Saint Louis University School of Medicine Does a DEI Detox

In 2023, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) opened an investigation into Saint Louis University (SLU) School of Medicine over its discriminatory Scholarship Program for Visiting Medical Students Underrepresented in Medicine.

The program required applicants to “identify as a member of a group underrepresented in medicine” (URiM), citing the previous Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) definition of URiM to include “students who identify as African Americans and/or Black, Hispanic/Latino, Native American (American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians), Pacific Islander, and mainland Puerto Rican.”

In response to the investigation, SLU dropped the racial criteria from the program; in fact, the program’s web page now redirects to SLU’s “Resident Diversity” web page.

Now, however, it appears the medical school has gone a step further.

The school’s entire Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion web page, active as recently as September 2024, redirects to a new web page for its Office of Ignatian Mission in Medicine. 

SLU’s Office of the Ignatian Mission is dedicated to establishing initiatives to “reduce health inequities and improve the health and well-being” of the local community, as well as creating a “culturally competent healthcare workforce.”

Additionally, as recently as January of this year, SLU advertised an initiative called the “Summer Undergraduate Research Program Pilot for Students Underrepresented in Medicine.” The program’s eligibility criteria don’t explicitly mention race, although the program does aim to “improve the recruitment and retention of students who are underrepresented in medicine.”

The link, however, now also redirects to the school’s web page for its Office of Ignatian Mission in Medicine. 

Also redirected to the Ignatian Mission web page is the information page for the John Berry Meachum Scholarship, which was targeted at “disadvantaged” students.

However, many DEI resources still remain; as mentioned, the Resident Diversity web page is still active, and contains a link to the application form for the Department of Psychiatry Scholarship Program for Visiting Medical Students.

That form includes a section for the applicant to list their “Ethnicity/Race/Underrepresented Member Self-Description.”

Another page which is still up is the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’s (ODEI) Fall 2020 announcement discussing SLU’s various DEI plans.

“The ODEI has bold ideas for fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion at the School of Medicine, and among students, faculty, staff and the community,” the announcement reads. “Among the initiatives are intentional leadership decisions and staffing patterns, training and professional development, increased scholarships and opportunities for minority students and faculty, and events, forums, and lecture series that address relevant issues.”

Numerous medical schools have scrubbed their websites of certain divisive DEI content in recent months, deleting links to their DEI initiatives and altering offensive language.

But it’s important to maintain perspective.

Are these efforts genuine, good-faith shifts in institutional priorities? Or are they simply rebrands intended to remove conspicuous evidence of DEI activity while the medical school continues to engage in divisive or even discriminatory behavior?

We’d like to think it’s the former.