OHSU’s Radical DEI Regime: Indoctrinating Future Health Care Professionals

Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) has surrendered its academic mission to a radical DEI regime that appears to care more about promoting ideology and policing language than it does patient care.

For health sciences students at OHSU, the indoctrination begins early and continues throughout their education. The 2024-2025 Course Guide shows the curricula at OHSU to be saturated with DEI classes:

• Dentistry students can take Community Dentistry 705 Social Determinants of Health, Social Justice and Equity, which “challenge[s] the dental students to reflect on any incorrect assumptions that poor oral health is primarily an individual consequence due to self-neglect”—likely placing the blame on social conditions with little regard for personal accountability.
• The School of Medicine offers Clinical Psychology 615 Cultural Considerations & Diversity, centering “equity in the practice of psychology with individuals from diverse backgrounds.”
• The School of Medicine pushes Food Systems & Society 511 Food in Culture, “discuss[ing] the role of cultural meanings and practices in food systems through the lenses of cultural studies and social equity” and “investigat[ing] frameworks, issues and representations of race-ethnicity, class and gender.”
• The School of Medicine also offers Neuroscience 644 Racial Equity in Scientific Research & Beyond, training students to see “systemic racism” everywhere and become “active agents of change.”
• Public Health offers Health Behavior 522 Health & Social Inequalities, teaching the “‘embodiment’ of social forces” and examining actions, including “legislative and political” to “eliminate health inequities.”
• Physician assistants have the opportunity to take Physician Assistant Studies 518A Principles of Professional Practice I, drilling “bias in medicine” and “cultural humility.”
• Undergraduate Medical Education courses like Family Medicine 705NA Introduction to Native Health compel students to “consider and discuss how colonialism, bias, and historical trauma have shaped health systems and experiences for Native patients.”
• Another Undergraduate Medical Education course, General Internal Medicine 709B Health Equity Elective, sends students to work with specific ethnic community partners to witness “structural inequality.”
• Nursing devotes an entire series—Nursing 546A through 546C Clarifying Racism—to “institutional racism,” “bias,” and “unequal treatment,” forcing students to master “inclusive communication practices with regard to racism and diversity issues in health care.”

These are just a few of the courses taught at OHSU. Some are more blatantly ideological than others, but there are too many to discount any one of them as being fringe, and several take a significant departure from clinical practice placing the student squarely in the world of activism.

For example, the nursing series listed above elicits a serious question: Why are no fewer than three 500-level classes needed to clarify racism? 

Nursing is a complex profession that requires understanding a wide range of conditions from which people suffer. At the same time, nurses must be able to gain their patients’ confidence and trust. The ability to synthesize knowledge in a high-paced environment while maintaining therapeutic relationships with patients is paramount to nursing. 

However, when a school responsible for the foundational education of these young professionals spends a great deal of time indoctrinating them with continued assertions of “institutional racism,” then how much trust will they place in their preceptors, supervisors, and the profession itself? 

Nursing is just one example of many, unfortunately. The sampling of courses here demonstrates a focus of the OHSU curriculum on seeing future patients as victims of oppression rather than individuals seeking objective care. 

Equally concerning is OHSU’s still-active Inclusive Language Guide, a “say this, not that” type of speech code that runs roughshod over biologically accurate terms. After instructing readers with a deeply confused assertion that discourse is “dominated by the majority point of view” and, in America, “people who are white, heterosexual and cisgender” are at the center of this discourse, the guide informs and cautions on various fronts:

• Students and teachers are instructed to say “pregnant people or person”—not “pregnant women or woman,” because that would be exclusionary.
• “Biological male/female” is “derogatory”; say “assigned male/female at birth.”
• “Obese” and “fat” are stigmatizing—use “higher weight” or “larger body” unless the patient “reclaims” the term “fat.”
• “Minority” is forbidden because it allegedly “centers people… usually white people.”

The logic is absurd: in addition to creating a false construct that demonizes white people and puts students of different backgrounds unnecessarily at odds with one another, students are taught that saying “pregnant woman,” for example, supposedly “suppresses diversity,” while terms like “noncompliant” must be replaced by “did not complete treatment” just to avoid any perceived offense. 

Precision in health care saves lives; OHSU demands its students to twist language to appease ideology. Patients deserve care based on science and merit, not guilt and grievance.

Do No Harm stands firmly against the ideological capture of academic medicine and health care education. OHSU would far better serve its students—and their future patients—by truly focusing on the health sciences, not activist indoctrination.