Earlier this month, Stanford University offered a continuing medical education course in the form of a webinar titled “The Supreme Court’s 2023 Affirmative Action Ruling: What Does it Mean for Health Equity and Public Health?”
Speaking at the course was Dr. Michelle A. Williams, the former Dean of the Faculty at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Williams offered a full-throated defense of racially discriminatory policies and criticized the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (which found racially conscious admissions illegal), justifying her arguments in the name of diversity and equity.
Particularly revealing was the language used by Williams to characterize the impact of this decision, and the regime she instead wished remained in place.
“Our conclusion was that the focus on racial neutrality was flawed,” Williams said.
Additionally, Williams mourned the ostensible negative effects of the Supreme Court’s decision, arguing that the lack of an ability to racially discriminate will impair healthcare.
“Medically underserved areas are going to be even less well served as a result of the workforce shortages,” Williams said. “There will continue to be a reduced ability to provide culturally competent care, affecting the quality of healthcare across diverse communities.”
Williams then proceeded to make several seemingly incorrect claims.
“We also know from emerging literature and well done studies concordant care, meaning the aligning of care with social and cultural status, leads to better health outcomes for marginalized populations and that concordant care can increase patient experience, can improve screening, which will improve preventive measures…and we’ve seen that mortality rates for black newborns for example, dropping by half when black physicians care for the patients,” Williams said.
It’s not clear what study exactly Williams is referring to, but her claim does bear a striking similarity to a false claim by Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, which stated that “for high-risk black newborns, having a black physician more than doubles the likelihood that the baby will live.”
Justice Jackson’s claim is incorrect for a number of statistical reasons; but beyond that, the famous study often used to support racial concordance on the basis of improving black infant mortality is methodologically flawed.
Proponents of DEI and race-conscious admissions in medical schools have frequently cited the 2020 study, “Physician–patient racial concordance and disparities in birthing mortality for newborns,” to argue that medical schools should prioritize race in admissions in order to increase diversity among physicians and thereby improve care for minority patients. The 2020 study examined Florida infant mortality data and purported to show that the elevated infant mortality rate among black babies was partially reduced when black babies had black doctors rather than white doctors.
But a 2024 commentary published in the same journal, examined the same data and found that, when controlling for very low birth weights, the racial concordance effect becomes statistically insignificant in the most comprehensive statistical models that include hospital and physician fixed effects.
Moreover, Williams’ general point about the positive effects of racial concordance are similarly incorrect.
Do No Harm’s report on racial concordance highlighted the fact that four out of five systematic reviews found no evidence to support the claim that racial concordance improves health outcomes. Moreover, the fifth systematic review suffered from methodological flaws, such as the unexplained omission of studies that contradicted its conclusion.
Williams then went on to provide recommendations for how schools can continue to pursue these diversity and equity goals.
“Staying within…the framework of our laws, the strategic acts that would be necessarily [sic] to counteract the decline in our healthcare workforce that is represented in our population would require us to continue to look for ways to expand how we do our admissions processes to be holistic,” Williams said. “Holistic means looking at socioeconomic factors, as well as the life experiences, along with the academic metrics of applicants.”
Although it’s not clear what decision-making process Williams has in mind, as Do No Harm has shown holistic admissions is often a proxy for racially conscious admissions; it provides a veneer of plausible deniability for medical schools to continue to consider race in their admissions decisions while devaluing objective metrics like MCAT scores and GPAs.
Williams then suggested scholarships for “diverse” students as a way to continue addressing health equity.
“Financial support is going to be important, particularly providing scholarships for…students of diverse backgrounds, particularly of low socioeconomic strata,” Williams said.
It’s worth noting that restricting access to scholarships on the basis of race is illegal; Do No Harm has filed numerous complaints against medical schools that offer racially discriminatory scholarships.
In sum, this course amounts to a defense of racially discriminatory admissions policies and a eulogy for racial discrimination.
Needless to say, these ideas have no place in medical education, and are antithetical to the principles of merit and excellence that serve as the foundation of medical practice.
And in light of the Supreme Court’s decision, such ideas are illegal and should be confined to the dustbin of history.
Debunked Racial Concordance Study Continues to be Cited Credulously
Uncategorized United States DEI Medical Journal Commentary Ian Kingsbury, PhD, PhDA 2020 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) infamously claimed that black newborns were more likely to survive if treated by black doctors. While the study initially received effusive praise, it has since been debunked and exposed as an attempt to push an ideological narrative rather than an honest, scientific endeavor.
The damage caused by this study can’t be fully undone, but PNAS could at least partially rectify the mistake in publishing the study by retracting it or making it abundantly clear to all readers that the results are not credible. Instead, a critique of the study which definitively proves that the results are biased by a failure to statistically account for the disproportionate assignment of very low birth weight black newborns to highly specialized white doctors is buried. A reader would have to click the “view related content” button on the home screen to access the critique.
As a matter of habit, most people who read the study probably don’t bother to click on “related content.” Because the critique is hidden, the study and its original findings continue to be cited in academic literature. According to Google Scholar, that includes 47 citations in 2025 alone (of a total of 766), meaning that even after the study was formally debunked in September 2024, it continues to accrue about one additional citation every other day.
A review of the 10 citations most recently published in English-language, peer-reviewed journals indicates that these citations are not warnings about the politicization of medical research or the ideological capture of medical journals, but credulous citations in favor of racially concordant (i.e. segregated) medical care. Specifically, the following claims feature a citation of the debunked PNAS study:
PNAS did the medical community a disservice by publishing a study with obvious flaws. It continues that disservice by not retracting the study or issuing a clearer disclaimer about the results. Unless or until that day comes, readers should keep PNAS’s “editorial standards” in mind when reading it.
Virginia Could Move Closer to Protecting Children From Harmful Gender Interventions
Uncategorized Virginia DEI, Gender Ideology State government Commentary Do No Harm StaffLast week, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin took a step toward protecting children from the harms of sex change interventions.
Youngkin added an amendment to legislation requiring school administrators to notify parents about safe gun storage policies.
The amendment would further require school administrators to let parents know if their child requested a school employee to “participate” in either their “social transition” or their actual transition to a “stated gender” different from their biological sex.
In other words, the amendment would let parents know if their child is experiencing gender dysphoria and school employees are “affirming” their child’s gender incongruence.
It’s important to protect children experiencing gender dysphoria, as once children are on the transgender medicalization pathway, they are often shepherded by medical providers toward increasingly harmful interventions such as cross-sex hormones and surgical procedures.
Ultimately, as the most authoritative reviews of the evidence on this issue has shown, there is no strong evidence to support the effectiveness of child sex change interventions, and they carry known harms as well as further unknown risks.
The “affirmation” approach to pediatric gender medicine – which is enabled by school administrators dutifully “affirming” the gender incongruence of distressed children – is demonstrably ineffective and unsupported by the weight of the evidence. What’s more, children lack the capacity to meaningfully consent to such interventions.
In fact, Do No Harm Parent Advocate January Littlejohn has seen the harms of this process first-hand. School administrators aided the “transition” of January’s own daughter and encouraged her to use a new name and pronouns. Now, January is a fierce advocate for the rights of parents to protect their children against the harms of gender ideology.
Protecting children from this “affirmation” approach is an important first step to prevent further harmful medicalization.
Additionally, Youngkin proposed amendments to legislation that would force medical professionals to sit through so-called “unconscious bias” trainings.
The legislation would “require unconscious bias and cultural competency training as part of the continuing education requirements” for the renewal of licensure.”
Youngkin proposed a tweak to the bills, changing the requirements so that medical professionals would instead have to “complete two hours of continuing learning activities that address maternal health care for populations of women that data indicate experience significantly greater than average maternal mortality.”
Unconscious or “implicit” bias is a dubious concept; the tests used to evaluate or identify implicit bias fail to meet widely-accepted standards of reliability and validity and have been found to be “poor predictors” of real-world bias and discrimination.
Do No Harm believes that Virginia’s medical professionals don’t deserve to be subjected to mandatory training that accuses them of racism and pushes unsupported concepts.
A Revolt Against DEI in Social Work?
Uncategorized United States DEI Medical Journal Commentary Do No Harm StaffEarlier this month, the Journal of Teaching in Social Work unveiled a new issue focused on criticisms of the DEI ideology that has been so dominant in social work, healthcare and medicine.
The issue, titled “Beyond Ideological Mandates: Critical Reflections on Anti-Racist and Anti-Oppressive Social Work Education,” features over a dozen individual criticisms of DEI and the role of social work associations in imposing this ideology onto the profession.
As a field related to and frequently overlapping with medicine and healthcare, it’s essential for the health of Americans that social work is free from discriminatory and regressive practices and beliefs; Do No Harm previously reported on the National Association of Social Workers’ myriad commitments to antiracism and social activism, and codification of DEI into its ethics statements.
One article, titled, “Out of Balance: Moving Beyond Anti-Racist & Anti-Oppressive Education,” specifically takes issue with the Council on Social Work Education, the accrediting body for social work programs.
It’s worth noting that the article was published under a pseudonym.
“Debates over the nature of social work education are not new,” the abstract reads. “What is new, however, comes from the Council on Social Work Education’s (CSWE) injection of critical pedagogy into social work education through ‘anti-racist’ and ‘anti-oppressive’ competencies laid out in the 2022 Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS).”
The article argues that the actual practice of social work has been diminished and instead prospective entrants into the field are inundated with ideological programming.
“As a result, social work classrooms have become dedicated to fostering moral directives at the cost of practical skills,” the article continues. “Students’ hard-earned money is now thrown away as they sit through lessons of stereotyped, pessimistic ‘moral education’ rooted in ‘luxury beliefs,’ leaving them unprepared for the complexities of practice and failing thousands of clients across the United States in the process.”
Another article, titled “A Critique of Antiracist Ideology,” delivers a dressing-down of the DEI ideology, arguing that it will lead to deleterious outcomes for mental health.
“In this article, I argue that antiracist political activism modeled after the teachings of critical race theory (CRT) and critical social justice theory (CSJ) more generally, is an unethical form of pedagogy and clinical praxis that will likely damage members of society by producing incompetent mental health professionals,” the abstract states.
“Antiracist propaganda in education fails to address (1) the axiological humanistic priorities that center on the distinct phenomenology of individual lives, and (2) inappropriately focuses on race essentialism and colonial blame rather than on (3) universal egalitarian principles mental health disciplines should prioritize in education, training, and public service,” the article continues.
This issue is a tremendous development, representing a departure from the traditional DEI orthodoxy and an embrace of open criticism of the so-called “woke” ideology. The editorial board of the journal described their impetus for the issue being the response to the October 7th attacks on Israel by Hamas, and how DEI ideology was used to justify hateful ideas.
“The galvanizing spark for the call was the response to events following the October 7 massacre by Hamas,” the editors wrote. “This included a not-incidental number of social work students and faculty signing petitions and joining protests that devalued Jewish lives and valorized violence in the name of antiracist practice that deemed Jewish people as being on the wrong side of the ‘settler-colonialism’ or antiracist line.”
“We saw in this response a coalescing of what we have been observing for some time, that perhaps from impatience and frustration with the stickiness of entrenched social problems, our profession has gradually been letting go of the necessary burdens of the humbling search for professional and scientific knowledge,” they continued.
“Instead, we too often are settling for the comfort of moralistic and rigid truth-claims that, by their own logic, preempt the discomfort of critique,” they added. “In this way, the response to October 7 has been one moment in a larger trajectory of professional change—but a moment we found especially compelling, in the explicit anti-Semitism it perpetrated on too many of our communities and, in so doing, making overt the broader dangers of mandating a single, particular ideology, including the ways in which this compromises academic freedom and the development of critical thinking in our students and our own practice as scholars and teachers.”
It’s heartening to see such strong criticism of the DEI agenda published in such a prominent platform.
Just a few years ago, DEI across all disciplines went essentially unchallenged.
This is good news, and a positive sign that DEI will become just a passing, harmful memory.
East Tennessee State University Tries to Rebrand Divisive DEI
Uncategorized Tennessee DEI East Tennessee State University Medical School Commentary Do No Harm StaffEast Tennessee State University (ETSU), home of the Quillen College of Medicine (QCOM), appears to be attempting to rebrand its DEI activities in the wake of President Trump’s executive order and corresponding guidance from the Department of Education.
Earlier this month, ETSU sent out an email addressed from President Brian Noland recounting recent decisions the university had made regarding its DEI resources. The email comes on the heels of the Department of Education demanding institutions of higher education cease all racially discriminatory policies, programs, and practices; the Department correctly noted that many of these offensive policies are justified on the grounds of DEI.
“Recently, the U.S. Department of Education directed institutions across the country to review their programs and services to ensure equal access for all individuals, regardless of race or personal identity,” Noland said in the email. “ETSU is not an exclusionary institution. Nearly all of our programming and resources are open to anyone wishing to participate. However, we recognize that some terminology may have been construed as exclusive by members of our campus community.”
Despite the statement “ETSU is not an exclusionary institution,” the statement “nearly all of our programming and resources are open to anyone” implies that ETSU realizes its practices and policies have been somewhat less than unifying and welcoming.
ETSU has a long and storied history of promoting radical, divisive, and exclusionary ideologies and practices. Do No Harm has previously exposed ETSU and QCOM for their DEI activities in our 2023 report, “The DEI Bureaucracy in Tennessee’s Medical Schools.”
QCOM maintained a “Diversity Council” whose duties included collecting data and monitoring metrics to ensure that QCOM reached diversity goals, and the school practiced holistic admissions with the aim to increase diversity among the student body.
Additionally, the Quillen College of Medicine recommitted itself to pursuing diversity goals in a policy statement this January.
And most recently, as the Washington Examiner reported, ETSU hosted a lecture called “Health Care Reparations: Reversing the Impact of Race Corrections on Health Equity.”
Other racially themed events held at the September conference included a session on “Black Male Empowerment,” three talks on diversity, equity, and inclusion, a discussion on “racial equity in organizational leadership,” and a training on “facilitating cultural humility.” One event referred to mothers by using the gender-neutral term “lactating parents.”
Noland’s email then went on to list the actions ETSU was taking to achieve “full compliance” with federal directives.
“To ensure full compliance with recent federal directives, the Office of University Counsel is reviewing university communications, including web pages,” the email reads. “In the meantime, new landing pages have been created for the Multicultural Center, the Pride Center, and the Women and Gender Resource Center, with details of events offered by these centers available on the university calendar.”
Of these pages, the previous iteration of the Multicultural Center is easily the page most within the purview of the executive order.
That page includes numerous references to DEI and related resources and concepts; the new page for the Multicultural Center omits reference to DEI entirely.
According to an archived version of the previous Multicultural Center page, ETSU had advertised a “Diversity Scholarship,” had maintained a “Black Faculty and Staff Association,” and had multiple invocations of the benefits of diversity as well as commitments to infuse DEI into the school’s functions.
The email ended with a reaffirmation of the university’s values.
“While processes and language may evolve, our values remain unchanged,” the email reads. “We will continue to cultivate a campus where all individuals feel valued, supported, and empowered to succeed. We will uphold free expression, thoughtful discourse, and our unwavering commitment to respect and civility.”
Do No Harm hopes these actions are genuine good-faith efforts to end divisive and exclusionary practices, rather than attempts to remove troublesome language.
Discrimination exists regardless of what one elects to call it; the practice itself must end.
Do No Harm and FAIR File Lawsuit Over Arkansas Racial Quotas
Uncategorized Arkansas DEI State government Press Release Do No Harm StaffRICHMOND, VA; March 26, 2025 – This week, Do No Harm and the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism (FAIR) filed a federal lawsuit challenging an Arkansas law imposing racial quotas on gubernatorial appointments to state licensing boards.
For example, Arkansas’s law requires at least one member of the five-person Occupational Therapy Examining Committee to be a racial minority. None of the current members meet this requirement, and three seats are open.
Do No Harm and FAIR are filing the lawsuit on behalf of two Arkansas natives who meet the committee’s requirements but are excluded because they are not racial minorities. Pacific Legal Foundation represents Do No Harm and FAIR.
“By imposing racial quotas on gubernatorial appointments, Arkansas is illegally discriminating against qualified applicants to its licensing boards,” said Stanley Goldfarb, MD, Chairman of Do No Harm. “Medical boards like the Occupational Therapy Examining Committee should be made up of the most qualified candidates to ensure that expertise is prioritized at every level of the healthcare community. Arkansas should prioritize merit over radical identity politics.”
“Arkansas cannot disqualify individuals from public service because of their race,” said Jeff Jennings, an attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation. “Courts have repeatedly struck down race-based appointment mandates as unconstitutional, and Arkansas should be no different. Public service should be based on qualifications, not immutable characteristics.”
To see Pacific Legal Foundation’s case page for Do No Harm, Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism v. Governor Sanders, click here.
Do No Harm, established in April 2022, has rapidly gained recognition and made significant strides in its mission to safeguard healthcare from ideological threats. With 16,000 members, including doctors, nurses, physicians, and concerned citizens across all 50 states and 14 countries, DNH has achieved over 10,000 media hits in top-tier publications and garnered widespread attention through numerous broadcast news appearances.
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Hosts Political Activists, Advocates of Critical Race Theory
Uncategorized Pennsylvania, United States DEI University of Pittsburgh Medical School Commentary Do No Harm StaffDuring its 47th Annual Refresher Course in Family Medicine, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center hosted a March 6 session, titled “Racial Health Disparities” and presented by Stephanie Miller, MD and Kristina Johnson, MD.
The session was replete with political advocacy and references to DEI, critical race theory, and implicit bias.
For instance, Johnson spent a significant portion of the discussion going on a diatribe against the public health policies of the Trump administration.
“There is an ongoing attempt at erasure of trans people. There are outright attacks on gender affirming care,” Johnson said. “Immigration and Customs Enforcement has ended its policy of staying out of healthcare facilities, and the Department of Education may be cutting financial support for students with disabilities. As physicians, we must speak up. Use your voice.”
Without delving too deeply into the political nature of these attacks, it’s worth noting that the Trump administration’s actions regarding so-called “gender-affirming care” have only been to restrict federal funding of such interventions for children.
Moreover, in addition to citing founder of critical race theory Richard Delgado, Miller called for healthcare professionals to engage in active anti-racism, using an example of a moving walkway at an airport.
Anti-racism in practice often holds that racial discrimination is praiseworthy and necessary. It seeks to overcome different outcomes among racial and gender groups by actively discriminating in favor of some people and against others. Its most famous advocate, Ibram X. Kendi, made his embrace of racial discrimination explicit: “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
At another point in the discussion, Miller talked about how to practice this ideological form of medicine in practice.
“You can provide gender-affirming care by confirming that you’re using your patients’ or your colleagues’ correct names and pronouns,” Miller said. “You can use ancestry rather than race to describe the risk of disease.”
Additionally, at various points in the discussion, both Miller and Johnson dismissed the idea that health disparities between racial groups could be explained by physical/genetic differences.
Johnson summarizes her point succinctly here:
“We have talked about how the social construct of race was used by white people to gain and hold onto power, and how that resulted in health disparities between races; and the false conclusion that those disparities are based in genetics rather than racism. We’ve also explained that racism is anything that increases the disparity between racial groups, whether that’s intentional or not; and we use this narrow focus because the historical path and present-day disparities are so glaringly obvious.”
This is misleading. For instance, as our own Director of Research Ian Kingsbury has shown using the example of preeclampsia, in which about 55 percent of risk is estimated to be genetic, “West African ancestry is linked to risk variants in a gene called alipoprotein L1 (APOL1) that dramatically increase the likelihood of developing preeclampsia or kidney disease.” Genetic differences obviously play a role in numerous other conditions.
In other words, genetic differences between different groups of people obviously lead to differences in particular health outcomes, and it is dangerous to dismiss this fact.
Harvard Professor Mourns Death of Racially Discriminatory Admissions in CME Course
Uncategorized California DEI Stanford University Medical School Commentary Do No Harm StaffEarlier this month, Stanford University offered a continuing medical education course in the form of a webinar titled “The Supreme Court’s 2023 Affirmative Action Ruling: What Does it Mean for Health Equity and Public Health?”
Speaking at the course was Dr. Michelle A. Williams, the former Dean of the Faculty at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Williams offered a full-throated defense of racially discriminatory policies and criticized the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (which found racially conscious admissions illegal), justifying her arguments in the name of diversity and equity.
Particularly revealing was the language used by Williams to characterize the impact of this decision, and the regime she instead wished remained in place.
“Our conclusion was that the focus on racial neutrality was flawed,” Williams said.
Additionally, Williams mourned the ostensible negative effects of the Supreme Court’s decision, arguing that the lack of an ability to racially discriminate will impair healthcare.
“Medically underserved areas are going to be even less well served as a result of the workforce shortages,” Williams said. “There will continue to be a reduced ability to provide culturally competent care, affecting the quality of healthcare across diverse communities.”
Williams then proceeded to make several seemingly incorrect claims.
“We also know from emerging literature and well done studies concordant care, meaning the aligning of care with social and cultural status, leads to better health outcomes for marginalized populations and that concordant care can increase patient experience, can improve screening, which will improve preventive measures…and we’ve seen that mortality rates for black newborns for example, dropping by half when black physicians care for the patients,” Williams said.
It’s not clear what study exactly Williams is referring to, but her claim does bear a striking similarity to a false claim by Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, which stated that “for high-risk black newborns, having a black physician more than doubles the likelihood that the baby will live.”
Justice Jackson’s claim is incorrect for a number of statistical reasons; but beyond that, the famous study often used to support racial concordance on the basis of improving black infant mortality is methodologically flawed.
Proponents of DEI and race-conscious admissions in medical schools have frequently cited the 2020 study, “Physician–patient racial concordance and disparities in birthing mortality for newborns,” to argue that medical schools should prioritize race in admissions in order to increase diversity among physicians and thereby improve care for minority patients. The 2020 study examined Florida infant mortality data and purported to show that the elevated infant mortality rate among black babies was partially reduced when black babies had black doctors rather than white doctors.
But a 2024 commentary published in the same journal, examined the same data and found that, when controlling for very low birth weights, the racial concordance effect becomes statistically insignificant in the most comprehensive statistical models that include hospital and physician fixed effects.
Moreover, Williams’ general point about the positive effects of racial concordance are similarly incorrect.
Do No Harm’s report on racial concordance highlighted the fact that four out of five systematic reviews found no evidence to support the claim that racial concordance improves health outcomes. Moreover, the fifth systematic review suffered from methodological flaws, such as the unexplained omission of studies that contradicted its conclusion.
Williams then went on to provide recommendations for how schools can continue to pursue these diversity and equity goals.
“Staying within…the framework of our laws, the strategic acts that would be necessarily [sic] to counteract the decline in our healthcare workforce that is represented in our population would require us to continue to look for ways to expand how we do our admissions processes to be holistic,” Williams said. “Holistic means looking at socioeconomic factors, as well as the life experiences, along with the academic metrics of applicants.”
Although it’s not clear what decision-making process Williams has in mind, as Do No Harm has shown holistic admissions is often a proxy for racially conscious admissions; it provides a veneer of plausible deniability for medical schools to continue to consider race in their admissions decisions while devaluing objective metrics like MCAT scores and GPAs.
Williams then suggested scholarships for “diverse” students as a way to continue addressing health equity.
“Financial support is going to be important, particularly providing scholarships for…students of diverse backgrounds, particularly of low socioeconomic strata,” Williams said.
It’s worth noting that restricting access to scholarships on the basis of race is illegal; Do No Harm has filed numerous complaints against medical schools that offer racially discriminatory scholarships.
In sum, this course amounts to a defense of racially discriminatory admissions policies and a eulogy for racial discrimination.
Needless to say, these ideas have no place in medical education, and are antithetical to the principles of merit and excellence that serve as the foundation of medical practice.
And in light of the Supreme Court’s decision, such ideas are illegal and should be confined to the dustbin of history.
Oregon Lawmakers Set the Record Straight on Child Sex Changes
Uncategorized Oregon Gender Ideology State government Commentary Do No Harm StaffThis week, Republican lawmakers in Oregon sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi correcting false claims made in a lawsuit against the Trump administration.
The letter comes in response to claims made in a lawsuit by several Democrat-run states over a recent executive order curtailing federal funding to providers of child sex changes; Oregon is one of the states suing the Trump administration over the order.
In their complaint, the states make the claim “that transgender minors do not receive gender-affirming genital surgery.”
As Do No Harm Visiting Fellow Paul Terdal demonstrated in National Review earlier this month, this is blatantly false:
Moreover, according to insurance claims data obtained by Do No Harm, there were 26 genital surgeries performed on minors between 2019 and 2023. Additionally, 330 minors received “top” surgeries such as breast reductions or double mastectomies.
The letter from the Oregon lawmakers further requests a federal investigation into Oregon’s use of Medicaid funds; the lawmakers accuse the Oregon Health Authority of “concealing the extent of taxpayer-funded procedures on minors and suppressing internal findings that show no evidence of benefit.”
This is in reference to a review of the “evidence” supporting child sex change procedures by the Oregon Health Authority’s Health Evidence Review Commission, which found a “paucity of data” and no systematic reviews to show the benefits of these interventions. However, the report was never published; instead, the commissioners endorsed guidelines from the radical activist group WPATH, or World Professional Association for Transgender Health.
“This is state-sponsored medical experimentation on kids, paid for with your tax dollars,” said Representative Ed Diehl, one of the lawmakers behind the letter. “The DOJ needs to act—this isn’t health care, it’s political ideology.”
Do No Harm applauds this effort to correct the record. As we’ve seen over the past few years, advocates of so-called “gender-affirming care” are not above making false or misleading claims to support their agenda.
Geisinger College Makes Clear Its Commitment to Radical Activism
Uncategorized Pennsylvania DEI Geisinger College of Health Sciences Private university Commentary Do No Harm StaffEarlier this week, Do No Harm filed a civil rights complaint against Geisinger College of Health Sciences (GCOHS) in Pennsylvania over its discriminatory DEI programs.
GCOHS, by its own admission, prioritizes “the recruitment and inclusion of … traditionally underrepresented minorities in medicine and biomedical sciences, specifically African American/Blacks, Latinos/Hispanics and Native Americans as members of [its] faculty, staff, and student body.”
The Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine also used a $3.4 million federal grant to establish a “Center of Excellence for Diversity and Inclusion.” The Center’s primary goal has been described as building “a leakless pipeline to expand the pool of underrepresented-in-medicine (URM) candidates” for medical school admission and faculty positions.
The offending programs mentioned in our complaint mirror GCOHS’s institutional posture regarding DEI and political activism.
Do No Harm obtained a presentation for GCOHS administrators that highlighted “challenges” facing the school today.
These challenges include “ICE activity” and changes to “DEI initiatives” and “gender-affirming care.”
First, it’s not clear what federal immigration policies or the Trump administration’s ICE activity have to do with the mission of a medical school. The notion that these issues would be an area of concern indicates that GCOHS’s priorities extend into the political realm.
Second, the school’s listing of DEI initiatives reflects just how much these programs matter to GCOHS.
It’s also worth noting that “gender-affirming care” is grouped under the DEI category.
These DEI priorities are also reflected in Geisinger’s Strategic Plan for 2023-2028; the plan includes a commitment to “continue to diversify college faculty, staff and learners to better serve our communities.”
Geisinger also aims for its “academic components [to be] aligned with system goals, adding value to the system mission and enhancing effectiveness of assets in areas of shared concern such as DEI, well-being, professionalism, and leadership development.”
It’s clear that GCOHS has a deep institutional commitment to DEI.
We hope that it takes our complaint to heart, abandons its DEI endeavors, and instead focuses on the true mission of medical schools: teaching the practice of medicine.
University of Texas Medical Branch ‘Study’ Hints That the School Remains Fixated on Race
Uncategorized United States DEI Medical School Commentary Ian Kingsbury, PhD, PhDDEI activists insist that racial/ethnic group differences in academic readiness for medical school or performance in medical school must be evidence of racist systems. In response to this imagined racism, they demand reform that obfuscates differentiation in performance. So, for example, “holistic admissions” tone down the once-prominent role of MCAT scores and GPA in determining medical school admission in favor of fuzzy personal attributes, like the candidate’s commitment to the school’s mission.
Because “underrepresented” (i.e. black or Hispanic) applicants tend to have significantly lower GPAs and MCAT scores than white and Asian applicants, this enables medical schools to continue advancing their diversity goals with plausible deniability that they are engaging in racial discrimination.
The latest absurdity comes from University of Texas Medical Branch researchers publishing in the journal Advances in Medical Education and Practice. The study supposedly “aims to compare traditional admissions interviews with Multiple Mini Interviews [i.e. 7 to 9 short interviews instead of one long one] to assess their reliability in evaluating applicants across racial and socioeconomic backgrounds.” The data for this study comes from the University of Texas Medical Branch John Sealy School of Medicine (JSSOM), which changed its interview format to mini interviews in 2022 after the “admissions committee observed inconsistencies in interview scoring, topics discussed during interviews, and interviewer comments using an unstructured interview format.”
The “study” involves two separate analyses. In the first part, the researchers observe the correlation between interview scores and Casper scores according to interview type. “The Altus Assessments Casper test is an online situational judgment test designed to evaluate an applicant’s noncognitive skills, including ethical judgment, communication, and professionalism.” The correlation between interview score and Casper score improves from essentially non-existent to small when the school adopts multiple mini interviews.
At face value, this would seem to speak well to the multiple mini interviews format. In reality, however, there is no test that can accurately assess “an applicant’s noncognitive skills, including ethical judgment, communication, and professionalism.” Were that so, all employers would be administering these tests to prospective employees. Instead, these types of skills are appraised as a matter of human judgement. In the case of medical school, it’s likely that they are best evaluated through long interviews that test a candidate’s endurance and limit their ability to offer scripted answers. In other words, the multiple mini interview format is a solution in search of a problem.
In the second part of the analysis, the researchers assess whether using the multiple mini interview format reduces ethnic and economic group differences in interview score. They observed that multiple mini interviews “reduced differences compared with traditional interviews for African American candidates and slightly increased differences for URM, Hispanic, and disadvantaged candidates.” Of course, group differences in interview scores are no more evidence of discrimination than differences in MCAT scores, but the researchers don’t entertain that reality and favor an orthodoxy that differences must be evidence of discrimination.
In a particularly revealing display of their motives, the researchers show group differences in MCAT scores and GPAs but provide the information in a convoluted way that makes it impossible for the reader to discern which groups perform higher.
Again, generally speaking, applicants from groups “underrepresented in medicine” (i.e. Hispanic and black) have significantly lower GPAs and MCAT scores than white and Asian applicants and face lower admissions standards. Acknowledgement of this fact is made all but impossible by their rationalization that multiple mini interviews allow “for a more granular and specific evaluation of candidate abilities, improving the precision of scoring by reducing subjectivity and enhancing reliability in assessing key competencies.” A test like the MCAT is the gold standard when it comes to “objectivity.” Were that indeed their primary concern, they would conclude that, on average, candidate quality does in fact vary by ethnic group.
Ultimately, it’s unclear whether multiple mini interviews facilitate skirting the Supreme Court’s ruling against affirmative action. What is clear, however, is that tinkering with the admissions process at JSSOM is occurring in service of racial consciousness. As the researchers themselves acknowledge, “Finding a way to assess the interpersonal and intrapersonal characteristics of applicants accurately is critical given the recent Supreme Court decisions in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. (SFFA) v. University of North Carolina and SFFA v. President & Fellows of Harvard College.”
JSSOM, like all schools, should be focused on attracting the beat and brightest candidates. This study should invite healthy skepticism regarding the school’s commitment to that principle.
The NEJM Pushes Discriminatory Ideology in ‘Structural Racism’ Survey
Uncategorized United States DEI Medical Journal Commentary Do No Harm StaffThe New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM)is distributing a 14-question survey to healthcare organizations regarding their opinions and experiences pertaining to “structural racism.”
The survey includes questions inquiring as to the prevalence of structural racism in a provider’s organization, how structural racism impacts “care delivery,” tactics utilized in addressing structural racism, the deployment of DEI-related metrics, the presence of a safe space to discuss DEI-related concepts, and much more.
The NEJM makes clear its preferences: that healthcare organizations should treat racial groups differently in order to promote “diversity.”
For example, NEJM gives several options for organizations to “address” structural racism when asking how organizations currently go about doing so. Several of the options provided in this multiple choice question relate to intertwining personnel decisions with racial criteria, including “prioritizes hiring and promoting diverse leadership” and “collects data on racial composition of C-suite and board of directors.”
This type of racial-quota-focused hiring is regressive and obviously detrimental to a healthcare organization’s mission to actually, you know, provide healthcare, so it’s disappointing to see this behavior encouraged by such a “respectable” publication.
The survey further asks respondents to assess their organization’s commitment to address structural racism, thereby giving the NEJM a metric to determine how committed to “the cause” the referenced organizations truly are.
Additionally, some of the questions and prompts appear to be an ideological screening test; for example, after asking several questions about the relationship between structural racism and care, NEJM poses the question “What are the top 2 factors contributing to whether people with access to health care become unhealthier?”
Among the options provided as answers are unsafe environments, stress, low health literacy, low prioritization of health, lack of trust in the medical system, and other.
The NEJM has a long history of this behavior; in May 2023, Do No Harm organized a petition condemning NEJM’s publication of an article calling for explicit racial discrimination in medical education. The petition garnered the support of more than 1,000 health care professionals across a wide range of subfields.
A different article published by NEJM called for doctors to practice “anti-racist documentation” while another characterized “racism” as the chief culprit behind most health disparities.
And after one doctor submitted a commentary piece to NEJM in response to an article by the American Medical Association’s Chief Health Equity Officer, the Journal rejected the response.
What purpose will NEJM’s latest survey serve? That remains to be seen. But based on the presence of multiple questions at the end of the survey asking participants for their permission to use their responses for their “Insights Report,” one can make a reasonable guess.
VCU Health’s DEI Problem
Uncategorized Virginia DEI Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine Medical School Commentary Do No Harm StaffThe Virginia Commonwealth University – and its affiliated medical institutions VCU Health and VCU School of Medicine – are no strangers to DEI. VCU Health advertises its DEI programs on its website, while the medical school touts its commitment to DEI.
Yet it’s clear DEI has pervaded these institutions even deeper.
In fact, according to documents obtained by Do No Harm, almost 400 VCU Medical Center job descriptions contain references to “diversity.”
This includes references to diversity in the position’s desired qualifications and duties.
For instance, the job description for the Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of Health System Transformation requires candidates to have a “demonstrated ability to leverage diversity in functional skills, experience levels and backgrounds for innovation.”
The Chief Medical Officer role states that candidates should have a “Diversity Equity and Inclusion certification.”
A human resources position states that candidates are responsible for recruiting “historically underrepresented” populations.
VCU’s institutional commitment to DEI is further evidenced in a grand rounds session that has since gone viral.
Fox News reported that during the grand rounds session, Dr. Haywood Brown, associate vice president of Academic Affairs at the University of South Florida (USF), made a number of incendiary comments about how medical school faculty and administrators could skirt Florida’s anti-DEI laws.
Following Fox News’ report, Brown resigned from his position at USF.
But attendees, including VCU professor David Chelmow, applauded Brown, with Chelmow calling his speech “wonderful.”
But that’s not all; Do No Harm also obtained documents from the VCU Massey Cancer Center revealing VCU’s DEI education programs.
The documents include lesson plans and descriptions of “Advanced Research Mentoring Programs” operated by the VCU School of Medicine as a form of education that “provide evidence-based practices and techniques for research faculty to grow and hone their mentoring.”
The lesson plan for the initial ARM session is essentially entirely focused on DEI.
Activity titles include “Reflecting on Diversity,” “Reflect on Unconscious Assumptions,” “Implications of Diversity Research,” and “Case Studies,” with the latter discussing examples of, you guessed it, “Equity and Inclusion.”
According to the program description of an ARM session, the sessions are designed to help faculty “recognize the potential impact of conscious and unconscious assumptions, preconceptions, biases, and prejudices on the mentor-mentee relationship and reflect on how to manage them.”
Do No Harm also obtained the slide deck for one of the ARM sessions that includes, among other references to DEI, the infamous cartoon depicting “equity,” featured below.
“Equity is about giving everyone what they individually need to be able to participate/see what is happening/do research (ex. Having a lab bench at the height someone would need if they used a wheelchair),” the slide deck notes state.
Additionally, the slides note that the session involves an eight minute-long exploration of DEI research; another ARM document includes a list of studies ostensibly demonstrating examples of prejudice against racial minorities.
Do No Harm has previously documented VCU’s commitment to DEI and racially discriminatory ideology.
For instance, 2024 admissions guidelines obtained by Do No Harm from the VCU School of Medicine revealed that the school continues to reward “diversity” in the admissions process.
Additionally, VCU School of Medicine hosted a lecture featuring several flat-out misleading claims such as: “Underrepresented Minority Physicians Are More Likely to Serve the Underserved,” “Minority Patients Are More Likely to Follow the Recommendations of Minority Physicians,” “Diversity on Research Teams Enhances Impact of Research,” and “A Diverse Physician Workforce Will Reduce Racial Healthcare Disparities.”
Do No Harm Files Civil Rights Complaints Against Duke University Health System and Geisinger College of Health Sciences
Uncategorized North Carolina, Pennsylvania DEI Duke University, Geisinger College of Health Sciences Health system, Medical School Press Release Executive Do No Harm StaffRICHMOND, VA; March 19, 2025 – Today, Do No Harm submitted two complaints to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) against Duke University Health System (DUHS) and Geisinger College of Health Sciences (GCOHS).
The complaints identify several instances in which DUHS and GCOHS engaged in unlawful race-based discrimination in their programs and policies.
For instance, DUHS’s diversity plan explicitly calls for adapting admissions processes to increase acceptance of underrepresented minority applicants, even pairing prospective minority candidates with current minority students to “create community and a sense of belonging” during the admissions process through a “holistic review.” Internal DUHS documents tout deliberate admissions decisions to boost enrollment of certain racial groups.
GCOHS, by its own admission, prioritizes “the recruitment and inclusion of … traditionally underrepresented minorities in medicine and biomedical sciences, specifically African American/Blacks, Latinos/Hispanics and Native Americans as members of [its] faculty, staff, and student body.” GCOHS also used a $3.4 million federal grant to establish a “Center of Excellence for Diversity and Inclusion.” The Center’s primary goal has been described as building “a leakless pipeline to expand the pool of underrepresented-in-medicine (URM) candidates” for medical school admission and faculty positions.
“Medical schools like Duke and Geisinger continue to flout the idea of colorblind recruitment, merit-based admissions, and equal opportunity enrichment programs, despite a clear directive from the highest court in the land. Their actions are just another example of how DEI ideology has infiltrated every facet of American medicine,” said Dr. Kurt Miceli, Medical Director of Do No Harm. “Schools and health systems cannot be allowed to continue these obviously discriminatory practices, especially when they have the vital job of producing our future doctors. Relying on intrinsic characteristics – and not merit – undermines the very principle of equal opportunity and ultimately puts patients at risk. It is both illegal and immoral. Duke and Geisinger must be held accountable.”
Read the complaint against Duke University Health System (DUHS) here and the complaint against Geisinger College of Health Sciences (GCOHS) here.
Do No Harm, established in April 2022, has rapidly gained recognition and made significant strides in its mission to safeguard healthcare from ideological threats. With 16,000 members, including doctors, nurses, physicians, and concerned citizens across all 50 states and 14 countries, DNH has achieved over 10,000 media hits in top-tier publications and garnered widespread attention through numerous broadcast news appearances.
Use of Race in Pulmonary Function Tests Isn’t Racist
Uncategorized United States DEI Commentary Ian Kingsbury, PhD, Kurt Miceli, MD, PhDEditor’s note: This blog post was initially submitted as a Comment to JAMA Network Open in response to the article, “Race-Specific and Race-Neutral Equations for Lung Function and Asthma Diagnosis in Black Children.” JAMA rejected our submission.
In their article “Race-Specific and Race-Neutral Equations for Lung Function and Asthma Diagnosis in Black Children,” Chang, et al. (2025) tacitly dismiss the possibility that variation in lung capacity by race could have a biological explanation. They’re mistaken. Harik-Khan, Muller and Wise (2004) observed that “socioeconomic, nutritional, and environmental variables” only explain 7–10% of the difference between black and white children vis-à-vis lung volume. Even when factoring in anthropometric factors the researchers could only explain half of the difference in lung volume. Stocks, Sonnappa and Lum (2014) also concluded that “African genes are associated with lower lung volumes.”
Furthermore, asthma is diagnosed based on clinical history and evidence of variability in expiratory airflow obstruction. Static measurement of forced expiratory volume exhaled in 1 second (FEV1), whether using a race-neutral or race-specific equation, is grossly inadequate to detect asthma, as shown by the poor sensitivity and specificity of the test for either black or white children.
Taking the Cincinnati Childhood Allergy and Air Pollution Study (CCAAPS) data presented in Chang, et al.’s article, the sensitivity and specificity using the race-specific equation for percent predicted FEV1 in black children were 18.2% and 81.3%, respectively. Using the race-neutral formula, sensitivity improved to 72.7%, but at the expense of specificity falling to 42.9%. In other words, the new, race-neutral equation missed fewer black children with asthma, but at the cost of misdiagnosing more black children with asthma who don’t actually have the disease.
For white children in this dataset, the percent predicted FEV1 using the race-specific equation was similarly poor at 31.8%. Specificity was 85.1%. Using the race-neutral formula, sensitivity fell to 24.2%, while specificity remained relatively unchanged at 86.4%. Effectively, use of the race-neutral equation made a lousy result even worse for white children. The same pattern is seen in the Mechanisms of Progression from Atopic Dermatitis to Asthma (MPAACH) data, which the article also references.
The author’s conclusion of “structural racism” is unfortunately misplaced and divisive. As Witonsky, et al. (2022) noted, “spirometry could benefit from reference equations that incorporate genetic ancestry.” Moreover, predicted FEV1 is inadequate to detect asthma in both black and white children no matter the formula used. Rather than hunt for alleged “outdated racist practices” research should focus on truly improving the clinical diagnosis of asthma for all people.
Do No Harm Files Lawsuit Against Penn Medicine for Discriminatory Directory
Uncategorized United States DEI University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine Medical School Press Release Do No Harm StaffRICHMOND, VA; March 18, 2025 – Today, Do No Harm filed a lawsuit against Penn Medicine, the Consortium of DEI Health Educators, and WURD Radio for their discriminatory physician directory that excludes doctors based on race.
Penn Medicine, the Consortium of DEI Health Educators, and WURD Radio operate the Black Doctors Directory, an advertising and marketing opportunity provided exclusively to black doctors in southeastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. Non-black doctors are excluded from the Directory regardless of how regularly they treat black patients or how much they have worked to improve black patients’ health.
The Directory is founded on the false premise that racial concordance, in which patients are treated by physicians of the same race, improves health outcomes. This ideology sows distrust between doctors and patients. Do No Harm has debunked this false belief in its report, Racial Concordance in Medicine: The Return of Segregation.
The Directory violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as well as Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which bans racial discrimination in federally funded health programs.
Do No Harm is filing the lawsuit on behalf of one of its members who is excluded from the Directory based on race, even though they regularly treat black patients in southeastern Pennsylvania.
“The Black Doctors Directory is yet another example of Penn Medicine and other institutions prioritizing identity politics over care,” said Stanley Goldfarb, MD, Chairman of Do No Harm. “It is both wrong and a gross misuse of taxpayer money to exclude doctors from the Directory’s advertising advantages just because they are not black. Furthermore, the Directory’s foundational claim that racial concordance produces better health outcomes has been thoroughly debunked. If Penn Medicine and others wants to improve health outcomes for patients, then it would advertise and recommend the highest quality doctors, regardless of their race.”
Click here to read the lawsuit.
Do No Harm, established in April 2022, has rapidly gained recognition and made significant strides in its mission to safeguard healthcare from ideological threats. With 16,000 members, including doctors, nurses, physicians, and concerned citizens across all 50 states and 14 countries, DNH has achieved over 10,000 media hits in top-tier publications and garnered widespread attention through numerous broadcast news appearances.
New Do No Harm Report Reveals How Accreditors Inject DEI Into Medicine
Uncategorized United States DEI accrediting organization, Medical School Press Release Do No Harm StaffRICHMOND, VA; March 18, 2025 – Today, Do No Harm published a report titled, “Unethical Expectations: How Accreditors Inject Identity Politics into Medical and Healthcare Education.” The report highlights 10 accreditors for medical and healthcare education that impose DEI requirements and/or reference the value of “diversity” in their accreditation standards.
These standards range from explicitly requiring DEI offices to indirectly encouraging diversity-related outcomes.
The 10 offending accreditors include:
For instance, the American Osteopathic Association’s Commission on Osteopathic College Accreditation (COCA) standards, which set requirements for osteopathic medical education programs that grant Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (DO) degrees, explicitly require dedicated DEI programs and offices for colleges of osteopathic medicine (COMs) to be accredited.
“Our new report shines a much-needed light on the all-powerful actors in healthcare education,” said Dr. Kurt Miceli, Medical Director at Do No Harm. “Wielding unchecked control, accreditors have long had the ability to force member institutions to comply with their standards. Over the past decade, their shift toward political and social activism has furthered the imposition of DEI requirements on these graduate medical and healthcare education programs. Applicants, students, and patients are now paying the price. If these governing bodies want to earn back the public’s trust, they must depoliticize their standards and focus on prioritizing expertise and high-quality care in the institutions they accredit.”
To read the full report, click here.
Do No Harm, established in April 2022, has rapidly gained recognition and made significant strides in its mission to safeguard healthcare from ideological threats. With 16,000 members, including doctors, nurses, physicians, and concerned citizens across all 50 states and 14 countries, DNH has achieved over 10,000 media hits in top-tier publications and garnered widespread attention through numerous broadcast news appearances.
Do No Harm Launches First-of-Its-Kind Newsletter Highlighting State of Gender Medicine
Uncategorized United States Gender Ideology Medical association Press Release Do No Harm StaffRICHMOND, VA; March 17, 2025 – This month, Do No Harm launched our newsletter, “Youth Gender Medicine Today,” a new resource highlighting the current state of play in the field of pediatric gender medicine.
The Spring 2025 edition of the newsletter, sent to Do No Harm members, providers of gender-related medical services, and other stakeholders in the medical community, identifies trends in medicine and society at large demonstrating how the country is turning away from the “gender affirmation” approach to pediatric gender medicine.
Now, more than ever, it’s important to highlight the current trends that demonstrate the tide is turning against the child transgender industry. This newsletter provides a comprehensive analysis of the current state of pediatric gender medicine from the perspective of medical experts and advocates working to protect our country’s children.
“Times are changing. The more the evidence behind so-called ‘gender-affirming care’ is scrutinized, the more the child transgender industry is discredited,” said Stanley Goldfarb, MD, Chairman of Do No Harm. “Do No Harm is doing our part to ensure that our members within the medical community understand this fact.”
You can read the full newsletter here.
To join Do No Harm and support our efforts to restore trust and scientific rigor in medicine, sign up here.
Do No Harm, established in April 2022, has rapidly gained recognition and made significant strides in its mission to safeguard healthcare from ideological threats. With 16,000 members, including doctors, nurses, physicians, and concerned citizens across all 50 states and 14 countries, DNH has achieved over 10,000 media hits in top-tier publications and garnered widespread attention through numerous broadcast news appearances.
Johns Hopkins Plays Dumb in Defense of DEI
Uncategorized Maryland DEI Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Medical School Commentary Do No Harm StaffLast month, Dr. Lisa Cooper, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity, appeared on an episode of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health podcast to defend the DEI movement and its underlying ideology.
The episode, titled “The Concepts Behind The Language of Equity,” is framed as a response to – and a means of explaining – the “backlash” to DEI over the past few years.
In it, Cooper attempts to spin DEI as simply a misunderstood and well-intentioned effort to help everyone; the language of “race” and “racism” are downplayed and in their place are references to nebulous concepts like “needs” and “backgrounds.”
“I think one thing that people oftentimes get confused about is that they think we are aiming for equality; which is a good thing, you know, to be fair and give everyone the same thing but, in order to achieve health equity, which is on the other side of the coin from health disparities, you have to give people what they need,” Cooper said. “And not everyone starts from the same place, or has the same needs.”
When placed in the context of race, this is just an indirect way of describing racial discrimination. If one is “giving” individuals different things based on their “needs,” and those needs are determined by race, then one is discriminating.
Cooper then tries to redefine “diversity” without its racial connotation.
“There’s this whole phrase that’s been created – DEI terminology – that I guess is supposed to mean something that’s negative,” Cooper said. “But in reality, diversity basically just means having people from different backgrounds, and different ways of thinking, and different life experiences, and making sure we appreciate that, which I think is a basic American value.”
This is not what diversity means “in reality” – the term in practice refers to racially discriminatory practices and policies. Diversity scholarships reward certain racial groups over others; diversity in the student body entails discriminatory admissions policies.
In fact, Johns Hopkins’ own DEI initiatives discriminate against certain racial groups.
Do No Harm has shined a spotlight on Johns Hopkins before, running an advertising campaign exposing its discriminatory behavior after Dr. Sherita Hill Golden, the former chief diversity officer for Johns Hopkins Medicine, sent out a memo labeling white males and Christians as possessing innate “privilege.” Golden resigned shortly after.
In January, we filed a civil rights complaint against Johns Hopkins after the university restricted access to certain programs to medical students from racial groups deemed to be “underrepresented” in medicine.
Cooper goes on to argue that the consequences of DEI are that “no one is left behind or disadvantaged.”
But DEI, by its very nature, disadvantages certain racial groups while favoring others.
At the end of the day, this spin doesn’t change the underlying reality that DEI in practice amounts to racial discrimination.