning that a medical institution would so completely reorient its mission in service of radical ideology. But how these ideas manifest in practice is all the more disturbing. 

Racial Discrimination

Do No Harm has repeatedly exposed how the Icahn School of Medicine’s commitment to racial justice is often a proxy for its own form of racial discrimination, excused in the name of DEI.

In June 2023, Do No Harm Senior Fellow Mark J. Perry filed a complaint with the New York City Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) regarding the Growth in Operations, Administrations, and Leadership Society (GOALS) program at the Icahn School of Medicine. The program was characterized as “an elite Black male Initiative at Mount Sinai Health System that advocates for career advancement opportunities and equitable resources for its members.” Perry later filed complaints over the program with the Department of Education and Department of Health and Human Services’ Offices for Civil Rights (OCR); these cases all remain under review. 

Moreover, the Washington Examiner reported on documents, obtained by Do No Harm, showing how the Icahn School of Medicine is evaluating instructors based on their contributions to DEI and is requiring job applicants to demonstrate their adherence to DEI ideology.

Additionally, as John Sailer of the National Association of Scholars reported, the Icahn School of Medicine advertised a job that limited applicants to “early stage investigators who are Black, Latinx, or from a disadvantaged background […].”

In March 2023, Do No Harm filed a complaint with the Department of Health and Human Services OCR against the Mount Sinai Health System for sponsoring Icahn’s Visiting Electives Program for Students Underserved in Medicine (VEPSUM). The program’s eligibility criteria stipulated that applicants must be “underrepresented in medicine, specifically Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino, Native American/Alaska Native, and Pacific Islander/Native Hawaiian.” The Icahn School of Medicine ended up removing the discriminatory eligibility criteria following our complaint. 

And in September 2023, Perry filed another complaint with the CCHR against the Mount Sinai Health System over a paid fellowship that discriminated on the basis of race. 

“Anti-Racist Pedagogy”

The Icahn School of Medicine also contributed to the Association of American Medical Colleges’ (AAMC) DEI efforts. 

While investigating the AAMC, Do No Harm discovered that the Icahn School of Medicine’s Center for Antiracism in Practice developed a program aimed at embedding “antiracism” within “all courses and clerkships” at the school.

In 2021, the school established the Center for Antiracism in Practice “to integrate anti-racism efforts” across the school’s departments; the center was later subsumed under the Institute for Equity and Justice in Health Sciences Education in 2023.

“Participants work one-on-one with CAP facilitators to implement and assess the effectiveness of anti-racist pedagogy, policies, and practices within their courses,” the program description reads. 

What does this antiracism look like in practice? Well, the school’s Office for Diversity and Inclusion advertised a book by anti-racism “scholar” Ibram X. Kendi, who openly calls for racial discrimination to achieve racial equity and remediate past injustices.

And given the school’s open embrace of racially discriminatory policies, it’s clear that to the Icahn School of Medicine, DEI and “antiracism” involves overt discriminatory practices.

Do No Harm is committed to eliminating DEI and its divisive concepts from medical education. 

As evidenced by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, these ideas not only degrade the quality of medical education but lead to overt racial discrimination that unjustly disadvantages individuals based on their race.

Do No Harm will remain vigilant and continue exposing racial discrimination in the medical field.