Americas medical schools tiptoe away from DEI for now

The Fourth of July is America’s 250th birthday, but we’ve already received an early gift. As of Wednesday, America’s medical schools are no longer being forced to teach discriminatory and divisive DEI ideology to the next generation of physicians — after months of public and political pressure, including from President Donald Trump’s Justice Department. This largely under-the-radar shift will benefit all Americans’ health and well-being: Now, tomorrow’s doctors can focus all their attention on treating patients equally, and with excellent care.On July 1, new accreditation standards go into effect for the United States’ 162 MD- and 46 DO-granting medical schools.The separate accrediting organizations that govern them issue educational standards that all member schools must uphold. And in recent months both organizations have heavily rewritten their standards, completely ditching so-called “diversity, equity and inclusion” mandates. These mandates emphasize political indoctrination over health education — and have no place in the training of doctors.Consider the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, the powerful organization that oversees MD-granting medical schools. Since at least 2015, the committee has required them to teach students to recognize and address “biases in themselves, in others, and in the health care delivery process.”Later, it added required training in “health care disparities and health inequities.” (There’s no evidence DEI helps solve such problems.)The result: In the 2020-21 academic year, 70% of medical schools had instituted a formal anti-racist curriculum.By 2022, 96% of US and Canadian medical schools had incorporated DEI as a “key learning outcome.”The Commission on Osteopathic College Accreditation, which oversees the schools that train doctors of osteopathic medicine, was even more explicit. Its 2023 standards required these institutions to “include a commitment to advancing diversit...