In The News Archive - Page 13 of 50

DEI oaths in taxpayer-funded medical schools draw legal threats, bump against Trump orders

Rhode Island College got a break a year ago when the Supreme Court declined to review whether its taxpayer-funded officials could be held personally liable for failing a social work studentwho refused to lobby for legislation he opposed, a vehicle for possibly overturning the SCOTUS-created doctrine of “qualified immunity.”

Public universities are still testing the legal limits of what they can force students to say, even if it’s not clear what they expect students to do, prompting confrontations with free-speech groups and likely the second Trump administration, which has wasted no time invoking executive power against all forms of diversity, equity and inclusion.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression sent a legal warning letter Friday to the University of Connecticut School of Medicine for apparently requiring freshmen to recite what FIRE called an “ideologically-charged version of the Hippocratic Oath” at their “white coat ceremony” last summer, which kicks off their medical education. (Starting at 43:30, an official calls the oath “slightly modified and updated.”)

Pfizer resolves conservative challenge to diversity fellowship program

DEI Media Mention

Pfizer has resolved a lawsuit by a conservative group that alleged that a fellowship program that the drugmaker established to boost the pipeline of Black, Latino and Native American people in leadership positions at the company unlawfully discriminated against white and Asian-American applicants.

According to papers filed on Friday in Manhattan federal court, Pfizer will stop accepting new fellows and has already opened its program to applicants regardless of their race after being sued in 2022 by Do No Harm, an advocacy group opposed to diversity initiatives in medicine.

The settlement came after the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Jan. 10 reversed a judge’s decision to dismiss the case and gave Do No Harm a new shot at establishing that it had the necessary legal standing to pursue the litigation.

Read more in Reuters.

Pfizer, Anti-DEI Group End Suit Over Diversity Fellowship

DEI Media Mention

Pfizer Inc. and a conservative group agreed to end litigation challenging the legality of the company’s multi-year Breakthrough Fellowship Program designed to build a diverse pipeline of scientific talent.

Attorneys for the pharmaceutical giant and plaintiff conservative advocacy group Do No Harm made the announcement in a joint stipulation of dismissal filed with the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on Friday.

Pfizer Agrees to End Racially Discriminatory Fellowship, Resolving Anti-DEI Lawsuit

DEI Media Mention

Pfizer has agreed to end its fellowship designed exclusively for black, Latino, and Native American applicants as part of its resolution of an anti-DEI lawsuit, in which the plaintiff argued the program illegally discriminated against whites and Asians.

The pharmaceutical giant said it will stop accepting new fellows to the program, according to court documents approved on Friday. The case is now dismissed following the agreement.

Do No Harm, a policy advocacy group that opposes diversity, equity, and inclusion in medicine, sued Pfizer in September 2022 for illegally barring whites and Asians from applying for its Breakthrough Fellowship Program. Created in 2021, the program sought to boost the pipeline of black, Latino, and Native American leaders within the drug company. By 2025, Pfizer hoped to train 100 diverse fellows.

Pfizer Drops Discriminatory DEI Fellowship After Do No Harm Lawsuit

DEI Media Mention

Pfizer publicly dropped race-based selection criteria from an internship program that discriminated against white and Asian applicants, settling a lawsuit with Do No Harm, an organization committed to safeguarding the medical industry from leftwing ideology.

The pharmaceutical giant settled with Do No Harm after the organization launched a lawsuit challenging Pfizer’s Breakthrough Fellowship program, which originally excluded white and Asian would-be applicants on the basis of their race.

Do No Harm Chairman Dr. Stanley Goldfarb touted the victory, noting that the settlement amounts to an admission from the company that they were previously engaged in unlawful racial discrimination.

Med schools less likely to hire white male professors, study finds

DEI Media Mention

Authors argue it is racial minorities and women who need help

White male doctors are less likely to get hired for entry-level positions, according to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

However, the authors argue the “culture and practices surrounding faculty appointments and promotions” needs to be “transform[ed]” – to support women and racial minorities.

I’m a trans-clinic whistleblower — Trump is right to ban sex changes for kids

Gender Ideology Op-Ed Jamie Reed

Is President Trump pushing gender-confused kids to commit suicide?

This shocking claim hit mainstream and social media within minutes of the president’s Jan. 28 executive order banning federal funding for child sex-change treatments, among other strong policies that will make those treatments less likely.

The way the argument goes, if kids can’t get puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries, their mental health will deteriorate to the point of no return.

Meet the Asian American lawmaker working to end DEI in Iowa

Iowa DEI Media Mention

‘Pervasiveness of DEI’ means ending it will take work at state, federal, and accreditor levels, Rep. Henry Stone says

A retired member of the United States Air Force and former college football coach, Iowa state Rep. Henry Stone never saw his path leading to politics.

But after being prompted to run for office, Stone (pictured) now is championing efforts to end diversity, equity, and inclusion in higher education institutions – both in Iowa and nation-wide.

Medical student sues Minnesota for racial quotas on ‘health equity’ council

Minnesota DEI Media Mention

Three days short of 45 years before the Supreme Court largely invalidated race-based affirmative action in college admissions as a violation of equal protection under the 14th Amendment, it struck down even more blatant racial quotas in medical school admissions.

Yet activists keep finding racial quotas in even government organizations, where they seem hardest to defend, raising the question of how many taxpayer-funded bureaucracies continue flouting a precedent settled since the Carter administration.

Medical advocacy group Do No Harm sued the Minnesota Department of Health on Friday, arguing its Minnesota Health Equity Advisory and Leadership Council‘s racial quotas violate the 14th Amendment and are “demeaning, patronizing, and unconstitutional.”

Read more on Just the News.

Trump issues executive order to ban gender-affirming care for minors

Washington DC Gender Ideology Media Mention Executive

President Trump on Tuesday signed a sweeping executive order meant to broadly restrict access to gender-affirming care for transgender children and teenagers younger than 19, inching closer to fulfilling a key campaign promise to ban treatments that he and his administration have cast as experimental and dangerous, in conflict with major medical associations and transgender health experts.

“Across the country today, medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions,” Tuesday’s order states. “This dangerous trend will be a stain on our Nation’s history, and it must end.”

Affirmative Action Is Still Alive and Well. Trump Can Kill It

DEI Op-Ed Ian Kingsbury, PhD, Stanley Goldfarb

Many institutions continue to discriminate on the basis of race. Here’s what the president can do to stop the practice once and for all.

The death of affirmative action has been greatly exaggerated. Donald Trump knows it — and he’s already moving to end this racial discrimination once and for all.

This is the reality of the executive order that Trump signed on January 21. He ordered the attorney general and secretary of education to ensure compliance with the Supreme Court’s 2023 ban on affirmative action, which is both unconstitutional and illegal. Trump is targeting colleges and universities that receive federal funding, which is essentially all of them.

Trump DEI crackdowns lauded for bringing merit back to medicine: ‘Make healthcare great again’

DEI Media Mention

President Trump is waging war on the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) philosophy entrenched in various U.S. entities, signing an executive order scaling back the practice as he encourages companies in the public and private sectors to prioritize merit in the workplace.

“It’s just enormous, and I think the president is really, really going to make healthcare great again,” Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, chairman of the “Do No Harm” nonprofit, told Fox News while addressing the potential changes to the medical industry.

“I think it’s going to do three things. It’s going to have a huge impact on medical school admissions. First of all, it’s going to demand that medical schools now comply with… the Students for Fair Admission, the famous case in the Supreme Court against Harvard and [the University of] North Carolina,” he added, referencing the landmark 2023 ruling that barred race-based “affirmative action” admissions practices for most institutions of higher education.

Biden embraced diversity efforts. Trump has moved to demolish them.

DEI Media Mention

Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden couldn’t be further apart on values that once were considered foundational American ideals — but no longer are.

While the country never fully embraced or implemented diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), those stood as vital principles and goals to guide the nation.

Not now, thanks to Trump and his aggressive, methodical, fiercely implemented attack on diversity.

Lawsuit challenges DEI-driven racial quotas for Minnesota state board

Minnesota DEI Media Mention

A new federal lawsuit in Minnesota is challenging the racial quotas for membership on the state’s Health Equity Advisory and Leadership, or HEAL, Council, an advisory board tasked with addressing “inequities” in public health policies.

In the suit, Do No Harm, a nonprofit organization of medical professionals, argues the quotas violate the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. The lawsuit comes amid a national shift against diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, driven by the Trump administration’s aggressive rollback of DEI programs.

Trump orders federal DEI staff be put on leave immediately

DEI Media Mention

(The Center Square) – President Donald Trump ordered that starting Wednesday, all federal staff working on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion activities will immediately be put on paid leave.

That announcement came via a memo from the Office of Personnel Management, essentially the federal government’s human resources department. According to the memo, all DEI offices will be closed, and federal agency leaders have until the end of the month to submit plans on how they will close those offices.

All online websites and social media accounts must be removed as well, according to the memo.

Trump Admin To Put All Federal DEI Officials On Leave By End Of Day

DEI Media Mention Executive

The Trump administration will be placing all federal diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) officials on paid leave by the end of the business day Wednesday, a document from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) says.

The OPM memo, which is being sent to the executive agencies as a result of President Donald Trump’s executive order “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEl Programs and Preferencing and Initial Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions,” instructs agency heads to tell all DEI employees that they are being placed on leave immediately.

The move from the Trump administration is an attempt to undo the Biden administration’s wide-reaching campaign to embed far-Left DEI policies and personnel throughout the executive branch. One study from Do No Harm found that the Democrat administration took at least 500 different actions to embed the ideology within the federal bureaucracy and executive branch.

Medical schools ‘skirting’ SCOTUS ruling rejecting race in admissions: report

DEI Media Mention

A new report conducted by nonprofit organization Do No Harm (DNH) is sounding the alarm on medical schools allegedly “skirting” a 2023 Supreme Court ruling rejecting the use of race-based factors in admissions.

DNH says it “represents physicians, nurses, medical students, patients, and policymakers” in an effort to keep “identity politics out of medical education, research, and clinical practice.” The organization had previously released a report where they found “many in the healthcare establishment nevertheless remain ideologically committed to the principle of racial favoritism and reject the virtue of race blindness” despite the high court ruling.

DNH states that a previous report also indicated that the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) “and several medical specialty societies and medical schools” “rebuked” the Supreme Court decision shortly after it was handed down through means that included “veiled threats to circumvent the Court’s decision.”

University of Washington medical school renames directory and opens program to all races after anti-DEI lawsuit

Washington DEI Media Mention

The University of Washington’s medical school recently decided to rename its “BIPOC Physicians Directory” into the “MD Connections Directory,” thus removing the reference to a left-wing racial buzzword in the title of its program.

The school also began advertising that the program is not only available to “Black, Indigenous, and People of Color” but is, in fact, open to all races, according to National Review.

The University of Washington was sued by the anti-DEI group Do No Harm in October for its allegedly discriminatory program.