Florida medical schools should teach medicine, not extremism

Have Florida’s taxpayer-funded colleges and universities embraced divisive and even discriminatory ideas?

That’s the question Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered them to answer in a Dec. 28 letter his administration sent to each school in the Florida College System and the State University System. It’s a valid ask, given the politicization of higher education, and the truth is essential to ensuring that colleges and universities operate at the highest level. Yet the governor and his team may want to pay special attention to institutions that hardly anyone expects: Florida’s public medical schools.

The governor’s order is focused on race-based ideology, especially Critical Race Theory and “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” These concepts typically hold that society suffers from “systemic racism,” while explicitly if not entirely focusing on people’s skin color instead of, say, their character or individual characteristics. They have been used to justify policies like preferential treatment by race in the name of righting past wrongs. No matter the attempted justification, the name for that is racial discrimination.

Read more at the Orlando Sentinel.