Leading medical school accreditor pauses DEI rules following Trump executive order

A leading medical school accreditor announced on Friday the suspension of two “diversity” requirements, following a recent federal executive order targeting “diversity, equity, and inclusion” mandates among accreditors.

The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education pointed to external pressures in a news release announcing the decision.

The accreditor cited its hiring mandates, which demand that residency programs and their sponsoring institutions, such as medical schools, implement recruitment and retention strategies to “boost diversity,” medical advocacy group Do No Harm reported.

“As we’ve seen, medical schools subject to accreditation requirements that they pursue diversity objectives are keen to pass the buck and blame their DEI initiatives on accreditors,” Do No Harm staff wrote.

“For residency programs specifically, the ACGME’s decision removes all plausible deniability,” they wrote.

Additionally, Do No Harm Senior Fellow Travis Morrell stated the ACGME “has a monopoly on physicians’ postgraduate education, and was making programs choose trainees, supervising teachers (attendings), and even non-clinician staff based on race,” in a post on X Monday.

He called the accreditor’s decision to suspend its requirements an “encouraging first step.” However, “now it must permanently eliminate these requirements – along with the equity in education rule it still enforces,” Morrell stated.

Read more in The College Fix.