Florida medical schools should teach medicine, not extremism | Commentary - Orlando Sentinel

Have Florida’s taxpayer-funded colleges and universities embraced divisive and adjacent discriminatory ideas?

That’s the question Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered them to reply successful a Dec. 28 letter his medication sent to each schoolhouse successful the Florida College System and the State University System. It’s a valid ask, fixed the politicization of higher education, and the information is indispensable to ensuring that colleges and universities run astatine the highest level. Yet the politician and his squad whitethorn privation to wage peculiar attraction to institutions that hardly anyone expects: Florida’s nationalist aesculapian schools.

The governor’s bid is focused connected race-based ideology, particularly Critical Race Theory and “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” These concepts typically clasp that nine suffers from “systemic racism,” portion explicitly if not wholly focusing connected people’s tegument colour alternatively of, say, their quality oregon idiosyncratic characteristics. They person been utilized to warrant policies similar preferential attraction by contention successful the sanction of righting past wrongs. No substance the attempted justification, the sanction for that is radical discrimination.

Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, a erstwhile subordinate dean of program astatine the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, is president of Do No Harm. (Pictures by Todd)

Such toxic ideas person nary spot successful higher education, and taxpayers person a close to cognize however prevalent they are astatine Florida’s colleges and universities. The politician is requiring schools to sanction the “staff, program, and field activities” that absorption connected these concepts, portion besides making wide however overmuch payer wealth is being spent connected them. Surprisingly, Florida aesculapian schools whitethorn beryllium immoderate of the worst offenders.

My enactment has spent the past twelvemonth investigating whether and to what grade aesculapian excellence has been replaced by governmental indoctrination astatine these institutions. What we’ve recovered casts uncertainty connected the prime of acquisition that aesculapian schools supply to the aboriginal physicians who volition dainty Floridians.

The University of Florida School of Medicine is peculiarly bad. Until precocious past year, nether the guise of diversity, equity, and inclusion, it offered a race-based scholarship that banned achromatic radical from applying. It adjacent required that applicants taxable a photograph, surely to beryllium their tegument color. The assistance violated the U.S. Constitution and national law, truthful we filed a civilian rights ailment with the Department of Education, starring the schoolhouse to scrap it.

Despite this change, the UF School of Medicine is inactive steeped successful divisive ideas. It has an Office for Diversity and Health Equity that powerfully influences students and module alike. The schoolhouse promotes resources specified arsenic a publication entitled “Me and White Supremacy,” requires first-year med students to larn astir “health equity” and “distributive justice,” and offers ideologically grounded module training.

It’s a akin communicative astatine FAU’s Schmidt College of Medicine. Its exertion process asks students to reply questions like “How tin you play an progressive relation successful addressing and dismantling systemic racism?” and however they volition code issues similar housing, poverty, and different non-medical issues. Staff grooming videos see statements similar “whites, your beingness reflects and reproduces whiteness” and “systemic racism is you.” The school’s Office for Diversity and Inclusion beats these drums constantly.

Similar points tin beryllium made astir beauteous overmuch each nationalist aesculapian school, from the UCF College of Medicine to the University of South Florida’s Morsani College of Medicine. Yet the afloat grade of extremist ideology successful the state’s aesculapian schools isn’t afloat known, which is wherefore Gov. DeSantis’ bid is truthful important.

Taxpayers — and conscionable arsenic important, patients — person each close to beryllium worried. In different states, race-based ideas person fixed emergence to a big of unsafe policies. That includes requiring aesculapian educators to pledge allegiance to diversity, equity, and inclusion, which violates their free-speech rights and de-emphasizes the probe and expertise that really substance to medicine. We’ve adjacent seen university teaching hospitals denote plans to springiness number patients preferential entree to attraction — an overt illustration of radical discrimination.

Floridians merit to cognize precisely however acold the state’s nationalist aesculapian schools person gone down this extremist road. This contented goes good beyond the prime of the acquisition they provide. Ultimately, it affects the wellness and well-being of everyone who volition 1 time beryllium treated by the physicians these institutions teach. Here’s hoping Gov. DeSantis is connected way to cure this corruption of aesculapian schools, on with the remainder of higher education.

Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, a erstwhile subordinate dean of program astatine the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, is president of Do No Harm. He lives successful Bryn Mawr, Pa.