Texas is the state of cowboys, rodeos, and cultural revolution, or at least it will be if advocates of “Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity” (DIE) have their way with UT Austin—the university in the capital of the lone star state—and they are gunning for the school’s medical education next.
As my colleague at the National Association of Scholars, John Sailer, reported recently, student activists demanded that UT Austin change its university policies to foster “social justice” back in 2016. The university’s administrators quickly acquiesced, making plans to weave DIE into the institution’s policies and practices, and by 2018 the University of Texas at Austin published its “Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan.” Soon, every college and school had committees for diversity and inclusion, and DIE was embedded in every layer of the university administration.
Then, in June 2020, amid the Black Lives Matter riots, UT Austin received even more demands from student activists and, once again, acquiesced. Administrators soon released their “Strategic Plan for Faculty Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity,” along with an additional 37-page action plan to be followed. To get a sense of just how rapidly UT Austin fell to DIE, it helps to visualize these trends. Pulling data from NAS’s recent, nation-wide quantitative study on DIE, we can see the dramatic rise of DIE-related language in UT Austin’s social media content since 2016:
Now, DIE advocates are going after Austin’s Dell School of Medicine. They seek to politicize medical education, and ensure that doctors and nurses are credentialed and employed not on the basis of their qualifications, but on their political purity. Jewel Mullen, Dell’s associate dean for “health equity” recommends works such as Ibram X. Kendi’s book How to Be an Anti-Racist, Peggy McIntosh’s essay “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” and Robin DiAngelo’s book White Fragility, later featured in the School of Nursing’s DIE reporting.
This is not just some critical race theory book club, however. Dell’s undergraduate curriculum focuses on “core competencies” so students will develop the “knowledge, skills, behaviors, and attitudes” they will need as healthcare professionals. In 2021, “Health Equity” was added to Dell’s list of core competencies. This criteria demands that students be able to:
- “Demonstrate an understanding of the root causes of health inequities including how the socialization of dominant cultural norms, beliefs and values and application of public policy create these health inequities among defined populations.”
- “Describe how current and historical perceptions of identities such as race, ethnicity, language, sex, sexual orientation, gender, age, ability, culture, socioeconomic status, geographic location, immigration status and their intersectionality lead to the unequal allocation of power and resources and create vulnerabilities that influence health outcomes.”
- “Recognize one’s own power and privilege and demonstrate the ability to leverage them to promote health equity.”
- “Act to disrupt racist perceptions, beliefs, policies and practices in order to advance diversity, equity and inclusion.”
- “Advocate for inclusive interpersonal, institutional and societal practices and procedures through application of understanding the role intersectional identity plays in health inequities.”
UT Austin and Dell Medical School are suffering from an infection of an ideological variety, and the disease happens to be quite contagious and likely fatal. As Dell continues to partner with local area hospitals and its indoctrinated students become healthcare professionals working throughout the region, that infection will surely spread into society at large. UT Austin must be cured, and the politicization of its medical education must end.