Two Major Universities Deny Requests for Communications About the Hamas Attack on Israel

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The University of Tennessee (UT) and the University of Utah (UU) are refusing to release email communications between key school leaders regarding the recent conflict between Israel and Gaza. Both schools have a history of hosting and even kowtowing to demands from an extremist student group that directly aligns itself against Israel.

Do No Harm submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to a number of schools following incidents of anti-Semitic hate and perpetuation of radical ideologies by White Coats for Black Lives (WC4BLUMN). Spawned by Black Lives Matter, WC4BL has a presence in several schools of medicine across the country. Following the attack on Israel on October 7, the national organization for WC4BL released a statement falsely claiming that Israel was committing “genocide” and showing clear support for “Palestine’s struggle for liberation.”  

Figure 1. Do No Harm post on X regarding White Coats for Black Lives (October 20, 2023).

We asked for email communications from specific administrative personnel, such as university presidents, chancellors, provosts, medical education deans, student affairs personnel, and leaders in DEI departments. Keywords we submitted in our FOIA request are:

  • Hamas
  • Gaza
  • Israel
  • Palestine
  • Palestinian
  • Middle East
  • Ukraine
  • Jew
  • Jewish
  • Arab
  • Islam
  • Muslim
  • Antisemitism
  • Islamophobia

Tennessee and Utah’s responses to our FOIA requests for communications about the situation suggest that there’s something in the emails that UT and UU don’t want the public to see.

Citing state law (Tenn. Code Ann. § 10-7-503) from the Tennessee Public Records Act) in its denial, the University of Tennessee says that our FOIA request is “overly broad and not sufficiently detailed,” adding that it would require the school to “sort through files and search through voluminous records” to fulfill the request. The response concludes by stating that Do No Harm’s request “constitutes an improper attempt to use the Public Records Act as if it were a discovery request made pursuant to litigation.”

A follow-up request is pending. But in the meantime, it’s notable that the University of Tennessee System has engaged in WC4BL events in the past, and the UT Health Science Center has a webpage dedicated to the group.

Figure 2. WC4BL demonstration at the University of Tennessee (Fall 2020).

A similar reply was received from the University of Utah, which justifies the withholding of public records by referring to its Government Records Access and Management Act (GRAMA, section 63G). Specifically, the school responded by saying:

Your request does not identify the records sought with reasonable specificity, as required by GRAMA.  Id. § 63G-2-204(1)(a)(ii).  In addition, the University may consider whether it is able to fulfill certain requests without unreasonably interfering with its duties and responsibilities. Id. § 63G-2-201(9). The University cannot respond to your request without more specific information concerning the particular records you seek. Therefore, we are unable to respond your request as initially presented.

We have contacted UU’s general counsel for further explanation and are awaiting an answer. However, the school also has a history of WC4BL support.

The Campus Connect platform at the University of Utah confirms that WC4BL is a sponsored student organization at the school. During the summer of 2020, the University of Utah Medicine chapter of White Coats for Black Lives “peacefully presented a list of demands” to the dean and vice dean of the school. The demands included cutting ties with local police and creation of a plan to “matriculate a first-year class in 2021 with overrepresentation of Black, Latinx, Native American and Pacific Islander/Native Hawaiian students.” The Anti-Racism Commission (archived page here) was subsequently formed by a group of students from WC4BL, producing a full report. And, in late 2021, medical students and personnel joined UU’s deans and faculty for a demonstration coordinated by WC4BL.

Figure 3. WC4BL demonstration at the University of Utah (December 28, 2021).

Current events on American college campuses illustrate how “toxic DEI ideology” leads to radical assertions by student groups like White Coats for Black Lives with an agenda to push. Campus leaders undoubtedly have something to say about it. Why are the University of Tennessee and the University of Utah hiding what their chancellors, deans, and DEI leaders are discussing?

White Coats for Black Lives breaks their silence to demand apologies for terrorist sympathizers

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On October 7th, Hamas butchered more than 1,200 men, women, and children in southern Israel. Within days, the medical student association “White Coats for Black Lives” (WC4BL) accused Israel of committing “genocide.” The Minnesota chapter clarified that Palestinians should “free themselves from their oppressors by any means necessary.”

Neither the national organization nor Minnesota chapter faced any professional sanction. Ostensibly emboldened by the lack of consequences for espousing blood libel and calls to genocide, the national organization released a new statement on November 8th complaining that some medical professionals who voiced similarly despicable ideas did in fact suffer consequences.

An increasing number of American medical institutions have moved beyond their complicity with the U.S.-funded genocide of Palestinians, either through their silence or Zionist statements, to personally target Palestinian and Palestinian-American healthcare providers advocating for the freedom of their own people, and their allies. This is a violation of the human right to resist the mass murder and dispossession of one’s own people, and allies’ rights to stand in solidarity. In addition, medical institutions’ participation in Zionist doxing further fuels Islamophobia and endorses anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab discrimination. For the reasons described above, we demand:

  1. All American medical institutions immediately reinstate all healthcare providers who have been fired or placed on leave for demanding a ceasefire, the end of the siege on occupied Gaza, and the end of Israeli occupation, or have affirmed Palestinians’ right to resist in the face of 75 years of relentless oppression.
  2. Involved institutions issue public apologies to impacted healthcare providers.
  3. All disciplinary actions are removed from the records of impacted providers.
  4. Offending institutions offer any needed letters explaining disruptions in training or work which explicitly state that the disruption was the result of the inappropriate actions of the institution.
  5. Institutions retract all statements denouncing healthcare providers in solidarity with Palestine and any associated punishments.
  6. Institutions immediately end efforts to intimidate pro-Palestine medical workers into silence (e.g. through disciplinary or professionalism meetings, threatening emails, encouraging a culture of reporting those in solidarity with Palestine, etc.).

The letter goes on to name four individuals that WC4BL believes worthy of reinstatement and deserving of public apology from their employers. Just who are these martyrs?

Tania Singh claims to have been fired from a nursing job for—as she frames it in a gofundme page—taking a stance “that’s way too unacceptable for a settler colonial nation.” She offers more detail in an interview with The Masses, the self-described “official press organ of the Revolutionary Maoist Coalition.”

Singh: I wrote something like “it will be a cold day in hell when the colonizers get to lecture the colonized on how to resist”…I was terminated on the following Friday for antisemitism, support of terrorism, and harassment.

Interviewer: It’s telling that as soon as support for Hamas comes up that’s a red line.

Singh: Exactly! And if it wasn’t Hamas it would be someone else.

Singh was given a platform to share her story and used the opportunity to lean into the microphone and repeat her support for terrorism. WC4BL apparently nonetheless believes that Singh is owed an apology and not owing of one.

Dana Diab was an emergency room physician at Lenox Hill Hospital who shared a video of the massacre that occurred at a musical festival near the Gaza border with a caption that read “Zionists colonists get a taste of their own medicine.” She was fired, but she would still be practicing medicine if WC4BL had their druthers.

Zaki Massoud took to Instagram after the October 7th massacre to appeal to “stop walking on eggshells, afraid of what people will think. Let them call it terrorism. Extremism. Barbarianism. We call it liberation. Decolonization. Resistance. Revolution.” NYU Langone Winthrop Hospital thankfully disagrees with WC4BL and called the statement grounds for termination.

Abeer AbouYabis, a physician at Emory Winthrop Cancer Center, was investigated and ultimately fired for several pro-Hamas statements, including “They got walls we got gliders glory to all resistance fighters.” What precisely her employer needed to investigate is unclear, but none of it matters as far as WC4BL is concerned.

As Sally Satel chronicles in a recent Commentary piece, WC4BL has been signal boosted by the Association of American Medical Colleges and recognized as a resource for “antiracism” efforts. While WC4BL might be a good resource for defending terror apologia issued through the press organ of the Revolutionary Maoist Coalition, medical institutions interested in fighting rather than elevating bigotry should seek guidance elsewhere.

Sorry, Vituity: Discrimination and Segregation Are Wrong.

Vituity, a healthcare staffing company, has an odd solution for improving patient health: Blatant racial discrimination. The proof is its new sponsorship of a racist scholarship for the Society of Hospital Medicine.

The scholarship is dedicated to advancing “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” with a special focus on “eliminating health disparities for hospitalized patients.” Naturally, it’s only available to applicants who are “underrepresented in medicine.” That’s a nod to minorities, and it’s a clear-cut case of racial discrimination.

Figure 1. Society of Hospital Medicine scholarship page.

Not only is discrimination wrong, but the operating assumption behind this scholarship is false. Activists claim that recruiting more minorities into the medical profession will help reduce health disparities between white patients and minority patients. Why? Because having more minorities in the medical profession will allow physicians and patients to be matched by race. This is called “racial concordance,” and it’s one of the top goals of woke activists.

Yet as Do No Harm has shown, “racial concordance” has no benefits. Studies show that it doesn’t improve health outcomes or decrease disparities. In fact, it’s more likely to harm patients by encouraging lower standards for medical professionals. It also lays the groundwork for the return of racial segregation. No one would tolerate white patients asking to be paired with white doctors. Why should woke activists get away with trying to match black patients with black doctors?

Vituity and the Society of Hospital Medicine should be ashamed. They’re supporting discrimination and paving the way to medical resegregation. This scholarship needs to end – and so does the woke misinformation that led to its creation in the first place.

Discrimination Comes To Thoracic Surgery

The Thoracic Surgery Foundation is the latest medical organization to engage in racial discrimination. A source pointed us toward several concerning scholarships for 2024. Like so many other institutions in medicine, the Foundation is downplaying merit in favor of skin color, which ultimately puts patient health at risk.

The scholarships in question are the “Underrepresented Robotic General Thoracic Surgeon Development Award” and the “The Levi Watkins Innovation and Leadership Development Scholarship.” Both are only available to applicants who are “underrepresented” in medicine. That’s code for racial and ethnic minorities whose representation in the medical profession is less than their share of the national population. It’s also blatant discrimination.

Figure 1. Eligibility criteria for the Levi Watkins Innovation and Leadership Development Scholarship.

Several other scholarships are cause for concern. The “Nina Starr Braunwald Research Fellowship Award” is only available to female applicants, which is another form of discrimination. And the “AstraZeneca Reversing Health Disparities in Lung Cancer Research Award” is reviewed by the DEI committee, indicating the race-focused nature of the scholarship.

Figure 2. Eligibility criteria for the Nina Starr Braunwald Research Fellowship.

What possible justification is there for racial discrimination? Activists claim that recruiting more minorities into the medical profession will improve health outcomes, since it will help more patients connect with physicians of the same race. Yet as Do No Harm has shown, such “racial concordance” is not supported by evidence. It’s more likely to harm patients by encouraging lower standards for admission to medical school. It also lays the groundwork for the return of racial segregation.

The Thoracic Surgery Foundation shouldn’t be discriminating by race or gender. It’s immoral, insulting, and it will ultimately injure patients. Now when will the foundation put equality, merit, and excellent medical care first?

Does your professional organization offer scholarships or fellowship awards that contain discriminatory eligibility criteria? Please let us know via our secure online portal.

Dr. Stanley Goldfarb Recognizes Wisconsin State Assembly Speaker Vos for Stance Against DEI in Medical Education

The University of Wisconsin System recently announced it will use $32 million from state budget funds to expand healthcare training in the state. However, Wisconsin State Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has stated that no money will be released until the UW System eliminates all DEI initiatives.

Read the letter Do No Harm chairman Dr. Stanley Goldfarb sent to Speaker Vos, asking him to give special consideration to removing DEI in the medical education programs at UW. “This issue goes well beyond the quality of the education they provide,” Dr. Goldfarb said. “Ultimately, it affects the health and well-being of everyone who will one day be treated by the physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals they teach.”

Letter to WI Assembly Speaker Vos from S. Goldfarb MDDownload

Rep. Murphy’s Fight For Fairness and Free Speech In Congress

Should medical schools force students or faculty to believe in “diversity, equity, and inclusion”? For that matter, should any institution of higher education? The obvious answer is a resounding “no,” yet federal law isn’t so clear. So kudos to Rep. Greg Murphy from North Carolina for fighting to enshrine fairness and free speech in the laws of the land.

Rep. Murphy, who’s a licensed doctor, recently introduced an amendment to the appropriations bill for Labor and Health and Human Services. The short amendment reads:

“None of the funds made available by this Act may be provided to a public institution of higher education that conditions admissions to any student applicant, or the hiring, reappointment, or promotion of any faculty member, on the applicant or faculty member pledging allegiance to or making a statement of personal support for or opposition to any political ideology or movement, including a pledge or statement regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion, or related topics.”

This amendment is needed because medical schools and other institutions of higher education are doing exactly that. To choose just one example: The Indiana University School of Medicine requires all faculty seeking promotion or tenure to submit a so-called “DEI Statement.” These statements show the faculty member’s commitment to this divisive and discriminatory ideology. It’s a blatant political litmus test, gutting free speech and corrupting medical education in service to a political belief system.

Many if not most medical schools (along with colleges and universities) now require similar DEI statements from faculty, staff, and/or students. If an institution of higher education is going to engage in this infringement on free speech, they shouldn’t receive taxpayer money. Rep. Murphy should be praised for championing this commonsense policy.

Myths and Facts About Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)

There are many misunderstandings about aspects of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and how it affects issues like civil rights, school accreditation, and the maintenance of DEI departments in higher education.

Read about five myths related to DEI and the facts that you need to be well informed about what DEI is, and what it isn’t.

Myths and Facts About DEI_Nov 2023Download

University of Kansas School of Medicine Requires Students Complete ‘Social Determinants to Health’ Assignment to Meet DEI Objectives

The University of Kansas Medical Center School of Medicine (KUSOM) is requiring students to meet “diversity objectives and competencies” through assignments that demand a focus on “social determinants to health,” including patient claims of having experienced “systemic racism,” say Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) documents obtained by Do No Harm.

Even following the Supreme Court’s ruling in June that found race-based admissions practices to be unconstitutional, the Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI) at KUSOM is touting its dedication “to recruiting, retaining and promoting diversity and health equity among its students and faculty.”

Figure 1. Statement from the KUSOM’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion.

“Health equity” is a narrative of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) ideology, which, based in Critical Race Theory (CRT), claims “systemic racism” and “oppression” prevent minority individuals from obtaining health care. According to the radical dogma, achieving “health equity” is dependent upon a “diversity” of races and ethnicities in the healthcare workforce.

Through its focus on DEI practices, KUSOM claims it “will become a national leader in inclusive excellence and health equity by purposefully mirroring the communities that we aspire to partner with and serve.”

As part of a Family Medicine Clerkship, for example, KU medical students are required to interview a patient facing a “social determinant to health,” a politicized label that places “mental health issues” and “physical disability” in the same category as “experiencing bias based on race, religion, gender, etc.”

The patient interview, the objectives say, can be conducted on “someone who has experienced stigma, negative stereotypes, discrimination, or violence based on religion, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, body size, physical or systemic powerlessness, medical or mental health problems.”

The assignment and samples of patient “stories” appear to serve the goal of creating an emotional impact on the medical students.

For example, the interview task requires medical students to turn in a “first-person voice” description of the patient they have interviewed – so that students must write the description as if they are the patient; a personal reflection of how the interview might “influence your future feelings, thoughts, or practice;” and a “power point slide with a meaningful visual image,” such as a “work of art, a symbol, a sports team, a building, or any image that enriches the story and enhances its memorability or emotional impact.”

Another diversity objective and competency requires the provision of “a forum for critical thinking about moral, cultural, legal, financial, and social issues in clinical medicine.”

The documents also indicate competencies required for graduation include:

a. Students will be able to incorporate social determinants of health to promote patient education and enablement of wellness regardless of patient or population based needs

b. Students will appreciate the influence of social determinants of health in various populations

A KUMC document titled “Curriculum Diversity Thread Objectives” states Year 1 medical students must meet a goal of “build[ing] a shared language around structures that promote inequity, their effects on health, and frameworks for exploring health outcomes.”

Figure 2. From “Curriculum Diversity Thread Objectives” at KUMC.

Students must be able to “define race, ethnicity, and culture, and their implications on health and health care;” to “explain why race is a social construct and the implication for racialized medicine and health outcomes;” and “define Health Disparity/Inequality.”

The “diversity objectives” also require students to define “structural vulnerability, intersectionality, structural violence and structural racism.”

Year 1 students must also be able to “identify the processes through which inequality is naturalized,” and examine “culture/stereotypes, individual implicit bias,” and “institutional bias.”

The influence of CRT on medical education continues at KUMC as Year 2 students are required to “understand and use” a “structural competency framework as a tool to unveil the influences of structures that promote inequity on patient health and healthcare practice.”

In Years 3 and 4, medical students at KUMC are required to identify and “imagine” structural “interventions,” i.e., be able to use the “tools” that allow doctors to “take action to address health and illness as the downstream effects of broad social, political, and economic structures.”

KUMC makes clear a primary focus of its CRT-inspired medical training is a thorough understanding of “inequity,” “structural racism,” and “social determinants to health.”

“Diversity is good, but it should never come at the expense of quality,” Do No Harm Chairman Stanley Goldfarb, M.D. warned, however, at National Review in October.

He explained while many minority individuals are highly qualified for admission to medical schools, still “a great many aren’t,” and “yet the powers that be are lowering standards to let them in.”

The Supreme Court has ruled that race-based admissions policies and practices are unconstitutional. Despite the fact that “poor academic performance in medical school is a predictor of poor performance in post-graduate clinical training,” Goldfarb nevertheless observed that “medical schools are still looking for ways to prioritize race and gender over academics.”

Do No Harm Challenges Tennessee’s Racial Quotas for State Boards and Commissions

Nashville, TN; November 8, 2023:  Today, Do No Harm, a prominent national nonprofit committed to safeguarding healthcare from radical and divisive ideology, filed a federal lawsuit against the unlawful racial quotas imposed on the governor of Tennessee when making appointments to state boards and commissions.  

The Tennessee Board of Podiatric Medical Examiners requires one board member to be a racial minority, which has nothing to do with podiatry. A seat reserved for a racial minority opened in June 2023, and despite no shortage of qualified podiatrists in Tennessee, the governor has not made any appointments to the board. 

“State medical boards are given important responsibilities to oversee the quality of care in their state and the safety of patients. It is crucial that they be the most qualified physicians available. Like all aspects of healthcare, patient safety and patient concerns should be primary, not the skin color or the racial makeup of any oversight committee,” Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, board chair of Do No Harm. 

“Tennessee law forces governor after governor to engage in racial discrimination when making appointments to state boards and commissions,” said Laura D’Agostino, an attorney with Pacific Legal Foundation who are bringing the suit pro-bono. “Using race to make appointments to government boards is not only demeaning and unconstitutional, but it undermines the distinctive spirit of the Volunteer State by precluding opportunities for Tennesseans to serve their local communities.” 

Tennessee is far from the only state that uses immutable characteristics to limit opportunities for individuals to serve their state and local communities. A report released by PLF, Public Service Denied, found that 25 states codify such unconstitutional discrimination.

The case is Do No Harm v. William Lee and was filed in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee. Find additional information here.

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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 more than 5,000 members, including doctors, nurses, physicians, and concerned citizens across all 50 states and in 14 countries, DNH has achieved more than 4,900 media hits in top-tier publications and garnered widespread attention through numerous broadcast news appearances.

Clinical Advisor is Misadvising

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Clinical Advisor claims to be a medical news and opinion site designed for nurse practitioners and physician assistants. Discerning whether that news is real or fake will require some effort from readers.

A recent article offered up an intriguing headline: “Cultural competency training changes behavior among emergency department nurses.” The headline references a poster presentation at the recent DNPs of Color Annual Meeting. The poster shares results from an intervention in which the researcher measured “cultural awareness” at baseline, then once again immediately after watching a one-hour movie called “Ending Racism is Everyone’s Responsibility,” and then a third time four to six weeks after that. The researcher observed that “cultural awareness” scores increased through the three observation periods.

According to the researcher, “the data revealed a behavioral trend and clinical significance.” That characterization is inaccurate for several reasons.

First, experiments must include intervention and control groups to parse out treatment effects from other factors that could shape the outcomes of the intervention group, such as placebo effects (i.e., benefits that arise from the participant’s belief that the intervention is effective) or Hawthorne effects (i.e., participants altering their behavior because it is being observed by researchers). It is entirely possible that the survey responses of the participants changed because they were mindful of being observed or that they hoped for the intervention to succeed.  

Second, attitudinal surveys are not indicative of “behavioral trends.” Surveys and tests are often poor predictors of human behavior, including issues related to race. The popularly utilized Implicit Association Test, which is used to measure “implicit bias,” does not demonstrate any ability to predict racist behavior. Most likely, the survey trends observed in this “study” do not equate to behavioral changes, and indeed it strains credibility and common sense that watching a one-hour video would alter patterns of human behavior.

Third, the claim the results were “clinically significant” is a matter of personal judgement, and one that is contradicted by the objective measure of statistical significance. In fact, the reported statistical significance—a measure that determines the likelihood that the results were determined by some effect rather than random chance—doesn’t even come close to reaching conventional thresholds of significance.

The study and its characterization in Clinical Advisor are emblematic of a healthcare establishment that continues to embrace the pseudoscientific claim that racism permeates American medicine, and the equally dubious idea that it can be expunged through interventions with no history of success. Evidence for these ideas is wanting, even if Clinical Advisor pretends otherwise.

Meet Raheem Williams, Do No Harm Senior Fellow

In 2018, Raheem Williams couldn’t have known that his professional and educational backgrounds in economics and social policy — combined with a personal history of digging for medical answers ­— would lead him to be an advocate for the safety of children.

But today, Williams is just that: A researcher who demands data-driven information about all things, especially when it involves children and irreversible medical procedures.

A practiced researcher and policy analyst by trade, Williams began noticing something while digging through medical jargon and empirical research on Google Scholar: Medical news reports were ablaze with mentions of youth “gender affirming care,” “life-saving care,” and “gender ideology.” Williams’ propensity for research told him to dig deeper past the buzzwords. He didn’t like the narrative that he saw.

“For roughly four years, I was a silent observer, just reading and watching the narrative unfold. But I noticed that the language used by medical professionals and the media was trying to equate transgender youth to gay rights—but fundamentally, it’s not. Challenging the notion of putting kids through medical procedures that are lifelong and completely elective isn’t about gay rights. It’s about one question: Can kids consent?” Williams said.

“When you see bad things happening and no one speaks up, it gets worse. I was—and am—fundamentally bothered by the lack of conversation around this issue and the way the media purposefully uses language that misleads people, like ‘life-saving care.’ Most Americans don’t understand that this is a dog whistle for radical policies. I felt compelled by the basic issue of human decency to speak up.”

Raheem Williams, Do No Harm senior fellow.

Williams’ background in policy and his expertise in research has allowed him to speak on the issue of transgender youth in a way that few can command. Williams finds it particularly disturbing that what medical practitioners and scientists are saying to each other behind closed doors is miles apart from what they’re telling the public. His paper, The Trans Youth Phenomenon: Critiques and Hard Questions, forces readers to confront the medical evidence that points out that there is no biological basis for transgender ideology, and what little evidence that does exist raises new ethical dilemmas, particularly among children and the use of puberty suppressors.

But that research is ignored by the media, activist clinicians, and advocates so-called “gender affirming care” who instead promote weak research to justify their worldview.

“There’s a universality in public policy where Americans tend to be indifferent to problems that they don’t see as their own. With lawmakers, we need to zoom out,” Williams said.

“It’s a fundamental question: What exactly is a minor? Why do we have legal protections for minors? That’s what we need to think about right now. I live in a country where you must be 21 to buy cigarettes but I’m being told that even a 12-year-old can understand the ramifications of a sex change.”

That question is one Williams is determined to have every adult answer as he advocates for the victims — kids and their parents alike.

“As a society, we must get back to protecting the innocence of children. Where we, as adults, understand the extreme difficulty of making serious decisions and do not put that burden on kids,” Williams said.

He is quick to empathize with parents who truly believe they are protecting their children by advocating for them — parents who have been told over and over by medical professionals that their child needs to transition, lest they kill themselves. According to Williams, these parents are victims too — victims who deserve honest practitioners.

Williams believes the more our society lifts the voices of these victims, the more the public will understand this issue — and combat it. His experience testifying in the states has shown him that people on both sides of the political aisle, across every religion, creed, and skin color are opening their eyes to the gravity of this issue, and the lasting ramifications it has on our children. New groups of people are coming together and discovering they have one thing in common: Common sense — and the desire to protect kids.

Washington State University Hides Its Comments to the AAMC in the DICE Inventory

Washington State University’s Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine doesn’t want to reveal just how much it has aligned with the AAMC’s politicized policies for medical schools, as it has shown in its Diversity, Inclusion, Culture, and Equity (DICE) Inventory document it sent to Do No Harm.

Here’s the background. In November 2022, the Association of American Medical Colleges released a report showing that the vast majority of medical schools have embraced identity politics, despite their divisive and even discriminatory nature. The report was based on surveys of specific medical schools, which the AAMC didn’t name.

For the sake of transparency and accountability, Do No Harm submitted freedom of information requests to public medical schools nationwide, including Washington State University College of Medicine (WSUCOM). We asked for a copy of its DICE Inventory survey response, so that Washington taxpayers and policymakers could learn the truth about this institution.

However, WSUCOM was unwilling to provide a complete version of the Excel spreadsheet that participating schools sent to AAMC. In April, the school sent an Excel document titled “22-436 Installment No Redactions.xlsx.” But upon review, the spreadsheet has had all the comments columns removed. For example, here is how the Government, Leadership, & Mission tab should appear (there is a column on the right titled “Supporting Evidence – Free Responses” that is available for the school to enter comments):

Figure 1. Except from the AAMC’s DICE Inventory Excel spreadsheet.

This is how the same tab (and all the tabs) of the Excel spreadsheet sent by WSUCOM appears (note how the column for “Supporting Evidence – Free Responses” is missing):

Figure 2. Excerpt from the WSUCOM DICE Inventory Excel spreadsheet.

Upon questioning the Public Records Office at WSU, we were told, “The Office of Public Records did not delete or redact anything from the record. We also verified with the department that provided the record that they did not delete anything from the record prior to submission to the Office of Public Records.” Yet, the comments have mysteriously disappeared from the spreadsheet, which is something we haven’t seen in other cases.

Minus the comments – which were submitted in all other DICE Inventory Excel documents we received – here’s what the Washington State University College of Medicine has self-reported:

  • It has adopted racially discriminatory admissions practices under the guise of “affirmative action.” This means it’s potentially lowering standards in the name of diversity, thereby threatening patient health. An example is the “holistic admissions” process, which WSUCOM openly promotes: “Personal stories, reflection, and life experiences review what academic metrics cannot,” the schools Admissions Requirements webpage states.
  • It has a “dedicated office, staff, or resources” dedicated to DEI. This means there’s a permanent woke bureaucracy pushing ideology on faculty and students. In fact, WSUCOM is so dedicated to this agenda that it posts a 57-page “Strategic Diversity Action Plan” on its DEI office’s website.
  • It lobbies for woke policies at the federal, state, and/or local levels. This means it’s wading into toxic public debates instead of fully focusing on educating future physicians. “As WSU administrators and faculty continue to develop the medical school,” the Strategic Plan page states, “they stay in touch with the universities government affairs office, which maintains regular contact with elected officials who can provide resources to help the college.”
  • It offers tenure and promotion to faculty who prove their commitment to extreme identity politics and woke priorities. This is a litmus test that requires faculty to toe the party line instead of teaching medicine at the highest level. In its Guidelines for the Tenure and/or Promotion of Pre-Tenured and Tenured Faculty document, WSUCOM notes that “efforts to promote diversity” are important for applicants to document when describing their service activities.
  • Its administrators are active within local, regional, and national forums to promote equity, diversity, and inclusion. This means it’s wasting resources that would be better spent on real medical education. The WSUCOM Student, Staff, and Faculty Resources page illustrate its alignment with the DEI position of the AAMC and with intercampus initiatives such as the Equity Committee.

All told, WSUCOM has instituted 89.5% of the divisive and discriminatory woke policies listed by the AAMC. And you can bet it is feeling pressure from activists and outside groups to go even further down the radical rabbit hole – doing even more damage to faculty, medical students, and ultimately, the millions of patients they’ll see.

Figure 3. WSUCOM DICE Inventory overall score.

Washington taxpayers help fund the Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine at Washington State University. They, and the policymakers who represent them, should ask why they’re giving so much money to an institution that’s putting divisive and discriminatory ideology at the heart of medical education.

Eastern Virginia Medical School DEI Officer Informs Colleagues National DEI Group Will Be ‘Opposing Legislation Against Use of Race in Admissions’

The vice president of diversity and inclusion at Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS) attempted to offer support to his DEI colleagues during what he called the “difficult days” following the Supreme Court’s decision that outlawed race-based admission practices.

Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) documents obtained by Do No Harm show Mekbib Gemeda, Ed.D. forwarded to members of the Health Professions Chapter (HPC) of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education (NADOHE) information he gathered from a meeting held by the group’s president Paulette Granberry Russell, J.D., on June 28, the day before the release of the Court’s ruling.

Gemeda suggested NADOHE would still be supporting use of race in admissions whenever possible.

“I hope you are staying well during these difficult days,” he wrote in an email, and continued to summarize Russell’s meeting.

“The goal of the meeting was for Paulette to hear from Chapter leaders and to share plans and activities of NADOHE on the Supreme Court decision and State Legislation that is already affecting officers and programs,” he said, adding some “key highlights” of the meeting.

“NADOHE will continue to lead and partner with other organizations in opposing legislation against use of race in admissions,” Gemeda related, adding:

NADOHE will continue its work on articulating and presenting the argument on the critical importance of diversity in advancing academic excellence and innovation, civic engagement, and in achieving equity. To that end it will continue to work in tandem with other organizations in placing and disseminating this information to the public.

Figure 1. Mekbib Gemeda, VP of Diversity and Inclusion at EVMS.

Gemeda also wrote that NADOHE “is working on developing resource toolkits for members in response to the SCOTUS decision,” and will be “exploring legal options to fight the efforts to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion programing.”

Additionally, he shared Russell’s official statement on the day of the Court’s decision, one she called a “dark day in our nation’s history.”

Russell called the effects of the Court’s ruling “heart-wrenching”:

Even though many of us anticipated the outcome, facing the reality of the widespread impact of the Court’s ruling is heart-wrenching.

We are a racially diverse country that, as noted by the dissenting Justices Brown, Sotomayor, and Kagan, has not been colorblind.

Russell’s claim is representative of Critical Race Theory (CRT), the foundation of the DEI movement.

“This is a country with a history of legally sanctioned discrimination based on race, with outcomes that permeate our lives today in the 21st century,” she asserted.

Figure 2. NADOHE president Paulette Russell (June 29, 2023).

“While the rulings acknowledge that race affects the lived experiences of students, they nevertheless limit the ability of colleges and universities to consider race in shaping their campuses,” she said, and then vowed:

We at NADOHE are discouraged but not dissuaded from our goals. We have work to do. We have votes to cast. We have students to educate and support. The work to ensure every student in our country has equal and equitable access to a college education continues, even on this dark day in our nation’s history.

Russell’s bio indicates her research interests are mired in a CRT worldview: “gender equity in STEM, campus culture and its impact on marginalized communities, and strategies for dismantling structural racism to create more equitable experiences for faculty, students, and staff of color.”

As Do No Harm reported in December 2022, NADOHE held a webinar series in advance of the Court’s ruling, the goal of which was to prepare academic DEI officers for their response to the anticipated decision and to plan for how they might still continue to support their diversity mission.

The decision by CRT/DEI activists to double down on finding workarounds to the Court’s ruling, however, is not based on any evidence that minority students who are qualified are being denied admission to medical schools, says Do No Harm Chairman Stanley Goldfarb, M.D.

In a letter to the editor at the Wall Street Journal in February, Dr. Goldfarb observed that, even though the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), America’s primary medical school accreditation organization, has been coercing medical schools to accept more students of certain racial and ethnic groups for several years, “the number of minority students has increased only minimally and remains well below the sought-after goal of equaling the proportion of blacks in America.”

“Medical schools have had to confront the fact that an insufficient number of qualified students are available,” Goldfarb said, and spelled out the stark reality of the damage done by DEI to the future of health care in America: “Forcing greater diversity therefore must lead to a reduction in the merit of the students accepted.”

Additionally, however, Goldfarb noted the great disservice medical school diversity programs will inflict on qualified minority students if they dig in their heels further.

“Pursuing this approach will only undermine the academic achievements of those minority students who deserve admission to medical school and want eagerly to pursue a career in medicine,” he wrote. “They deserve fair treatment, just as patients deserve the highest standard of care.”  

Vanderbilt University Medical Center Department of Radiology Kicks Off Its DEI Week With “Emerging Models of Health Equity” Claiming Racism is the Cause of Disease

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Leave it to Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) to find a way to infuse racism and health equity into every aspect of medicine. The Department of Radiology’s joint effort with the VUMC Office of Diversity and Inclusion this week demonstrates just how far they are willing go with its mission of “achieving health equity.”

The 2023 Vanderbilt Radiology Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Week event kicked on October 23 with a Grand Rounds session by Dr. Ruth Carlos titled “The Biology of Discrimination: Social Genomics and Health Equity.” The stated objectives for this presentation are quite a mouthful:

1. Review emerging models of health equity that link social exposure risk to cancer outcomes 

2. Assess developing evidence for inflammation as a potential pathway for biological effects of social exposure on cancer outcomes  

3. Explore potential effects of social risk on physiologic and epigenetic alteration through a social genomics framework. 

In her presentation, Dr. Carlos, a professor of radiology at the University of Michigan, spoke on “the heritability of social trauma.” This was a typical discussion about how the “social determinants of health” – which physicians have no ability to address or change – are at the root of every health problem in certain groups of patients. She demonstrated this concept in a graphic model. But take note of one thing: She places “race/ethnicity” as the starting point for the model:

Figure 1. Model depicting “the heritability of social trauma” by Dr. Ruth Carlos at VUMC (October 23, 2023).

Dr. Carlos stated, “I’m sure you’re asking, ‘why is a radiologist studying this’?”

Great question. The answer appears in her additional assertions regarding the origin of disease.

Dr. Carlos presented her theory about “social genomics.” In a nutshell, racial discrimination has an effect in the brain that creates a “potential mechanism for embodiment of racism-related disease.”  

Figure 2. Slide from “The Biology of Discrimination: Social Genomics and Health Equity,” presented at VUMC on October 23, 2023.

In conclusion, Dr. Carlos thanked the attendees “for allowing me to push the envelope today.” In response to a question regarding “the ‘biologicization’ of race” and physicians “trying to get away” from that, she said that physicians don’t always think there is racism in medicine because there isn’t “a lab test” that shows it. She also pointed out that Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts (BCBS) “has signed a deal” with four healthcare organizations to track equity measures and outcome rather than services delivered.

Figure 3. From “Championing Health Equity” at BCBS Massachusetts.

As Dr. Carlos put it, “If you align incentives, you will get the results you want.”

Do No Harm rejects the assumption that financial incentives to physicians and healthcare facilities for approaching their patients as members of a group instead of as individuals will result in better care. And, Dr. Carlos’s declarations of the presence of racism in every corner of radiology and the healthcare industry does not affirm her theory that “social genomics equals equitable evidence-based care.” The Vanderbilt University Medical Center Department of Radiology must stop sponsoring events that perpetuate messages that promote division instead of caring for patients according to their individual clinical needs.

UNLV Refuses to Reveal Their Score on the AAMC’s DICE Inventory

For the past ten months, we have been reporting on the public medical schools that participated in the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Diversity, Inclusion, Culture, and Equity (DICE) Inventory, including the University of Nevada Las Vegas Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine. But UNLV has thwarted all our attempts to obtain a full copy of the school’s DICE Inventory responses. They’re clearly nervous about what it contains.

Here’s the background. In November 2022, the AAMC released a report showing that the vast majority of medical schools have embraced identity politics, despite their divisive and even discriminatory nature. The report was based on surveys of specific medical schools, which the AAMC didn’t list.

For the sake of transparency and accountability, Do No Harm submitted freedom of information requests to public medical schools nationwide, including the UNLV Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine (KSOM). We asked for a copy of its survey response, so that Nevada taxpayers and policymakers could learn the truth about this institution. Most other schools readily shared the Excel spreadsheets they sent to the AAMC, which provides a calculated final report with an overall score.

Yet, despite multiple requests to UNLV’s general counsel, the school refused to respond with anything other than a PDF document that does not include the scoring report. Such a refusal is a clear violation of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), but also goes against Nevada state law. This statute requires UNLV to provide the document in the format requested.

In a final attempt to obtain the Excel spreadsheet, we informed UNLV KSOM that failure to comply with the Nevada Public Records Act would result in Do No Harm seeking legal recourse. Within 24 hours, the school submitted the DICE Inventory in the Excel spreadsheet format.

But there’s one last catch: The functionality of the Excel document we received had been disabled, preventing the final scoring report from being generated:

Figure 1. Excerpt from the “Report” tab of the UNLV KSOM DICE Inventory Excel spreadsheet.

Why aren’t they proud of their DICE Inventory score?

Here’s what we can determine from UNLV’s self-reported “yes/no” survey responses and their comments:

  • It has used racially discriminatory admissions practices under the guise of “affirmative action.” This means it’s potentially lowering standards in the name of diversity, thereby threatening patient health.  It lists “CDI 10.4b” in the survey comments, presumably referring to the “holistic admissions policy” the question asks about.
  • It has a “dedicated office, staff, or resources” dedicated to DEI. This means there’s a permanent woke bureaucracy pushing ideology on faculty and students.  It reports, “The KSOM has a dedicated DEI office with an Associate Dean, Assistant Dean, Coordinator,” and administrative assistant, with its own programming budget.
  • Its administrators are active within local, regional, and national forums to promote equity, diversity, and inclusion. This means it’s wasting resources that would be better spent on real medical education. “The Associate Dean serves as a member of the AAMC Group on Diversity and Inclusion and the Nevada Minority Health Equity Coalition,” as noted in the comments.
  • It has adopted radical training and orientation programs that seek to indoctrinate rather than educate. KSOM indicated in multiple questions that is uses the “Common Read” program during first-year medical student orientation, which is the same orientation event we exposed at Mizzou Med.
Figure 2. Sample questions and responses from the KSOM at UNLV DICE Inventory.

While we cannot determine the percentage of divisive and discriminatory policies listed by the AAMC that the KSOM at UNLV has adopted, you can bet it is feeling pressure from activists and outside groups to go even further down the radical rabbit hole – doing even more damage to faculty, medical students, and ultimately, the millions of patients they’ll see.

Nevada taxpayers help fund the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV. They, and the policymakers who represent them, should ask why they’re giving so much money to an institution attempts to circumvent state and federal law, and one that’s putting divisive and discriminatory ideology at the heart of medical education.

Indiana University Charges $2,500 to Indoctrinate Participants in DEI ‘Certification’ Program

Indiana University (IU) is continuing to embrace the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) movement despite the Supreme Court’s ruling in June that race-based admissions policies and practices are unconstitutional.

IU is offering a 10-week course between February and April 2024, for example, for individuals who wish to be “certified” in DEI “leadership.” The fee to participate in the program is $2,500, which includes seven online sessions, keynote speakers who are considered DEI “industry leaders,” case studies, “thought-provoking” assignments, and a certificate “ceremony.”

The $2,500 fee does not include travel to and from the program’s two “in-person sessions.”

“Participants must have at least five years of experience in a private, public, or non-profit organization, be open to feedback, have the capacity for self-examination, and be willing to challenge their beliefs and biases,” IU says are prerequisites of the program.

An email sent to IU alumni in August, and obtained by Do No Harm, also shows the school is offering past graduates a 10 percent discount off the fee for the certification program.

Figure 1. From an email sent to IUSM faculty and staff on August 8, 2023.

“Research shows that diverse organizations are likelier to outperform non-diverse companies, including profitability and creativity, stronger governance, and better problem-solving abilities,” the email’s promotional message reads and adds:

Through IU’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Leadership Certification Program, build skills to develop a community that embraces a culture of belonging that positively impacts employee performance and engagement and organization innovation, resiliency, and profitability.

In medical schools, DEI is often expressed via the “health equity” movement.

IU’s School of Medicine, for example, is offering a symposium in November titled “From Analysis to Action: Advancing Health Equity Through Learning Health System Research.”

The program is sponsored by IU’s Health Equity Advancing through Learning health systems Research (HEAL-R) Collaborative, whose mission is “to promote health equity scholars and scholarship.”

The course’s overview is steeped in concepts of Critical Race Theory (CRT), including “structural racism” and “institutional oppression”:

Addressing the impacts of structural racism and other institutionalized forms of oppression on the delivery of health care and health inequity requires a dramatic transformation of how our health care systems function. The “learning health system” (LHS) model, in which internal data and experience are systematically integrated with external evidence, and that knowledge is put into practice, holds great promise to foster more responsive and equitable systems of care.

The symposium’s overview says it is “designed to connect trainees and health professionals from a variety of fields … who are focused on bringing quality health care and services to historically excluded, underrepresented, and marginalized patient populations.”

The conference is taxpayer-funded, by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), which joined the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as part of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) in 2010. 

Figure 2. From the “Advancing Health Equity Through Learning Health System Research” 2023 symposium program.

NIMHD says its mission is focused on social and political factors related to health care, and promotes the view that minority individuals have greater health problems because of discrimination:

The examination of biological factors is fundamental in understanding the development and progression of diseases and has traditionally been the focus of research on minority health and health disparities. NIMHD has been a leader in increasing the scientific community’s focus on non-biological factors such as socioeconomics, politics, discrimination, culture, and environment in relation to health disparities.

“Through NIMHD’s leadership, health disparities has become a recognized scientific field of study,” the institute touts.

On its website, IU School of Medicine boasts it is “committed to advancing culturally competent medical education, clinical care and research.”

The school’s programs are “aligned with three foundational pillars: representational diversity, inclusive working and learning environment, and cultural competence.”

The goal of “representational diversity” is achieved, says the school, by recruiting “trainees, faculty and staff from various backgrounds with focused efforts toward identified diversity categories,” and efforts to create an inclusive environment.

Providing excellent health care, IU Medical School continues, comes from “culturally competent, patient-centered care” that eliminates “health disparities.”

However, Do No Harm Chairman Dr. Stanley Goldfarb has recently warned again of the dangers of emphasizing social and cultural factors that actually do not “determine” health, as radical DEI ideology claims, but rather “affect behaviors associated with health status.”

In a piece in September at City Journal, Dr. Goldfarb argues that “physicians need to practice medicine, not worry about the ‘social determinants of health.’”

He cautions the medical establishment against its drive to push the divisive narrative that “no one should attribute any health-care disparities to individuals’ self-determined actions.”

Dr. Goldfarb labels “absurd” any recommendations that assume “doctors can take on the role of social workers,” who are trained to manage “systemic” factors such as “housing issues, transportation, and health-insurance status.”

He observes as well that requiring such training in the “social determinants of health” is a waste of medical schools’ funds and influence, when a more advanced level of medical training should be the goal.

“[T]his vision of the doctor’s role in society is profoundly flawed and will only lead to further degradation of our health-care system,” Dr. Goldfarb warns. “Worst of all, it will not do anything to improve the well-being of patients or correct disparities in health outcomes. In fact, it is far more likely to worsen patient suffering, since patients will increasingly deal with doctors trained to be political activists instead of true medical professionals.”

Despite Federal Civil Rights Investigations, the University of Minnesota Department of Medicine Seeks Faculty Dedicated to DEI

The University of Minnesota (UMN) is at it again with yet another federal civil rights investigation for sex-based discrimination. But even with all the attention on the school’s civil rights violations, it is still striving to recruit faculty members who are willing to prove their woke bona fides.

In April 2023, the UMN Department of Medicine was investigated by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) for a research award that discriminated on the basis of sex. Shortly after UMN removed this award from its website in September, the OCR opened an additional investigation against UMN for its participation in another program that also violates Title IX.

Considering UMN’s history of sponsoring and promoting discriminatory programs and awards, it’s not surprising that the Department of Medicine would seek faculty members who are likely do go along with the DEI narrative. Look no further than its job posting for an Associate Director for Research and Scholarship in the Division of Hospital Medicine. In addition to the academic qualifications listed, the ideal candidate will “forward efforts regarding Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in research and scholarship.” Although the position requires a medical license, mentoring skills, and a “track record of successful funding for research,” UMN places the credential of “demonstrated commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion” on the list ahead of these requirements.

Just so there’s no question about where the school’s priorities lie, the job posting displays the UMN diversity statements and a link to its robust Office for Equity and Diversity website.

Figure 1. From the “Associate Director for Research and Scholarship & Assistant Professor: Division of Hospital Medicine” job posting at the University of Minnesota.

Equity and diversity is fundamental to everything we do at the University of Minnesota. That’s the message from the UMN Office for Equity and Diversity. What about quality education and sound research based on science instead of ideology? Perhaps offering scholarships with eligibility criteria that don’t discriminate in violation of federal law? With this legacy, the Department of Medicine at UMN has a lot of explaining to do to Minnesota taxpayers and policymakers.

Have you seen job postings at your institution that include requirements of “diversity statements” or other politicized requirements? Do No Harm wants to hear from you.

The Gold Foundation’s Focus on “Humanism” Finds a Home in DEI Movement

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An anonymous member of Do No Harm recently contacted us regarding concerns about a charitable organization that is using its influence and resources to perpetuate concepts like anti-racism, health equity, and identity politics – all with an innocuous motto of “keeping healthcare human.”

The New Jersey-based Arnold P. Gold Foundation was founded in 1988 on the philosophy of “humanism,” and saw that, in 2020, its mission could easily link up with the goals of the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) movement.

The foundation “is dedicated to keeping healthcare human,” the organization touts on its website, adding it “champions humanism in healthcare,” which, it says, is its “Gold standard of care” that “embraces all and targets barriers to such care.”

The organization asserts it achieves its woke mission for an “equitable system” by actively “supporting innovation and creating tools and events to empower more people to elevate humanism in healthcare.”

Community organizing and an emphasis on diversity are also strategies used by the Gold Foundation to fulfill its mission to “change the world.”

“Bringing together diverse students, clinicians, healthcare leaders, and advocates to support each other in amplifying humanism in healthcare” is central to achieving “humanistic healthcare,” claims the foundation.

The American Humanist Association defines “humanism” as both a “progressive” and “rational” philosophy that is free of belief in God or “other supernatural beliefs.” Humanism “advocates the extension of participatory democracy and the expansion of the open society, standing for human rights and social justice,” the definition continues.

In a statement posted in June 2020, the foundation noted its DEIAR mission has been guided by “the killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and other people of color who have been killed or harmed, have created a clear view of what Black Americans and people of color face daily.”

“It is time to come together to create the humanistic world that has been denied to so many,” wrote Richard Sheerr, Gold Foundation chairman, and Richard Levin, M.D., the president and CEO.

Figure 1. Statement by the Gold Foundation on June 3, 2020.

“It is time to come together to move actively toward a world with true equity in health,” the foundation officials added. “It is time to come together to address and dismantle racism.”

Resources provided on the Gold Foundation’s website include a diversity, equity, inclusion, antiracism (DEIAR) “collection” of selections from the organization’s library of “InSight Webinars,” defined as “conference sessions … podcast episodes, art galleries, and more, that related to promoting healthcare equity.”

One of these resources is a course offering titled “Dismantling Structural Racism” (designed in collaboration with NextGenU.org), which provides the following description of its content that stresses Critical Race Theory (CRT) and DEI concept of structural racism:

… an introductory exploration of the key concepts related to health equity, including structural racism, health inequities, and social determinants of health. Participants will develop a practice of self-reflection and learn how structurally racist policies have adversely impacted health. They will also identify strategies to begin dismantling these policies in healthcare organizations and develop an action plan to implement these strategies.

Figure 2. “Dismantling Structural Racism” course from the Gold Foundation.

The course links to a similar resource called ShareTools, which features a photo of medical students holding signs in support of Black Lives Matter and White Coats for Black Lives – two organizations that have been thoroughly discredited and exposed in recent weeks.

Figure 3. ShareTools resource, recommended by the Arnold P. Gold Foundation.

Among the Gold Foundation’s “partners” is the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), which oversees the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) and cosponsors the accrediting body for all medical schools.

AAMC has made acceptance of its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) mission a dominant theme for U.S. medical schools.

Do No Harm Chairman Stanley Goldfarb, M.D., highlighted the AAMC’s influence in November 2022 at the New York Post. “Medical schools should fear a failing grade from the AAMC, which helps determine whether they get accredited,” Goldfarb said. “As a former associate dean, I can attest that when the AAMC sets priorities, administrators rush to follow them.”

Other partnerships include AAMC’s peer-reviewed journal, Academic Medicine; the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), an organization that sets standards for US graduate medical schools and the institutions that sponsor them; and the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), which represents over 800 U.S. nursing schools and establishes education standards in nursing education.

The Gold Foundation’s influence on medical education is also seen in its establishment of the White Coat Ceremony, whereby first-year students in medical training programs don a white coat as a “rite of passage.” The first such ceremony is claimed by Columbia University in 1993, where Dr. Arnold Gold (the foundation’s namesake) served as a pediatric neurologist.

Figure 4. Information on the history of White Coat Ceremony b the Gold Foundation.

White coat ceremonies “are now found in nearly every medical school in the country,” the foundation boasts, adding the white coat “serves to welcome students to healthcare practice and to elevate the value of humanism as the core of healthcare.” However, the oaths recited at some of these ceremonies have been highly politicized in recent years. As Do No Harm reported in March 2022, the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons Class of 2025 revised oath had the students promising to “recognize the acts and systems of oppression effected in the name of medicine” and “acknowledge the past and present failures of medicine to abide by its obligation to do no harm.”

The Arnold P. Gold Foundation has obviously had far-reaching influence in the infiltration of radical ideologies into medical education, partnering with prominent organizations to spread its damaging and discriminatory messaging with its unwavering commitment to identity politics. The return of merit and equality to physician training and the healthcare industry depends on the dissolution of these types of associations so that Americans can have their trust in the system restored.