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Is Your Family Physician Going Woke?

Forget medicine. The American Academy of Family Physicians wants its members to practice divisive and discriminatory ideology. That’s the takeaway from the AAFP’s September 20-23, 2022, Congress of Medical Delegates and Family Medical Experience in Washington, DC, which are the association’s primary annual events.

A tipster who was in attendance showed us what went down. To start, the AAFP held at least 10 sessions and panels focused on woke concepts – everything from “medical microaggressions” to “structural racism in medicine.” One session made clear that that family physicians should be political activists. It was titled, “Let’s Get in Formation: Physician Advocacy in Action.”

Another session, titled “Advocating for Anti-racist Medicine in Practice,” encouraged participants to identify goals “to dismantle structural racism in your organization.” Sample slides from the presentation are shown here.

As a reminder, anti-racism is grounded in the idea that racial discrimination is justified to right past wrongs. That’s deeply concerning, since the session also said that family physicians should “create a plan to integrate anti-racist best practices into your clinical care and health systems.”

From Advocating for Anti-racist Medicine in Practice

What does this mean in real life? To start, it involves family physicians focusing on their patients’ race instead of just their individual medical needs. It then leads to decision-making based on skin color. For instance, anti-racism is being used to justify giving patients of some races preferential access to care. Yet that means pushing people of different races to the back of the line. Such discrimination has no place in health care.

Other points from this presentation claim that racism, not genetics, has an impact on premature death.

From Advocating for Anti-racist Medicine in Practice
From Advocating for Anti-racist Medicine in Practice

The same session also pushes doctors to take the so-called “implicit association test,” which has been thoroughly discredited. Even the test’s creators now acknowledge its shortcomings. These facts notwithstanding, the AAFP is essentially telling its members to falsely admit they’re racist, then employ actually racist policies within their medical practices.

From Advocating for Anti-racist Medicine in Practice

The American Academy of Family Physicians is not well. All its members should question why they belong to an organization that’s elevating ideology over medicine. And every family should worry about what their family physician is being told to do.

Is your medical association embracing divisive and discriminatory woke ideas? Please let us know – securely and anonymously.

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Medical Educators Are Becoming Lobbyists

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We’ve warned patients and policymakers that medical schools are wading into divisive policy debates. According to a recent report, 75% of medical schools advocate for woke “policies and/or legislation at a local, state, or federal level.” Now we have details on which policies, exactly, some of these medical schools are focused on.

A growing number of medical educators are testifying against policies that wisely restrict so-called “gender-affirming care” for children. These policies try to protect vulnerable and young children from profoundly life-altering and largely irreversible surgeries and treatments. Yet this common-sense approach is unacceptable for the ideologues who run virtually every medical school, which explains why so many medical educators are trying to stop these policies.

For instance, after Alabama restricted this potentially harmful medical practice, no fewer than 8 medical educators filed a legal brief seeking to reinstate care that could harm children. Six of the signers came from the Yale School of Medicine. Similarly, when Arkansas passed a bill protecting children, a professor of pediatrics from the Duke University School of Medicine testified in a trial, seeking to overturn the state’s policy.

Plenty of other medical educators are wading into the fray. One from the UPenn Perelman School of Medicine has publicly opposed the pro-protecting-children policies that six states and counting have introduced. So has a professor at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine.

The list goes on, and in each case, these educators attempt to cite evidence to support their position. Yet as scholars like Leor Sapir have shown, the medical literature presents a much less favorable and more complicated conclusion. In fact, the evidence against so-called “gender-affirming care” is so strong that many European countries, including the United Kingdom, are moving away from it.

You won’t hear these facts from the American medical schools that are pushing for extreme policies. Instead, they’re turning their professors and educators into full-time political activists and lobbyists. They should spend more time teaching medical students to care for patients – and less time promoting harmful policies that could hurt patients, especially vulnerable children.

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OB/GYN’s Are Eating Their Own

The American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology has an official party line – and it’s as ideological as you’d expect. We recently came across the association’s “Statement Regarding Misinformation and Disinformation” on their website. Not only is it insulting and unfair to the OB/GYNs the group represents, but it also ignores the lessons of history in the OB/GYN community.

ABOG, as the board is called, wants OB/GYNs to practice “fact-based scientific data.” Yet its statement on misinformation goes far beyond science to matters of opinion and areas that deserve research. 

ABOG all but states that there’s a single acceptable view on “COVID-19, reproductive health care, contraception, abortion, and other OB GYN practices.” If OB/GYNs fail to promote that view to their patients, then ABOG threatens to “review reports” about them. 

The consequences are clear: “Eligibility to gain or maintain ABOG certification may be lost” if an OB/GYN doesn’t toe the party line.

Do No Harm doesn’t take positions on these issues. Yet we do believe that free speech and open discourse are essential to treating patients and finding medical breakthroughs. The way to clarify best clinical approaches is to encourage rigorous testing of ideas, not authoritarian pronouncements. Non-traditional ideas can be a powerful engine of medical advances. By trying to stifle debate on issues, ABOG is putting politics ahead of progress. Patients suffer when physicians are silenced.

The group representing OB/GYN’s should know better. One of the most famous physicians in history was Ignaz Semmelweis, a nineteenth century innovator who discovered that OB/GYN’s could dramatically improve maternal health by simply washing their hands. Yet his early insight on disinfectants was rejected by the medical establishment, which cast out Semmelweis. He was committed to an asylum and quickly died. Yet he was right – and the medical establishment was wrong.

The American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology is following this same, sad path. Who might the modern-day Semmelweis be in the OB/GYN community? And what life-saving breakthroughs are mothers and children missing out on because ABOG is stifling debate in the name of politics?

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The University of Missouri’s Med School Diversity Bender

The University of Missouri School of Medicine has a strange strategy for ensuring “diversity.” Like virtually all medical schools, it’s fully committed to a divisive woke agenda. But it also recently spent nearly $40,000 on parties and swag under the guise of recruiting minority students. Who knew that woke medical education was so much fun on the taxpayer dime?

We discovered this bizarre situation after the University responded to our recent freedom of information request. We requested all invoices paid for or by the Office of Diversity and Inclusion in the School of Medicine, from January 2021 to the present, among other things. We didn’t expect what the University sent us.

When we say swag, we aren’t joking. The medical school literally used that word to categorize an $8,550 payment to the Student National Medical Association, where it set up a recruiting booth. It spent another $2,096 on “swag” for “D&I,” a reference to diversity and inclusion at a similar recruitment event.

Another payment to the Student National Medical Association was for the “spring mix,” as in a party. That one cost $2,142.13. And the medical school spent $1,337 on a diversity-focused tailgate – their word, not ours.

The list goes on, with recruitment receptions and celebrations. Not all the charges are apparently party-related, like the $3,050 registration for the “National Conference for Community and Justice of Metropolitan St. Louis,” which is fully bought into the idea that physicians are biased based on skin color. Separately, we’ve found that Missouri’s School of Medicine has multiple racially discriminatory scholarships. We’ve filed federal civil rights complaints to root out this discrimination.

Taxpayers fund a significant part of the Mizzou School of Medicine. They – and the state’s lawmakers – should be asking why they’re forking over so much money to an institution that parties hard in the name of “diversity.”

Is your medical school using wokeness as a cover for slush funds and shenanigans? Please let us know – securely and anonymously.

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The Kentucky Board of Nursing Hides Its Bias

We were the first to call out Kentucky for forcing every nurse to take insulting woke training. Now the Kentucky Board of Nursing is trying to cover up its actions, even though it hasn’t actually changed. Either it’s afraid, or it knows what it’s doing is wrong. Either way, the state’s nurses and citizens need answers.

Here’s the backstory. Earlier this year, the Kentucky Board of Nursing mandated that all nurses take training on so-called “implicit bias.” Implicit bias testing is a discredited concept that accuses people of being racist based on their skin color. Yet woke activists demand it because it spreads the falsehoods they want everyone to believe.

The Board went even further by recommending the course provided by the Kentucky Nurses Association. The course is a master class in divisive and discriminatory propaganda. It tells nurses that “implicit bias kills,” and that white privilege is a “covert form of racism.” It even describes how white nurses “contribute to modern-day lynchings in the workplace.”

We called out this insulting and inappropriate training on September 30. A month and a half later, the board removed the recommendation from its website. That’s right: The Kentucky Board of Nursing is trying to pretend like it never told nurses to sit through training that all but accused them of being part of the KKK.

Why did the board remove it? Who does it think it’s fooling? Most of all, why does it still mandate that nurses take implicit bias training at all? 

It’s bad enough that the Kentucky Board of Nursing is trying to hide its own woke bias. It’s even worse that it doesn’t have any plans to change.

Are you a nurse or doctor who’s forced to take implicit bias training? Please let us know – securely and anonymously.

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Maternal Mortality in the U.S.-Media Narratives and Reality

Black women’s mortality rates are reported to be several fold higher than white women and the overall U.S. rate is said to be substantially higher than other developed nations.

A substantial part of the reported U.S. rate may result from a reporting system that has overestimated maternal deaths and one whose metrics are different from other developed nations.

Read Dr. Stanley Goldfarb’s op-ed on the issue:

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MUSC

The High Cost Of Woke Speakers At MUSC

We’ve previously reported on the “day of discrimination” hosted by the Medical College of South Carolina. Now we know how much MUSC paid for the privilege of accusing its faculty, staff, and students of bias, racism, and white privilege.

We submitted a freedom of information request to MUSC, asking for copies of the contracts and invoices for the speakers at the “Inclusion to Innovation” summit. It turns out the medical school paid a whopping $45,000 for woke speakers, including Robin DiAngelo and Isabel Wilkerson.

Who are these people? Robin DiAngelo is the author of “White Fragility,” one of the seminal works in the woke canon. It accuses white people of racism and encourages radical re-education along racial lines. Such indoctrination is exactly what MUSC is now implementing.

Isabel Wilkerson is no better. She argues that America isn’t just racist – it actually suffers from a “caste system.” The “solution,” naturally, is to radically reorient society along race-based lines. Indoctrinating faculty and students is necessary to the success of this extremist project.

What does any of this have to do with medical education at MUSC? Nothing. If anything, it will worsen the quality of that education, and ultimately, the care that medical students provide when they enter the field. The last thing MUSC should be doing is drilling divisive and discriminatory ideas into people’s heads.

Taxpayers fund a significant part of the Medical College of South Carolina. They – and the state’s lawmakers – should be asking why they’re forking over so much money for woke indoctrination. If anyone can save MUSC, it’s the people and their representatives.

Is your medical school forcing woke ideology down people’s throats? Please let us know – securely and anonymously.

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The Office for Civil Rights is Investigating UT Health for Racial Discrimination

Another Texas medical school is being investigated for discriminatory scholarship practices.

The University of Texas (UT Health) Long School of Medicine (LSOM) sponsors the Diversity in Medicine Visiting Elective Scholars Program, which provides a stipend of up to $2,000 for expenses associated with participating in a four-week rotation in one of 22 medical specialties. With support from the Office of the Dean, the UT Health Office for Inclusion and Diversity at the LSOM is funding the scholarship.

In response to a federal civil rights complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) about this program, an investigation was opened by the Dallas OCR on November 10, 2022. 

Do No Harm senior fellow Mark Perry filed the complaint on September 1 citing discriminatory inclusion criteria that required applicants to “identify as one or more of the following underrepresented backgrounds: Black/African American, Hispanic/Latinx, American Indian/Alaskan Native, Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander.” Discrimination on the basis of race is prohibited under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

However, UT Health’s Office for Inclusion and Diversity in the LSOM has taken down the page for the program named in the complaint, and has scrubbed its website of any reference to it. An archived version of the program’s page can be accessed here.

Have you been excluded from a scholarship or fellowship at your medical or nursing school because of discriminatory inclusion criteria? Do No Harm wants to hear from you, and you may remain anonymous if you wish.

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Johns Hopkins School of Medicine is Being Investigated for Racial Discrimination

The Johns Hopkins Harriet Lane Pediatric Residency Training Program says that it “strongly values diversity.” Unfortunately, they aren’t demonstrating those values when it comes to inclusion in its pediatric specialty rotations.

In response to a Title VI complaint filed by Do No Harm senior fellow Mark Perry, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has opened a federal civil rights investigation into the Visiting Elective Program for Students Underrepresented in Medicine, as it restricts eligibility to medical students  from groups defined as underrepresented: “Black (African/African American), Latino/Hispanic (Mexican American, Cuban American, Puerto Rican, Central American, South American), Native American, and Native Hawaiian.” Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin which is why the OCR has jurisdiction to conduct a federal civil rights investigation of Johns Hopkins

The online application makes it clear who is (and is not) eligible for the program, which provides a stipend of up to $2,000 for the six medical students who are chosen.

The John Hopkins Medicine Equity Statement says the organization believes in promoting inclusion in education and declares, “We stand against discrimination and oppression in all their forms.” Let’s hope they choose to live up to that mission.

Have you been excluded from a scholarship or fellowship at your medical or nursing school because of discriminatory inclusion criteria? Do No Harm wants to hear from you, and you may remain anonymous if you wish.

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The Medical University of South Carolina Hosts a Day of Discrimination

The Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) is rushing toward radicalism. On November 7, chief equity officer Willette Burnham-Williams hosted a day-long virtual webinar titled Inclusion to Innovation. It provided 6 hours of continuing medical education credit to participants, and “strategic intentionality” was the primary focus – not improving care for individual patients. 

Dr. Christopher King of Georgetown University set the tone for the webinar with a keynote address. He declared that clinicians are “operating in a system that has been rooted in injustice.” He says these systems must be “critically audited” because “bias is there; systemic racism is there.” He concludes by stating, “you can’t have quality and safety without equity.”

It only got worse from there. In the name of “infusing diversity and inclusion into the curriculum,” B. DaNine Fleming, Ed.D. and associate chief officer for inclusive excellence at MUSC, hosted a session with author/activist Robin DiAngelo. DiAngelo directed her remarks to “the white members of this audience,” asking: “did you study systemic racism,” along with questions that insult and demean participants:

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Remarkably, DiAngelo’s brief reference to “a foundational understanding of systemic racism” before being able to practice is the sole mention of anything related to medicine. Her main message focused on “white fragility,” “explicit white nationalism,” “a sociology of dominance,” and quoting Ibram X. Kendi. After stating, “So there is no such thing as reverse racism,” DiAngelo told the audience:

If you are white, I want you to think about black people. You know they exist if you watch Disney movies, if you go to the grocery store and you buy pancake syrup and rice, you know they exist.

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[VIDEO 1 – Robin DiAngelo]

Then there was the final presentation of the webinar. Author Isabel Wilkerson used her presentation time to propagate discredited narratives related to January 6, 2021. Wilkerson asserted that “half a dozen” law enforcement officers “actually died as a result of that attack” and asked the audience to consider “what would have happened had the people who looked like the janitors” would have “broken into the United States capitol?” Her answer? “They would not have lived to tell.”

[VIDEO 2 – Isabel Wilkerson]

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Why is the Medical University of South Carolina promoting these divisive topics and concepts, instead of focusing on medicine and providing better standards of care? It owes an appropriate learning experience to its students, faculty, and staff members, all of whom should worry about what’s happening to their institution.

Is your school or organization hosting conferences or training sessions that promote radical ideologies instead of medical education? We want to hear from you – anonymously and securely.

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S1E2: Politics in Medicine

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In our second episode, Benita Cotton-Orr and Dr. Stanley Goldfarb discuss when—and how—politics became such a big part of medicine.

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Radical Activists Are Corrupting the MCAT

The MCAT is the gold-standard test for admission to medical school. Surprise, surprise, it’s also a target of radical activists. They claim the test is racist, which has led to dozens of schools dropping MCAT requirements for many minority applicants – a direct threat to physician quality. But they’re also taking another tack that will lead to worse physicians: Putting divisive ideology into the MCAT itself.

We recently looked through materials from the Association of American Medical Colleges, which administers the MCAT. On a page titled, “What’s on the MCAT exam,” it clearly states that applicants may be asked to identify “the most appropriate way to assess prejudice in a study on implicit bias.” This presupposes that implicit bias is real, even though implicit bias testing has been debunked and the concept is used to justify discriminatory policies. Another section focuses on “prejudice and bias,” including “power, prestige, and class.” This is testing for political views, not medical knowledge.

It gets worse. The MCAT now has content on “social inequality,” which focuses on “the segment of the population that is disenfranchised or lacks power.” It blames “institutionalized racism and discrimination” for this supposed problem, while stating that “social justice” is “essential to address health and health care disparities.” Again, this is divisive ideology, not medical education.

The list keeps going. Another section focuses on the “social determinants of health,” which is part of the push to get medical students to focus on political issues like food stamps, housing policy, and the like. Yet that’s not what future physicians need to know. Even the AMA agrees that physicians have no power to change the patient’s “social condition.” Treating individual patients is all that matters.

The MCAT should be free of identity politics and radical ideology, so that it accurately tests future physicians for their knowledge of medicine. Alas, that’s the last thing activists want. They want to kill the MCAT, either by preventing people from taking it or corrupting the test from the inside. Either way, patients will suffer from the lowering of standards.
Have you seen identity politics in the MCAT? Please let us know – securely and anonymously.

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Will Mass General Kick Non-Woke Patients To The Curb?

Mass General is one of Boston’s premier hospitals. It may also be moving toward refusing care to patients who don’t adhere to the woke worldview. That’s what it looks like based on the note Mass General is now sending its patients.

A tipster sent us a copy of the note, which is also available on Mass General’s website as the “Patient Code of Conduct.” On its surface, the hospital seems to be upholding a sensible policy: “Words or actions that are disrespectful, racist, discriminatory, hostile, or harassing are not welcome.” 

Everyone can agree that racism, discrimination, and harassment don’t belong in a medical setting, much less anywhere else. But the problem is that Mass General fails to define these terms, so there’s no indication who decides what constitutes a violation. As we’ve seen, medical leaders are thoroughly steeped in woke ideology. They are likely to take a dim view of anyone who doesn’t toe the party line.

From the MGH Patient Code of Conduct.

Will patients who don’t use someone’s preferred pronouns be guilty of “harassment”? Will someone who disputes the existence of “systemic racism” be called a racist? Will a patient who believes in equal access to care, not “equity,” be deemed discriminatory? What if they oppose preferential access to care for minority patients, as has been announced at Boston-based Brigham and Women’s hospital?

These aren’t idle questions in the hyper-politicized world of woke healthcare. And patients at Mass General should be concerned about the consequences of running afoul of the hospital’s new policy:

“Some violations of this Code may lead to patients being asked to make other plans for their care.”

There’s a very real possibility that patients will be refused care at Mass General. The only way to ensure they get treated is to give into the politicization of medicine, race, and everything else that woke ideology demands. Mass General should make clear what its policy really means, before patients suffer.

Does your hospital or doctor’s office engage in politicized healthcare? Please let us know – securely and anonymously.

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ABIM Doubles Down On Extremism

We were the first to highlight that the American Board of Internal Medicine is falling prey to divisive identity politics. Yet despite our public campaign to call out this crisis, ABIM is rushing even further toward divisive and discriminatory ideology. That includes plans to force every ABIM-certified physician to answer “health equity” questions in their regular assessments.

A tipster recently sent us the details of ABIM’s latest moves. The prominent medical association is promising to address “racism in health care,” especially through the assessments that internal medicine specialists must take every 10 years. ABIM is wants to change them to “examin[e] our own potential bias and working to mitigate whatever we find,” and ensuring that they “do not create an unfair barrier for physicians to enter practice.” 

ABIM will accomplish these goals by adding “health equity” questions to its assessments. It states: “By incorporating health equity questions on our exams in the future, we elevate the topic for practicing physicians and for organizations that are training physicians.” Yet health equity is an inherently politicized concept. It is based on the fact-free belief that healthcare suffers from “systemic racism” and requires race-based decision-making – i.e., racial discrimination – in response. 

By taking this path, ABIM is pushing physicians to fixate on their patients’ race instead of their unique medical needs. Worse, it’s laying the groundwork for preferential care based on skin color – something that’s already moving forward elsewhere in healthcare.

What’s more, ABIM is asking its members to share “personal stories of how health inequities” have “affected you and/or your patients.” It will highlight these stories on its social media accounts, adding to the drumbeat of claims that healthcare is racist, and justifying its own attempts to put divisive ideology at the heart of internal medicine.

ABIM should be better than this. It’s not, and now the question is how far it will fall.

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This Florida Med School’s Trainings Are Extreme

Florida Atlantic University’s Schmidt College of Medicine is sinking into the radicalized abyss. That’s what we discovered after submitting several Freedom of Information requests to the college. Our digging turned up some of the most extreme and divisive faculty and staff trainings we’ve seen to date.

To start, FAU has two extremely offensive videos. The first is entitled, “What Does Critical Race Theory Have to Do with Academic Medicine?” and was presented on November 30, 2021 by Anita Fernander, Chief Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) Officer at the Schmidt College of Medicine. It brazenly states that Critical Race Theory – which is grounded in racist ideas and encourages racial discrimination – “should be applied within academic medicine to provide context for understanding and addressing racial health disparities.” 

The rest of the video forces this divisive worldview on viewers, while leveling accusations of “white supremacy,” among other insults and untruths.

The second video is called “What Makes ‘Systemic Racism’ Systemic?” by Dr. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva of Duke University’s Department of Sociology. His presentation from January 28, 2022 hits viewers over the head with thoughts like these:

This is a slide from Dr. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s presentation. Full copies of the documents and videos obtained through FOIA are available upon request.
  • “In truth, the way that the police, as an organization, was historically developed in the US as an organization in charge of keeping class and racial control.”
  • “Whites, your life reflects and reproduces whiteness.”
  • “The moment you think you are saved is the moment that whiteness will get deeper into your soul.”
  • “Systemic racism is you.” 

In short, the video on “systemic racism” itself expresses racist views. And of course, it tells viewers about the “need for social protest.” What political advocacy has to do with medical education is never stated.

Through another Freedom of Information request, we found that Florida Atlantic University also uses training materials from the “Racial Equity Institute,” like many other medical schools. That includes a 3-hour presentation focused on the “structural and institutional nature of racism in America.” Unsurprisingly, these training materials are incredibly divisive and have more to do with radical identity politics than medical education. 

What’s happening at Florida Atlantic University’s medical school is embarrassing and extraordinary. The families whose students go there – and the taxpayers who fund it – deserve to know what’s happening. And they should demand that it stop.

Have you seen divisive and politically motivated trainings at your medical school? Please let us know – securely and anonymously.

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SHRM Should Be Ashamed

The Society for Human Resource Management is the leading voice for HR professionals – and it’s using that voice to push a divisive, race-based agenda.

A tipster recently sent us a copy of a SHRM Webinar from October. Sponsored by Aetna, which is part of CVS Health, the webinar was entitled: “Addressing Health Inequities In the Workforce.” The webinar itself is centered on the idea that racism and discrimination are rife in healthcare. 

The webinar uses this pretext to push even discriminatory policies and practices. For instance, the moderator states that “diversity and inclusion are critical; you can’t get to health equity without it.” He also calls it “more than a moral imperative; it’s a business imperative.” This is a pretext for hiring people based on their skin color. Yet sacrificing merit for diversity could lead to worse health outcomes.

One webinar presenter also calls for “increased collection of race and ethnicity data of employees.” Another presenter states that “every business decision should be made through an equity lens.” In other words, SHRM wants healthcare employers to fixate on race to the exclusion of everything else.

The moderator also asks what organizations can do to make health equity a reality. The answer, from a presenter who works at the major consulting firm Deloitte: 

“The key here is having a strategy that has clear goals and measures that are tied to those goals. We’ve seen a lot of impact when there’s performance incentives tied to the health equity goal. It needs an all-enterprise approach so that everyone has to be invested in that kind of change; so bonuses and other ways to tie incentives are important.”

Don’t be surprised if your healthcare provider or employer takes this advice. Physicians and employees may soon be paid (or punished) according to how much they focus on people’s race. If only the Society for Human Resource Management was this concerned about individual health and well-being. SHRM should be ashamed.

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Sign This Declaration To Defend Academic Freedom At Medical Schools

Are you a medical educator worried about the rise of divisive ideology at your medical school? If so, please consider signing a new declaration on “Restoring Academic Freedom.” Do No Harm Chairman Dr. Stanley Goldfarb has already added his name, and we hope you’ll consider doing the same.

The declaration is not directed solely to medical schools, but it certainly describes what’s happening there:

The mission of the university is the pursuit of truth and the advancement and dissemination of knowledge. A robust culture of free speech and academic freedom is essential to that mission: Intellectual progress often threatens the status quo and is resisted. Bad ideas are only weeded out by unfettered critical analysis.

Unfortunately, academic freedom and freedom of speech are rapidly declining in academic institutions, including universities, professional societies, journals, and funding agencies. Researchers whose findings challenge dominant narratives find it increasingly hard to get published, funded, hired, or promoted. They, and teachers who question current orthodoxies, are harassed in person and online, ostracized, subjected to opaque university disciplinary procedures, fired, or canceled by other means. Employment, promotion, and funding are increasingly subject to implicit or explicit political litmus tests, including approval from bureaucrats seeking to impose a social agenda such as specific views of social justice or DEI principles. Activism is replacing inquiry and debate.  An increasing number of simple facts and ideas cannot even be mentioned without risk of retribution.

It further states:

Universities and professional societies are failing to resist such illiberal forces–which have arisen many times throughout history, from all sides of the political spectrum –and to defend academic freedom and freedom of speech.

The Declaration also lays out a variety of steps you can take to fight these trends, including joining organizations like Do No Harm. 

To sign the Declaration, simply add your name and affiliation to the end of this document. Thank you for standing with Do No Harm, Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, and so many others to defend academic freedom from divisive ideology – at medical schools and across society.