“We must wash our hands of DEI in medical schools.”
That’s what Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville said in a speech last month at the Alabama Hospital Association’s Healthcare Leadership Summit.
“DEI has plagued our federal government, academic institutions, and other aspects of our society for far too long, all while disregarding merit in the process,” he continued.
We couldn’t agree more.
It’s encouraging to see elected representatives highlight the issues on which Do No Harm has worked tirelessly, and it’s essential that we all reinforce this simple truth: DEI has no place in medicine.
In practice, “diversity, equity, and inclusion” invariably involves racial discrimination. Merit is subordinated to skin color and ideology.
Needless to say, that is incompatible with the core mission of medicine.
“We want Alabama students, our brightest young minds from every corner of the state, to have places at Alabama medical schools based on their hard work, talent and qualifications, not on divisive quotas or identity politics,” Senator Tuberville continued. “We want them to stay right here and practice in Alabama, building our communities, serving our rural areas, and strengthening our health infrastructure for generations to come.”
Do No Harm is fighting for these types of merit-based policies. Indeed, back in 2022, we submitted federal civil rights complaints against the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s medical school over three scholarships awarded to students on the basis of race; those scholarships are no longer active.
Recently, we sued the University of California, Los Angeles’s medical school for its race-conscious admissions policy.
And we exposed evidence of racial discrimination in the admissions processes of many other medical schools.
“Let’s reject this poisonous ideology in our education and health care systems once and for all,” Senator Tuberville concluded.
We applaud Senator Tuberville for spreading this message.
