Supposedly neutral institutions meant to determine a school’s quality are turning into ideological enforcers.
Supposedly neutral institutions meant to determine a school’s quality are turning into ideological enforcers.
M edical schools must be woke or lose their accreditation. That’s the threat their administrators are making to state lawmakers who want to get divisive and discriminatory ideology out of these institutions. It’s the latest sign that America’s accreditation regime has been captured by radical activists, and in the case of medical education, their dominance is a direct threat to patient health.
My organization has encountered this threat when testifying in favor of state bills this year. Multiple states are advancing legislation that would bar publicly funded medical schools from requiring that students learn “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” They would be further blocked from forcing faculty members or students to ascribe to these beliefs. Medical schools would also have to require the MCAT for applicants, which many medical schools are abandoning in the name of diversity. These reforms are designed to uphold the highest standards of excellence and ethics in medical education.
In every instance, medical schools and their proxies are warning lawmakers that any legislation would jeopardize their ability to issue degrees. Most of these threats occur behind the scenes, but in several states, they’ve been aired publicly. That includes Tennessee, where the legislature’s fiscal-review committee warned against reform on the grounds that it “could jeopardize . . . accreditation status.”
Medical-school officials were even more blunt in Missouri. In public testimony before a house committee, one said that accreditors “require . . . that we teach principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion in our curriculum.” Another said, “If this bill were to pass, it would be impossible . . . to be in compliance with both state law and accreditation rules.” Such words are clearly designed to frighten lawmakers away from exercising their rightful control over publicly funded medical schools, leaving woke ideology firmly in place.
Where are these threats coming from? The accrediting body for medical schools is the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), which is jointly sponsored by the American Medical Association and the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). Its third of twelve standards declares that “a medical education program . . . recognizes the benefit of diversity.” It further states that a medical school must “achieve mission-appropriate diversity outcomes among its students, faculty, senior administrative staff, and other relevant members of its academic community.” Separately, the AAMC has issued “DEI competencies” that effectively require medical schools to teach woke concepts in the classroom, and the LCME is known to push schools to implement a bigger DEI focus in curriculum.
These demands are not about training future physicians to provide the best care to patients, the whole point of medical education. Instead, they are designed to force medical schools to achieve the political outcome of recruiting more minority students while teaching politicized topics. Less-qualified applicants and less-rigorous medical coursework will inevitably lead to lower-quality physicians providing worse care to patients.
The LCME is serious about forcing medical education down this road. Through freedom-of-information requests, my organization has separately discovered that the LCME is criticizing medicals schools for failing to uphold its diversity standards. At the University of Utah School of Medicine, the LCME’s July 2020 accreditation report dinged the institution for its “diversity/pipeline programs and partnerships,” assessing the school’s performance in that element as “unsatisfactory.” The LCME demanded that administrators “delineate any changes in programs and/or any new programmatic initiatives related to student, faculty, and senior administrative staff recruitment and retention for each of the school’s identified diversity groups.” Other medical schools have reportedly encountered similar demands.
Does this mean that lawmakers should back down? Absolutely not. As a longtime medical educator and a former associate dean of curriculum at a top-tier medical school, I believe threats to accreditation are empty. The LCME will not endanger the jobs of hundreds of faculty members or the futures of thousands of medical students. Over half its voting members represent institutions in red states; they will not want a battle in their own backyard. There is also the strong possibility of an investigation of accreditors by congressional Republicans — another challenge the LCME will want to avoid. Even if it does push to de-accredit institutions, that requires a long remedial process, during which the LCME will have to publicly explain why it’s trying to shut down a medical school for not being radical. Good luck winning that fight.
State lawmakers should keep pursuing reforms of medical schools, with all the speed they can muster. These institutions should recruit students and faculty based on merit, not skin color, and teach science and sound medical practice, not social policy and identity politics. If that’s really a problem for accreditors, let them publicly defend their demands for discrimination and division.