Hello, readers. In January, we began a series of reports looking at how diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) measures are transforming our institutions. How, under the guise of progress, these measures are undermining their meritocratic mission.
First, John Sailer revealed how DEI is weakening universities. Then Rikki Schlott explored how these same demands are affecting the arts.
Today, we turn to the medical profession, starting with Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, the former associate dean of curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, who explains how he is turning the tide against DEI in medical education with his organization, Do No Harm. And, in a separate piece that follows, Dr. Sally Satel looks at how trauma therapy—the unproven belief that mental and physical ailments inevitably stem from childhood—has captured the field of psychiatry.
Check out our preview of both pieces below, with links to read the full articles on our site. As always, I am eager to hear what you think in the comments.
—BW
For better or worse, I have had a front-row seat to the meltdown of twenty-first-century medicine. Many colleagues and I are alarmed at how the DEI agenda—which promotes people and policies based on race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and sexual orientation rather than merit—is undermining healthcare for all patients regardless of their status.
Five years ago I was associate dean of curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, and prior to that, codirector of its highly regarded kidney division. Around that time, Penn’s vice dean for education started to advocate that we train medical students to be activists for “social justice.” The university also implemented a new “pipeline program,” allowing ten students a year from HBCUs (historically black colleges or universities) to attend its med school after maintaining a 3.6 GPA but no other academic requirement, including not taking the MCAT (Medical College Admission Test). And the university has also created a project called Penn Medicine and the Afterlives of Slavery Project (PMAS) in order to “reshape medical education. . . by creating social justice-informed medical curricula that use race critically and in an evidence-based way to train the next generation of race-conscious physicians.” Finally, twenty clinical departments at the medical school now have vice chairs for diversity and inclusion.
Although some discussion of social ills does belong in the medical curriculum, I’ve always understood the physician’s main role to be a healer of the individual patient.
At the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, I noticed that trainees were unprepared to care for critically ill patients. It was becoming clear to me that discriminatory practices—such as reserving monoclonal antibodies against Covid-19 for minority patients, and preferential hospital admission protocols based on race—were infiltrating medicine as a whole.
In March 2022, I started a nonprofit called Do No Harm with some acquaintances to combat discriminatory practices in medicine. We began a program to inform the public and fight illegal discrimination. We demand that any proposed changes in medical school admissions or testing standards require legislative approval and a public hearing—and we are getting results.
Our argument is that medical schools are engaging in racial discrimination in service to diversity, equity, and inclusion. We have filed more than seventy complaints with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which exists in large part to investigate schools that discriminate based on race, color, ethnicity, sex, age, and disability. Surely the radical activists never expected anyone to turn the administrative state against them, but that’s what we did.
And it worked—even under the Biden administration.
On the final lap of his book tour last March, Prince Harry sat in a comfy armchair on a living room set with a fire crackling in the background. Opposite him sat best-selling trauma expert, Dr. Gabor Maté.
Maté, 79, a Hungarian Canadian primary care doctor whose maternal grandparents were murdered in Auschwitz, argues that psychological problems and even psychotic illness often stem from childhood trauma. He said he turned to the 38-year-old prince’s memoir Spare as a means of analyzing him—by no means an accepted diagnostic method.
“Reading the book, I diagnose you with ADD,” said Maté. Attention deficit disorder, he went on to say, is “a normal response to normal stress, not a disease.” The dominant stress, Maté said, was the sudden death of Harry’s mother Princess Diana, who was 36 when in 1997 the driver of her car, who was drunk, lost control and crashed inside a Paris tunnel. The prince was just 12 years old when the tragedy struck. (Note: ADD and ADHD are understood by pediatricians and child psychiatrists to be neurodevelopmental disorders, not the result of devastating experiences.)
Ever since Harry’s session with the doctor, I’ve been thinking about its message. Over my decades of work as a psychiatrist, I have seen many patients continuing to nurse the wounds of childhood. Still, many others with unremarkable childhoods develop problems for reasons that have little to do with a troubled upbringing, such as feelings of failure, the inability to find love, or strong genetic predispositions that lead to mental illness later in life.
It may be no coincidence that two of the most popular mental health figures in America today—Bessel van der Kolk and Maté—focus on trauma.
First, they sound good. I am impressed by their sincerity and empathy; they express genuine optimism that their audiences can attain emotional growth.
But I also worry about luring people down the psychological path of least resistance. After all, the trauma narrative provides several comforts: a tidy origin story; a self-justifying narrative for those ashamed of their behavior; and the balm of exoneration that comes with victimhood.
If you’re hungry for more great content, check out these recent Free Press stories, including a look at why Orthodox Jewish women are packing heat, the dish on Tucker Carlson’s ouster from Fox News, and a curmudgeon’s essay on why we bother raising pets...
Great article. Happy to donate to Do No Harm.
"the balm of exoneration that comes with victimhood"
A little boy skins his knee falling off his bike. He naturally cries for his mum and buries his head in her lap and wails. He is a victim and he is comforted. Feels good as almost everyone can remember. Woke Victimhood is a direct extension of that. It's no coincidence that most devout wokies are single, childless, middle or upper class white women -- they need to comfort someone and the Victims are more than happy to fill that need. But the boy's dad would tell him to get right back on his bike.