The vast majority of American educational institutions have succumbed to the “anti-racism” craze, making proclamations and adopting policies that are supposed to advance “equity.” They don’t have any beneficial effects, but failing to adopt them risks trouble with hyper aggressive wokesters.
Consider, for example, Duke University. Its health system drafted an “antiracist” pledge in 2021. Surprisingly, one MD, Kendall Conger, resisted, and wanted to know what, if any scientific evidence supported the notion that racism was the cause of differing group health results.
He writes: “Their fundamental reason for writing the pledge, and its fundamental claim, was that ‘racism is a public health crisis.’ That had not been my experience, nor did it fit my observations, so I asked to see the clinical data the authors had used to form this conclusion. After much back and forth, I received the following reply from a Duke Health senior administrator: ‘I concede that I cannot find a [clinical] trial that proves implicit bias is the cause of worse health outcomes for African Americans. Believe me. I have looked.’”
Of course. This is just one of the many unexamined beliefs that go into the “progressive” case for a radical transformation of America.
When Duke persisted, Dr. Conger wrote again: “I explained that society works best when we try to treat each individual as having equal worth, dignity, and protection under the law. A collectivist system, on the other hand, is concerned with the worth, dignity, and protection of groups. These two systems are mutually exclusive.”
Duke continues to ignore Dr. Conger’s arguments. Let’s hope they don’t cancel him.