My personal belief is that the degree of DEI radicalism is directly proportional to the adherents’ level of inadequacy in their field. If medical schools can demand DEI obedience to gain admission, I say it’s time to demand that doctors provide their DEI score to prospective patients.
I suppose the fact that they misspelled "determinants" is meant as an act of resistance against the obviously white-supremicist obsession with written language.
I don’t disagree with any of this. It is another example added to the collection of examples on why CRT and DEI are corrosive.
I think the big unanswered question is why? Why did this take hold in universities but not with plumbers from Alabama? A recent episode of honesty wonderfully described where the ideology came from. But not why?
Social contagion as a concept is moving in the right direction. But again why this contagion with these people? Why?
I’m working on a thesis to answer that digging into psychology research. I know the world is waiting with bated breath for the insights of a random person online. This is sarcasm just in case you can’t tell.
But I will ride a wave of hypomania to the answer. Which I am finding, and one day may attempt to get it published. Maybe write a book that I can give to people for free because who cares. I can toss copies out at the local farmers market. Or leave them randomly on the side walk.
(1) Economically: the overproduction of elites has led to a far greater supply of highly credentialed workers than demand for them. The market incentive is to performatively distinguish oneself in a cutthroat application process.
(2) Politically: the Democratic Party’s realignment away from economic issues, instead using race and gender to fuse its base together. Best distilled by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 primary non sequitur: “breaking up the banks won’t solve racism”
(3) Socially: the increasing clustering of the highly educated and progressives in an urban archipelago disconnected in its value system from the heartland- the people herein feel so enlightened and anointed that they, as CS Lewis warned us, now seek “The Abolition of Man”
Follow-on for David’s question: what “archetypal” psychological profile do these three factors create?
An (1) insecure ladder-climber (2) conditioned to see the world through the lens of gender and race who (3) disdains the unwashed masses outside the city walls.
Let’s also give a shout out to the increased prevalence of the dark triad traits fostered in our culture (and the internet only magnifies this trend significantly). See also, Christopher Hitchins’ “The Age of Narcissism”.
(Just want to say that “urban archipelago disconnected in its value system from the heartland” is the most succinct and elegant summary of the West I’ve seen in a long time.)
I would also note that this "anti-racist" cant hasn't gained much purchase in engineering degree programs within the academy, probably because it's more obvious that "getting the right answer" and "being on time" - you know, those allegedly "white-supremicist" notions - actually matter.
Would you want to drive across a bridge designed by civil engineers who were not obsessed with "getting the right answer"?
The STEM sector has been the last bastion but the barbarians are at the gates there as well. In some school systems the SJW administrators are removing first year Algebra as an option for 8th grade students who have completed the prerequisites because those students are predominantly white/Asian. Many Accelerated science programs are either being discontinued because of disproportionate white and Asian enrollment or being converted to non-meritocratic admission schemes. Also, some curricula are introducing the notion of accommodating "non-traditional" methods for arriving at answers in high school math and physics, and characterizing the analytical processes at the heart of those disciplines as Eurocentric-white-oppressor ideals that are only relative and not superior to other cultures' concepts of reality as well as integral to the power of the oppressor. In my community the once exemplary public magnet high school
lost all of its best teachers who left when the system filled their advanced classes with remedial students in order to achieve diversity. DEI practices will inevitably exert greater influence on STEM departments and the diversity agenda will trump talent. Corporations engaged in engineering already have DEI programs in place and few are as dogged as Elon Musk in opposing it.
Today’s TFP article starts with a few paragraphs about The University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s College of Engineering’s focus on DEI — rating one’s understanding of “diversity” equal to one’s academic achievements. Bob K, much as it horrifies and saddens me, the ship has sailed (under the DEI flag)…and it’s getting worse by the day. Have you seen the new hiring criteria for the FAA? You might want to stay on the ground. “Science”? Not when we have TheScience™️…evolutionary biologists are suddenly unable to determine if ancient skeletons are male or female (a task they mastered definitively decades ago) lest their findings offend the all-powerful gender lobby. It’s everything-everywhere-all-at-once.
Why did this take hold in colleges and professional schools but not, as you put it, with plumbers in Alabama?
Because college and professional school professors and students are concerned with being labeled racist among their peers, which would torpedo their careers, not to mention making them pariahs in the faculty lounge. Acceptance by the herd - fitting in - is much more important than the truth; David Mamet has written about this, by the way: “Recessional. The Death of Free Speech and The Cost of a Free Lunch”
That Alabama plumber doesn’t worry about acceptance by his/her peers. He just wants to do a good job for the customer - to pursue the plumber’s truth, if you will.
My plumbers absolutely do care what their peers think (a good knowledge of MMA is big for them)…but their peers have very, very different values than elite university denizens.
I transferred schools from a public university to a private college. Both schools required "Diversity" classes as a graduation requirement. I still resent being forced to spend time and money on them.
I could test out of college algebra and other intro subjects, but there's no way to prove competency on the subject of diversity. Those departments just add to the class load (and tuition revenues) of students.
Don’t under estimate the power of the “like” button in social media.
And the desire to feel like your life has purpose. America’s virtuous mythology is centered around fighting Nazis, defending freedom and fighting identity-based injustice within. Depending on your persuasion, if there’s just not enough purpose in your life, you may LARP by being a social justice warrior and joining the local antifa chapter, or by becoming a prepper and joining a local militia.
I’m not saying the threats these choices try to solve for never exist, just that those threats need not be literally real for people to jump into a group-think ideology and find purpose or belonging. They need only be poetically real.
More thoughts on this… I have a desk job. But nothing helps me sleep at night like a long day working with my hands on, say, a home improvement project. We evolved to exert ourselves physically for a purpose. Even now that we don’t need to, we crave the benefits of physically exhausting ourselves. It’s the same with having a foil or an enemy to fight against. There’s a pent up demand for a villain that we can all agree is bad. And an ideology that feels like it gives structure to that approach (intersectionality, critical theory, oppressors and privilege, anti racism, etc.) might slide in right past all the normal skepticism.
IMHO, you are way overthinking this. Who buys into the racist culture? Mostly academics and those who are looking for an excuse for underachieving. Of course, there is the massive race hustler industry too. But those folks are just salespeople out to make a buck any way they can.
How do academics measure success? Publish or perish. And the way to get published in this day and age is to find a set of publications that have a distinct common mindset and then agree with that mindset. You can even make up your own data to support your advancement of the cause because 1) you don't ever show that data to anyone, and 2) the peer reviews conducted to establish validity and quality of your output is cursory at best. Does not matter how ridiculous your paper is as long as it gets published.
Now contrast that with an apprentice electrician. They work in the real world. Their success is a function of learning real electrical concepts and real-world applications. A good electrician is one who knows what they are doing, and consistently does that. Their work results in a successful project where the clear goals are achieved, and no one gets injured now or in the future. Race has nothing to do with it, and that is obvious to everyone. In fact, the most common encounter with racism that a private electrical contractor has is when they bid on a project where skin color gains one contractor an advantage over another.
Bottom line is that racist academics for the most part don't do very much of anything other than perpetuate their mindset on racism. And that mindset is clearly influenced by making a living and maintaining the status quo. Not only is it not acceptable by their peers to seriously question that mindset, but also a waste of time because few if any journals will publish any dissent.
Contrast that with an electrician. Success follows quality of real-world output, and meeting budget and schedule constraints. And that success has nothing to do with race.
Okay, what I’m writing here is a compliment. Your reply is so well thought out that it makes me wonder if I was under-thinking before posting my thoughts! I think your points are very valid here. It’s just that… these are scientists at a medical school, not humanities PhDs. Do you think they’re being seduced by the short cutting that anti racism affords them in the publication process? Like, even hard science professionals are falling into that trap? Also, this madness came for the corporate world, too. My thoughts were about trying to explain the appeal that I witnessed first hand as a VP in the Ad industry. None of us publish papers. But we did sit on our butts all day, creating beautiful packaging and signage to consumers. A lot of my colleagues gorged on it.
I got a good laugh at your slight of the humanities PhDs. As I was finishing my MS in Education, I was being recruited to pursue the PhD. But I just didn't have much respect for my professors. They just seemed to know a bunch of facts. They were clearly not great thinkers. So, I moved on.
My opinion: After George Floyd, it became fashionable to at least virtue signal to others your acceptance that systemic racism, racial bias, etc. existed and were prevalent. That was pervasive. Didn't matter if you had a PhD or a GED. And as the race hustlers and activists demanded that society do something about it, it was easy for most people to just go along because the actual consequences seemed minimal. Yeah, your employer hired or appointed someone to be the DEI Czar, but that position was largely ceremonial if not invisible.
But for whatever reasons, in academia it didn't remain invisible or ceremonial. Instead, it became celebrated (probably because it was celebrated in D.C. and D.C. had grant money to hand out). And it was jammed into hiring / promotion processes. And it became a whole new avenue of mining grants, publications, credibility, and influence.
And nearly all academics not only need that, they crave it as well. Does not matter if your area of expertise is medicine or CRT. And that will last for as long as the money flows to the converts.
I didn't see much real effect in the corporate world, other than the virtue signaling by Google, Facebook, Apple, et. al. The Ad industry however must have been a real zoo. Out of nowhere, a new just and righteous cause erupted into the mainstream. I'm sure the Ad industry was working 24/7 to take advantage of that.
But back to your question. The publication process. I was listening to an NPR piece on academic fraud. Stunning. This from Nature: The number of retractions issued for research articles in 2023 has passed 10,000 — smashing annual records — as publishers struggle to clean up a slew of sham papers and peer-review fraud. And some of the fraud was by PhDs at the pinnacle of their scientific professions.
We have a real crisis in science. Too many PhDs become convinced that a finding is real and obvious, regardless of the data (assuming that real data is even collected). And so, they write sham papers thinking that the fraud is Ok since the conclusions are valid. But of course, they don't really know if the conclusions are valid. And peer review is an unpaid endeavor that done correctly takes a lot of time and effort. And so, it is rarely done correctly.
Interesting observations about physical exertion, Matthew. I have a job that is non-physical, based in mental effort and interpersonal communications. It pays well, and I don’t need any additional income. Yet I also work one day a week in a warehouse-type environment, because I have always enjoyed physical labor. So —just as I did 40+ years ago —I’m still lifting and stacking boxes, and I think I probably enjoy my workout more than people who pay for a gym membership.
I refer you to James Lindsay, who has devoted himself to answering the question WHY? But you'll need to accept the fact that Marxism took over the academy at least 50 years ago and has informed political theory ever since, and that this is not a conspiracy theory.
In 1969, we were green freshmen when someone from Students for a Democratic Society shoved the works of Herbert Marcuse and Frantz Fanon in our hands, and off we went to a demonstration calling for us to "kill the pigs." "Defund the police" sounds more genteel, but the goal is the same.
Some call this getting an education. Others call it indoctrination. Remember that the founders of BLM proudly referred to themselves as "trained Marxists."
Marxist by definition are concerned with issues of social class and capitalism. Identity politics might take some of the same political tactics, but it is not marxist. The post-modernist, at least the most influential made that explicit.
Yes, Marxism was originally all about class, and as a matter of fact, anti-capitalism, including admiration for Mao's perspective and tactics, is still an important part of modern leftist politics.
But the focus on class has shifted to other forms of identitarianism, in particular race and gender. You're not wrong about post-modernism, but the two streams of thought have melded into the pernicious hybrid that has taken over the academy and worked its way into government. It's an effective method of social control.
The Marxist hatred of individuality remains. Social shaming, cancellation, speech codes, the corruption of children, dismantling of the nuclear family...all come from Mao's playbook. The term Cultural Marxism fits, even though it's not pure and the emphasis on class has faded.
I certainly understand your perspective and agree with much, but when a black person, who is a successful capitalist (using Marxist term) is seen as oppressed, while a proletariat who is white is considered an oppressor any Marxist analysis has been eliminated from consideration. FYI, Marx predicted globalization, and now that we see de-globalization, we can put Marxist predictions to bed (He wrote his works from the 1840s to the 1860s). Useful for 100+ years, but now the world has progressed in ways he couldn't imagine.
“The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground — what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?” Communist Manifesto
"The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles"......CM
"For almost forty years we have stressed the class struggle as the immediate driving riving power of history, and in particular the class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariate as the great lever of the modern social revolution; it is, therefore, impossible for us to co-operate with people who wish to expunge this class struggle from the movement. " Letter 1879
George, I searched around because there was something in the back of my mind that I couldn't dig out, but found it. In the early 1970s there was a famous debate between Noam Chomsky and Michelle Foucault.
"During the debate, Foucault was critical of what he saw as the hidden political power of seemingly neutral institutions. According to him, power is viewed in European society as something which belongs to institutions of political power (such as the government) and related sectors of society such as the state apparatus, police and the army. But according to Foucault, institutions such as the family, schools, universities, medicine and psychiatry all serve to maintain power in the hands of one social class and exclude the other. He saw it as a central intellectual task to criticize such institutions: "It seems to me that the real political task in a society such as ours is to criticize the workings of institutions, which appear to be both neutral and independent; to criticize and attack them in such a manner that the political violence which has always exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight against them."[4]
Chomsky agreed, adding that he concurs not only in theory but also in practice. However, according to him, the main institutions which have to be fought in modern society are economic: namely, financial institutions and multinational corporations. According to Chomsky, even if they present themselves as subject to the democracy of the market-place, they are still autocratic. Power is vested in a minority of owners and managers while the working majority have no real control over the operation of the corporation. According to Chomsky, such institutions gain their power from the domination of market forces in what he saw were the inegalitarian societies of the West."
Foucault rejected the Marxism of his youth. While Chomsky remains a life long Marxist.
Foucault obviously was the leading post-modernist of the time and it is his post modern thoughts that lead directly to much of what is fashionable in academia today; that is the disbelieve in the objective as it is a hidden locus of power.
George, I did enjoy this video. I understand what he is saying, just not buying in.
Marcuse and the other Frankfurt School philosophers were old school Marxist that after arriving to or observing the USA realized the working class was better off than ever before and pretty happy with their consumer goods, vacations, homes, etc. They then surmised the working class must be alienated and distracted from the "real" (RE: material) conditions of their lives and in the case of Marcuse wrote about how to escape this materialism and alienation from their "true" human potential. They tried real hard to fit modern day sensibilities into their Marxist ideology and their experience with the Nazi's. Shedding the culture was about gaining class consciousness............identity politics could be used to shed the culture, but it was in order to bring about a marxist revolution led by the proletariat's.
I see little of the Marxist revolution in current feminism, Islamist, anti-racism or any other of the stuff emanating from the elites. I do see old fashion authoritarian impulses though which infected the various Marxist revolutions as well as the American right and now the left. I think he conflates authoritarianism with Marxism................
Tim Urban, in his book “what’s our problem?” proposes a very clear and well thought-out analysis that addresses the “why”. It’s the best explanation I have read. An excellent read.
A very good discussion of the ‘why’ problem was just given here on TheFP with Bari Weiss talking with Chris Rufo and Yascha Mounk on 27 Jan segment titled: Weekend Listening, the Right Way to Fight Illiberalism.
I mean apart from some broader/generalized and/or "conspiratorial" view, the issues of DEI in medicine and practice do have a basis, as the former Dean acknowledges, there have and currently exist perhaps some biases and disparities when it comes to how practitioners and medical operations treat and deal with minority patients, and with varying outcomes for similar conditions experienced across different demographics. The thing is, this is mostly likely not the result of some deep-rooted racism within White practitioners, or even with practitioners who have a different ethnic/racial/cultural background than that of their patients, and the solution should not be that "white doctors treat only white patients and black doctors treat only black patients, etc", which is impractical on its face let alone "problematic" at its core, but seems to be some sort of desired outcome from modern "DEI" in practice - but is more driven by a probably lack of training and familiarity with treating minority patients and demographic specific conditions and symptoms and medical system interactions.
It's more likely just that the medical field, as it had long sidelined female biologically specific conditions and issues as "hysteria", or used male bodies as the "norm" to diagnose and study various conditions that do have gendered variances in (for example, the symptoms of heart attacks in females turns out to be markedly different than male symptoms, and yet for a very long time the "heart attack symptom list" was predominantly that of male experienced symptoms and most likely did result in many female cardiovascular events going mis-diagnosed and undetected (heartburn, IBS, diarrhea instead), to the detriment of female patients). Etc. So there are also indications that some genetic/metabolic conditions that may be more experienced by minorities often are also under-studied, mis-diagnosed, etc. Or that biases about the backgrounds of various patients may lead to different (and lesser) treatment than symptoms presented by others (pain symptoms in Black women have been found to be minimized/dismissed in practice as "'scrip seeking" while similar complaints in older white patients get the meds).
And again, this may not be the result of "racism", "misogyny" as deeply held beliefs but various biases in medical training, lack of exposure/understanding of the different communities of patients and how they approach the medical system and experience various conditions, etc.
The remedy for this *should* just be expanded medical school training in perhaps using a more diverse patient body study in education and interning, "cultural competency" about how maybe different communities may approach and deal with the medical system itself, etc. With the goal of having a well-trained medical staff that is *excellent* in working with a broad background of patients and recognizing and treating various conditions that may be gender and/or ethnically influenced. But the "in practice" instead is to focus on... "dismantling white supremacy", in the work of dismantling standards, insulting the actual accomplishments in the field as "stolen", etc. Which will make an entire field of medical practitioners of sub-standard quality to serve *everyone* and *anyone*, including the minorities and non-males they are claiming to want to serve. It's so STUPID. It's not only counter-productive to the mission (having an effective field of medical practitioners who can serve a diverse American patient field), but it also discredits the real issues around "DEI" that could be addressed so much more effectively and competently than in its current form of reducing overall standards, imposing rigid ideological conformity and abstract "theories" in the place of established practices, and administrative approved "bullying" of dissenters. And yes - to that end, you can look to more of the other "theories" as to why this approach and implementation of ineffective and corrosive "DEI" was chosen rather than an effective, but less political, and more geared to expertise in the fields rather than administrative bureaucracies : /
"Ironically, the paper also made no reference to the founding of Mount Sinai in 1852 as the Jews’ Hospital, created to provide care to poor Jewish immigrants who, because of antisemitism, could neither obtain jobs as physicians, nor care as patients, in other hospitals."
You mean, Jews are NOT uber-white oppressors, enormously successful in a variety of fields only by marginalizing others?
If I were a brilliant black doctor, film director, or any other professional, I would be upset that my reputation is tarnished by DEI. It’s bad enough that movies must pass DEI standards to be considered for an Academy Award, but if one goes to a doctor and sees that they are black, how terrible that the first thought is ‘are they qualified?’
Imagine boarding a plane and seeing your black pilot and realizing that a few years ago you wouldn't even blink but now you wonder, will this plane fall from the sky? Will our landscape be littered with fallen planes because -- diversity, equity, inclusion. Big yikes.
I think you are starting to understand the real point in all of this. Sowing division and mistrust based on immutable characteristics. They are making people MORE racist so they can point out how racist we all are so they can grab more power and make this less stable. Things like Reparations will do the same thing.
They are creating racism where none used to exist. it's fascinating, ironic and mind-boggling in the most disturbing way. It's actually demonic. I just can't wrap my head around how so many people are this evil/misguided/miserable/ill-intentioned etc. They're ruining everything for everyone, themselves included.
Most of the people (like all humans) are just trying to go with the flow and be 'decent'. Then there is a layer of people profiting over the chaos they are sowing. Greed plain and simple. And then a much smaller layer of people for whom the chaos is the goal. Destabilization tends to lead to populations looking to leadership to fix things, which leads to them having more power. They believe they will largely be insulated from the horrors they are inflicting.
We just watched a film about Dr. Ben Carson this past week. We need more like him who realize it's hard work and dedication, not skin color that determines success in a field like medicine.
There's another side to this that I have seen first hand. We admit applicants to medical school even though they may have lower standardized test scores and GPA (Please, no arguments about that. I was on the admission committee for a UC medical school in the 90s and know this was done.). The student works hard, attend a summer program before classes start, gets tutorial classes, tutors, but leaves the school after a year or two. They now have well over $100k in student debt but no qualification for the kind of salary that would allow them to pay that off. Have we really done them a favor?
The interventions to fix this must begin far earlier than college.
This first picture really sticks with me. I was a medical student in 2014 when the “white coats for black lives” movement started. I was never political but I walked through the cafeteria to get lunch to about 40 students lying down in their white coats with similar signs. I honestly had no idea what was going on until someone informed me that they were lying there for 6 minutes “because that’s how long Michael brown was left with no medical care after he was shot”. Another student nearby said he was an EMT in south Chicago and it was common practice to wait until police or more help arrived before going into a known dangerous area after an officer involved shooting, many times 6 minutes or longer. There was finally a forum about a month later which essentially consisted of an echo chamber and virtue signaling about the incident. At that time the DOJ report had actually come out and given more clarity to the unfortunate events. At the end of the forum I had the opportunity to speak and said essentially a synopsis of what Dr. Flier said, “as doctors we must be objective and have these discussions before making the statement or judgement”. Because of my statement I was asked to speak at a board of directors meeting for the medical school. I was reactant to say yes but was ultimately convinced…..although I was validated in my concerns. I was told to just show up and talk but the “opposition” side had a fancy PowerPoint presentation with school decorum all throughout it and the schools DEI head standing with them. It was a witch-hunt to make me stop speaking up and unfortunately it worked. I just kept my head down in order to graduate.
That is why I am so thankful that there are people continuing to speak up about this. One of my biggest regrets was not continuing to speak up about this lack of objectivity that took hold of medical teaching nearly 10 years ago.
It's in many places in the healthcare industry. Unfortunately business is usual is just to keep our heads down to get by and do our job to help people, as sad as it is.
But it starts to grow and grow to the point where it causes harm and decreases patient care. So IMO it’s not okay to just put our head down and keep following. I’ve had patients refuse my care because I’m not “a person of color”, I’ve seen residents that were borderline dangerous get pushed through because they aligned with BLM, I’ve talked to medical students that were told to acknowledge that one of their classmates identifies as a frog. It has got to stop at some point and we can’t be silent and expect change.
Yes, the growth of the pernicious effects is helped by silence. Yet, since doctors/PA/RN/etc. are licensed professionals, their silence is part of hoping to keep one’s license/livelihood, especially considering the expense of the training for it.
Our youngest son plans to apply for medical school next year. He will take a fifth undergraduate year to be sure he has all requisite pre med classes, and also take the MCAT. GPA is 3.93. He does not check any of the DEI boxes, we're not living out of our car, so "white privelege" might as well be stamped on every page of his application. Ironic (substitute your word) that these decisions are being made by overwhelmingly white academics who never had to navigate this ethical quicksand on their path to professional certifications.
Is our son about to waste a year of his life and a lot of money pursuing a dream that is closed to him? Any practical advice from you would be, well , priceless.
A brief aside; wouldn't you have loved to witness the "OH ______" moment the medical student who identifies as a frog had when time came for the dissection unit in high school biology?....
I was told even back 12 years ago when applying that I better buckle down because I didn’t meet any of the quota boxes for the University of Nebraska’s medical school. They probably weren’t wrong but I also wasn’t the hands down best candidate. It took me 3 years to finally get accepted to a medical school. I think I was just so ticked off by the entire process that I wanted prove a lot of people wrong about not accepting me. Lo and behold I met many other “privileged white males” that were just as ticked as me. That friend group went on to produce some of the highest academic achievers in the school’s history and now are some of the best physicians I’ve been around.
So my main point is that despite all the crap and hoops to jump through, if he is committed enough then it will absolutely be worth it. It will probably even make him an even better physician down the line.
We fight the battles in different ways, and I do in mine; but it is the difference in knowing when to fight and when to wait for the other side to hamstring themselves.
I haven't forgotten the nurse who gleefully boasted on social media about flubbing the blood draw of an elderly male patient who found her "She/Her" button baffling and silly.
The reality is that these people are not morally fit to be involved in medical care.
Between creating woke, Marxist doctors here in America, and importing Muslim doctors from South Asia, where can a Jew go today for medical care by a practitioner that doesn't hate them?
wow, not sure what to say here. Some of the best doctors I've had have come from Asia, where the education focuses on actual care, not politics. What an ignorant statement on your part.
My comment was NOT to question their competency. My longtime PCP is Indian Hindu. I have had two colonoscopies done by a Muslim physician originally from, I believe, Pakistan.
I am questioning whether their anti-Semitism will get in the way of being ethical. If you went to some doctor's Facebook page and you see that he was celebrating 10/7 and celebrated the wholesale slaughter of Jews, would you trust your care to them if you were Jewish? I would be skeptical, to say the least.
plenty of white doctors have shared similar anti-Semitic on social media sentiments after 10/7, as well as similar sentiments about white patients post George Floyd. DEI is now ingrained in US Medical Schools. It's not much different than some law school classmates I had who were openly racist towards minorities (one white dude who called me out repeatedly for being married to an Asian woman).
Balls. Given the current climate--articulated at this site now to the point of irrefutability, this is precisely the awful question people are asking themselves. Is it a thoroughly revolting development? Yes, and I never dreamed we'd be here. But here we are.
Asian and South Asian are very different. A Hindu doctor from India, a doctor from Japan, China, or the Philippines--those are all doctors I would expect to be highly skilled and well-educated in their field.
An Islamic doctor may be skilled and well-educated, but not at all trustworthy around any patient they suspect of being a Jew.
Yes. At the risk of sounding "racist", Asians have a culture of achievement, discipline, and competence and I trust them as providers in the medical field.
If you are referring to a present DEI era medical graduate as a 'woke Marxist' I respectfully disagree. These potentially medically unsound doctors will still want the high earnings their now derided White colonialist, supremacist brethren get.
I hope he writes an opinion piece on how, for lack of another shorthand term, LGBTQ ideology has subverted the foundations of biology and undermined the decades of research and treatment based on the real differences between 'natal' male and female patients.
Amazing the similarity in tone isn't it, to the line Spencer Tracy delivers to Burt Lancaster in "Judgement at Nuremberg":
Lancaster (as Ernst Janning) "Those people... those millions of people... I never knew it would come to that. I never knew it would come to that. You must believe it. You must believe it!"
Tracy (as Judge Haywood) "Herr Janning, it came to that the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent".
Overly dramatic? Maybe. Probably. But where are we headed? Where?
Colin Wright is an evolutionary biologist who has been fighting this nonsensical ideology for years, giving speeches, providing expert testimony in court hearings, writing research papers. He also has a very informative Substack called Reality's Last Stand.
Medicine sure has had a rough couple years... I wonder if that lady thinks white lives are equally worth saving? I wonder who thinks unvaccinated lives are equally worth saving?
I graduated SUNY at Buffalo Medical School in 1969. My degree was "Doctor of Medicine" and not architect of social justice. The M.D. degree required us to pronounce, and take seriously, the Hippocratic Oath, which is famous for "do no harm" but also includes the following often forgotten statement: "Into whatever homes I go, I will enter them for the benefit of the sick, avoiding any voluntary act of impropriety or corruption, including the seduction of women or men, whether they are free men or slaves."
Except for examining patients with the knowledge of genetic predisposition to certain diseases based on race, and that distinction was learned SOLELY for the treatment benefit of the patient (such as Sickle-Cell-Anemia in Black people), color of skin or sexual orientation was never a factor.
My preceptor in the clinical years, James Holland, M.D., a world famous hematologist-oncologist, insisted that every patient was addressed as Mr. or Mrs or Ms. (there were no pronoun issues in those days), and we were never allowed to use a first name. That was drilled into us to teach us that EVERY patient deserved formal respect. Another thing he insisted on was that we do not sit on the edge of the bed of the patient as we were talking to him/her, as that patient deserved their formal "space." RESPECT was taught without special courses in D.E.I.; respect was S.O.P.!!!!
Was there racism in America? Yes. Was there racism in medical research? Yes, as the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment certainly proves and that page in history also revealed a violation of standard medical ethics. Is there a racist physician in the USA? I'm certain there is but it is not prevalent in the least bit and, personally, in the 42 years I practiced Ophthalmology I intersected with hundreds of physicians and never met one who ever even expressed racial ideology!!!
Simply put: physicians treated patients with diseases (note "patients with diseases" and not just diseases). Are there outliers? If you watch any TV channel you will see ads for lawsuits against physicians who were sexual predators, so obviously there are outliers, but the outliers are rare and are seen disproportionately because of social media and class-action lawsuits. Except for dermatologists, physicians did not look at skin color.
In 2005, the State of NJ Board of Medical Examiners, required all licensed physicians to take a course in "cultural competency." Most of the contents of that course was preaching to the choir, as those in my lecture hall looked at each other in wonderment as to why are we re-inventing the wheel? On the examination I took for that course, believe it or not, there was a multiple-choice question regarding how to greet a patient who was from the Fiji Islands. So much for cultural competency courses and requirements!
Medical care is so complex and getting more so. Sadly, IMHO, it is being harmed by Wall Street, which includes the hospital conglomerates, the physician conglomerates, the pharmaceutical industry and the insurance industry. If you need an example, just look at the highway billboards and the TV ads, as all fight for the piece of the pie. It is not harmed by the claims of the D.E.I. movement.
D.E.I. will undoubtedly result in lower quality of care and I always thought that quality of care was what the practice of medicine was all about. Just as you do not prescribe antibiotics for a known viral disease, time spent on D.E.I. courses will be a waste, as the treatment is geared for a disease that does not exist. That time would be better spent on learning about real medical issues, such as disease, new treatments, etc.
Like duh to the equity movement, or is that diversity? In any case, God forbid if I greeted them as if they were from Bora Bora! The trouble is, my own medical profession in NJ succumbed to this nonsense already in 2005.
It"s becoming clear that professionals in Academia are quite adept at lying, obfuscating, manipulating the truth, etc. Why can't a job seeker just lie about their bona DEI
fides? Since those who demand and review this aspect of a persons career are most likely to be great manipulators and less than outstanding intellects they will be easily convinced by the right amount of bull****. Academic institutions deserve what they demand. Wait until the budget cuts and se who's left standing.
My doctor, a concierge physician in suburban CT, tells me that residents coming out of elite universities like Yale are wildly unprepared to actually practice medicine. They are well versed in these insane tenets of anti racism but they can't effectively treat patients. He tells me he is very afraid for the future.
I graduated med school in 1980.Medical school graduates are no longer taught physical exam skills or history taking, which are the real basics of diagnosis.
Now they are taught by instructors who do not have these skills themselves.
When I was a sophomore med student we had an entire semester devoted to physical examination and history taking.
I’m a radiologist and can confirm your observations. The number of elective and “emergent” imaging studies has mushroomed to a large degree because of the near complete absence of physical exams and clinical evaluations performed on patients. CT scans for example are frequently ordered by the triage nurse from the waiting room before a patient is even admitted for the ED or seen by a physician.
Very well done Doctor Flier. Thank you for having the courage and in taking the initiative to share this story. A few years ago I read and listened to Christopher Rufo discuss this insanity. He was (and still is by many no question) considered a radical for speaking out against this ideology. It’s encouraging to now see men like yourself choosing to do what you feel is right and just, simply because you sincerely care about the best outcomes for all.
“I suggested that the term anti-racist, though central to the mission of the school’s Racism and Bias Initiative (RBI), lacked a clear definition in their materials. The RBI discussion leader dismissively responded that “anti-racism was simply opposition to racism,” and that “anyone with a terminal degree should know that.” She then stated that the school’s anti-racism program was not about “encouraging pointless discussions of what anti-racism means.”
I couldn’t disagree more.
This ideology seems like a major airliner that took off in a big hurry, with a lot of fanfare, with all kinds of support, on a very noble mission, but not too long after take off they discovered there was no fuel in the tank, and now it is destined to crash.
And what was that noble mission? Go look at the proponents of RBI / CRT etc. They are all race hustlers trying to make a buck and feel important and powerful. And the quote you reference is the perfect example. These are not scientists. These are snake oil salesmen. But the difference is that the snake oil salesman quickly moves on once he fleeces the fools. The RBI / CRT practitioner instead tries to recruit new followers to grow the scam.
Education has gone out the window with the advent of Critical Race Theory and DEI. Critical Race Theory started in the schools , then to Government, advanced to Corporate America and is now pervasive in every aspect of our society. It is absolute nonsense.
I always thought that medical students would be vulnerable to social justice dogma: they are generally well-meaning individuals who want to do good in the world. I did expect their teachers to be wiser than to fall for it and to offer them some protection from the nonsense. I suppose that enough time has gone by that the professors are now graduates themselves of the social justice school, and that line of defense has crumbled. I confess that in my day at medical school (1976-1981 - takes five years in the UK) the intelligence of my comrades made them relatively resistant to BS, and whilst they learned to say the right words, they were cynical about things like the place of sociology in the curriculum. It took experience and maturity for me to see the value of a good social worker!
But the fact remains that it is hard to come out of medical school having learned enough not to be dangerous to patients. Any teaching in those few valuable years that is not aimed at making new grads safer is going to make it harder still by replacing important medical teaching with claptrap. And while our system of clinical trials is sometimes corrupted by pharmaceutical manufacturers, it is the best we have to be as sure as we can be about medical innovations actually working. It makes my blood boil to see "other ways of knowing" being introduced here. We might as well use a crystal ball or a divining rod to determine if a treatment works if we are going to do that.
Someone here referred to medical schools as trade schools, and that is largely correct. There is tradecraft to be learned, and just as I don't want, say, indigenous science and decolonized mathematics to be used in designing any aircraft I might fly in, I don't want such things to be influencing the treatment I receive from my doctors!
This reminds me of Columbia School of Social Work DEI programs: Decolonizing Social Work and their PROP curriculum. Social workers and doctors provide excellent mental healthcare. Care should be evidence-driven- not a political agenda.
And Hofstra. My friend in their MSW program was required Ibram X Kendi's book to write a paper on and was soon regurgitating the fiction that "black trans women are the most oppressed." That brainwashing will surely come in handy when she's out in the field.
Ugh this comment pissed me off (not you); we got this kind of garbage in my counseling program. I was not popular for pushing back against it, but we had to read "A Race is a Nice Thing to Have" and all of my rhetoric, logic, and debate training from undergrad almost gave me a damn aneurysm reading the circular logic, presumptions, and false assertions. I'm sorry your friend got ideologically captured. If it didn't mean potentially losing my license for having the opposite views and getting investigated, I wouldn't write under a pseudonym.
OMG. I'm too old school to have dealt with that without obvious scorn on my face. Needless to say, any paper I wrote in response would have been scorched earth.
Terrifying for the future of medicine.... so, isn't "racism" treating someone differently based on the color of their skin? Or does it depend on WHICH color? I thought the color of ones skin had no bearing on their.
aptitude, abilities, intelligence, skills...etc. and certainly for medicine, shouldn't we be focused on TRUE color-blind equality to get the best doctors, surgeons, medical personnel? This SURELY should be outcome driven. DEI flies in the face of getting the best-qualified people in the appropriate spots!
I work for a hospital. We received a pdf on strategy for the coming year that included this in order from the CFO
2024 Goals
Diversity Equity Inclusion
ESG
Social Determinents of Health
Find savings on IT Spend
Hmm, maybe if we quit focusing on things that have nothing to do with health, we would have the money for IT upgrades.
having recently moved and having to find a new doctor I specifically excluded anyone who graduated from medical school within the last 10 years.
Unfortunately, we might have to start refusing to fly commercial with pilots who were hired recently.
Or because of technicians bolting on door plugs.
Wow...that's saying somewthing.
My personal belief is that the degree of DEI radicalism is directly proportional to the adherents’ level of inadequacy in their field. If medical schools can demand DEI obedience to gain admission, I say it’s time to demand that doctors provide their DEI score to prospective patients.
I suppose the fact that they misspelled "determinants" is meant as an act of resistance against the obviously white-supremicist obsession with written language.
OMG I didn't catch that. Priceless.
I’m looking for Doctors and Hospitals that use only two acronyms:
1. DNH- DO NO HARM
2. ALL- ALL LIVES MATTER
where will you find those? are any practioners/hospitals using these identifiers?
🤦
I don’t disagree with any of this. It is another example added to the collection of examples on why CRT and DEI are corrosive.
I think the big unanswered question is why? Why did this take hold in universities but not with plumbers from Alabama? A recent episode of honesty wonderfully described where the ideology came from. But not why?
Social contagion as a concept is moving in the right direction. But again why this contagion with these people? Why?
I’m working on a thesis to answer that digging into psychology research. I know the world is waiting with bated breath for the insights of a random person online. This is sarcasm just in case you can’t tell.
But I will ride a wave of hypomania to the answer. Which I am finding, and one day may attempt to get it published. Maybe write a book that I can give to people for free because who cares. I can toss copies out at the local farmers market. Or leave them randomly on the side walk.
To answer “why?”:
(1) Economically: the overproduction of elites has led to a far greater supply of highly credentialed workers than demand for them. The market incentive is to performatively distinguish oneself in a cutthroat application process.
(2) Politically: the Democratic Party’s realignment away from economic issues, instead using race and gender to fuse its base together. Best distilled by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 primary non sequitur: “breaking up the banks won’t solve racism”
(3) Socially: the increasing clustering of the highly educated and progressives in an urban archipelago disconnected in its value system from the heartland- the people herein feel so enlightened and anointed that they, as CS Lewis warned us, now seek “The Abolition of Man”
Follow-on for David’s question: what “archetypal” psychological profile do these three factors create?
An (1) insecure ladder-climber (2) conditioned to see the world through the lens of gender and race who (3) disdains the unwashed masses outside the city walls.
A good basis for the psychological analysis, yes?
Let’s also give a shout out to the increased prevalence of the dark triad traits fostered in our culture (and the internet only magnifies this trend significantly). See also, Christopher Hitchins’ “The Age of Narcissism”.
Well put.
(Just want to say that “urban archipelago disconnected in its value system from the heartland” is the most succinct and elegant summary of the West I’ve seen in a long time.)
I would also note that this "anti-racist" cant hasn't gained much purchase in engineering degree programs within the academy, probably because it's more obvious that "getting the right answer" and "being on time" - you know, those allegedly "white-supremicist" notions - actually matter.
Would you want to drive across a bridge designed by civil engineers who were not obsessed with "getting the right answer"?
The STEM sector has been the last bastion but the barbarians are at the gates there as well. In some school systems the SJW administrators are removing first year Algebra as an option for 8th grade students who have completed the prerequisites because those students are predominantly white/Asian. Many Accelerated science programs are either being discontinued because of disproportionate white and Asian enrollment or being converted to non-meritocratic admission schemes. Also, some curricula are introducing the notion of accommodating "non-traditional" methods for arriving at answers in high school math and physics, and characterizing the analytical processes at the heart of those disciplines as Eurocentric-white-oppressor ideals that are only relative and not superior to other cultures' concepts of reality as well as integral to the power of the oppressor. In my community the once exemplary public magnet high school
lost all of its best teachers who left when the system filled their advanced classes with remedial students in order to achieve diversity. DEI practices will inevitably exert greater influence on STEM departments and the diversity agenda will trump talent. Corporations engaged in engineering already have DEI programs in place and few are as dogged as Elon Musk in opposing it.
This is an excellent summary of the situation, and dire outcomes are to be expected,
Sounds like the movie Idiocracy was a prediction that is slowly coming true.
Today’s TFP article starts with a few paragraphs about The University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s College of Engineering’s focus on DEI — rating one’s understanding of “diversity” equal to one’s academic achievements. Bob K, much as it horrifies and saddens me, the ship has sailed (under the DEI flag)…and it’s getting worse by the day. Have you seen the new hiring criteria for the FAA? You might want to stay on the ground. “Science”? Not when we have TheScience™️…evolutionary biologists are suddenly unable to determine if ancient skeletons are male or female (a task they mastered definitively decades ago) lest their findings offend the all-powerful gender lobby. It’s everything-everywhere-all-at-once.
No. But I don't want to be treated by a doctor without those skills either. Wait. Never mind.
Because the "long march through the institutions" didn't include trade programs. There's your book.
Actually, it has. It's just that the students tend to be more resistant to it.
Why did this take hold in colleges and professional schools but not, as you put it, with plumbers in Alabama?
Because college and professional school professors and students are concerned with being labeled racist among their peers, which would torpedo their careers, not to mention making them pariahs in the faculty lounge. Acceptance by the herd - fitting in - is much more important than the truth; David Mamet has written about this, by the way: “Recessional. The Death of Free Speech and The Cost of a Free Lunch”
That Alabama plumber doesn’t worry about acceptance by his/her peers. He just wants to do a good job for the customer - to pursue the plumber’s truth, if you will.
My plumbers absolutely do care what their peers think (a good knowledge of MMA is big for them)…but their peers have very, very different values than elite university denizens.
I transferred schools from a public university to a private college. Both schools required "Diversity" classes as a graduation requirement. I still resent being forced to spend time and money on them.
I could test out of college algebra and other intro subjects, but there's no way to prove competency on the subject of diversity. Those departments just add to the class load (and tuition revenues) of students.
They also provide funding for graduate students in the relevant departments at the expense of other possible electives.
I would have preferred to take a foreign language as an elective. I still don't understand why that wouldn't fulfill the "diversity" requirement.
Don’t under estimate the power of the “like” button in social media.
And the desire to feel like your life has purpose. America’s virtuous mythology is centered around fighting Nazis, defending freedom and fighting identity-based injustice within. Depending on your persuasion, if there’s just not enough purpose in your life, you may LARP by being a social justice warrior and joining the local antifa chapter, or by becoming a prepper and joining a local militia.
I’m not saying the threats these choices try to solve for never exist, just that those threats need not be literally real for people to jump into a group-think ideology and find purpose or belonging. They need only be poetically real.
More thoughts on this… I have a desk job. But nothing helps me sleep at night like a long day working with my hands on, say, a home improvement project. We evolved to exert ourselves physically for a purpose. Even now that we don’t need to, we crave the benefits of physically exhausting ourselves. It’s the same with having a foil or an enemy to fight against. There’s a pent up demand for a villain that we can all agree is bad. And an ideology that feels like it gives structure to that approach (intersectionality, critical theory, oppressors and privilege, anti racism, etc.) might slide in right past all the normal skepticism.
Trades people feel their purpose fulfilled by virtue of constantly building useful things for humanity with their hands.
IMHO, you are way overthinking this. Who buys into the racist culture? Mostly academics and those who are looking for an excuse for underachieving. Of course, there is the massive race hustler industry too. But those folks are just salespeople out to make a buck any way they can.
How do academics measure success? Publish or perish. And the way to get published in this day and age is to find a set of publications that have a distinct common mindset and then agree with that mindset. You can even make up your own data to support your advancement of the cause because 1) you don't ever show that data to anyone, and 2) the peer reviews conducted to establish validity and quality of your output is cursory at best. Does not matter how ridiculous your paper is as long as it gets published.
Now contrast that with an apprentice electrician. They work in the real world. Their success is a function of learning real electrical concepts and real-world applications. A good electrician is one who knows what they are doing, and consistently does that. Their work results in a successful project where the clear goals are achieved, and no one gets injured now or in the future. Race has nothing to do with it, and that is obvious to everyone. In fact, the most common encounter with racism that a private electrical contractor has is when they bid on a project where skin color gains one contractor an advantage over another.
Bottom line is that racist academics for the most part don't do very much of anything other than perpetuate their mindset on racism. And that mindset is clearly influenced by making a living and maintaining the status quo. Not only is it not acceptable by their peers to seriously question that mindset, but also a waste of time because few if any journals will publish any dissent.
Contrast that with an electrician. Success follows quality of real-world output, and meeting budget and schedule constraints. And that success has nothing to do with race.
When's the last time you really cared what color or gender your plumber, electrician or HVAC tech was as long as they did a good job?
And where's the DIE in the NBA?
Okay, what I’m writing here is a compliment. Your reply is so well thought out that it makes me wonder if I was under-thinking before posting my thoughts! I think your points are very valid here. It’s just that… these are scientists at a medical school, not humanities PhDs. Do you think they’re being seduced by the short cutting that anti racism affords them in the publication process? Like, even hard science professionals are falling into that trap? Also, this madness came for the corporate world, too. My thoughts were about trying to explain the appeal that I witnessed first hand as a VP in the Ad industry. None of us publish papers. But we did sit on our butts all day, creating beautiful packaging and signage to consumers. A lot of my colleagues gorged on it.
I got a good laugh at your slight of the humanities PhDs. As I was finishing my MS in Education, I was being recruited to pursue the PhD. But I just didn't have much respect for my professors. They just seemed to know a bunch of facts. They were clearly not great thinkers. So, I moved on.
My opinion: After George Floyd, it became fashionable to at least virtue signal to others your acceptance that systemic racism, racial bias, etc. existed and were prevalent. That was pervasive. Didn't matter if you had a PhD or a GED. And as the race hustlers and activists demanded that society do something about it, it was easy for most people to just go along because the actual consequences seemed minimal. Yeah, your employer hired or appointed someone to be the DEI Czar, but that position was largely ceremonial if not invisible.
But for whatever reasons, in academia it didn't remain invisible or ceremonial. Instead, it became celebrated (probably because it was celebrated in D.C. and D.C. had grant money to hand out). And it was jammed into hiring / promotion processes. And it became a whole new avenue of mining grants, publications, credibility, and influence.
And nearly all academics not only need that, they crave it as well. Does not matter if your area of expertise is medicine or CRT. And that will last for as long as the money flows to the converts.
I didn't see much real effect in the corporate world, other than the virtue signaling by Google, Facebook, Apple, et. al. The Ad industry however must have been a real zoo. Out of nowhere, a new just and righteous cause erupted into the mainstream. I'm sure the Ad industry was working 24/7 to take advantage of that.
But back to your question. The publication process. I was listening to an NPR piece on academic fraud. Stunning. This from Nature: The number of retractions issued for research articles in 2023 has passed 10,000 — smashing annual records — as publishers struggle to clean up a slew of sham papers and peer-review fraud. And some of the fraud was by PhDs at the pinnacle of their scientific professions.
We have a real crisis in science. Too many PhDs become convinced that a finding is real and obvious, regardless of the data (assuming that real data is even collected). And so, they write sham papers thinking that the fraud is Ok since the conclusions are valid. But of course, they don't really know if the conclusions are valid. And peer review is an unpaid endeavor that done correctly takes a lot of time and effort. And so, it is rarely done correctly.
beautifully stated my friend
Interesting observations about physical exertion, Matthew. I have a job that is non-physical, based in mental effort and interpersonal communications. It pays well, and I don’t need any additional income. Yet I also work one day a week in a warehouse-type environment, because I have always enjoyed physical labor. So —just as I did 40+ years ago —I’m still lifting and stacking boxes, and I think I probably enjoy my workout more than people who pay for a gym membership.
Judging from the way accusations of Nazism are tossed around most do not even know what/who Nazis are anymore.
I refer you to James Lindsay, who has devoted himself to answering the question WHY? But you'll need to accept the fact that Marxism took over the academy at least 50 years ago and has informed political theory ever since, and that this is not a conspiracy theory.
In 1969, we were green freshmen when someone from Students for a Democratic Society shoved the works of Herbert Marcuse and Frantz Fanon in our hands, and off we went to a demonstration calling for us to "kill the pigs." "Defund the police" sounds more genteel, but the goal is the same.
Some call this getting an education. Others call it indoctrination. Remember that the founders of BLM proudly referred to themselves as "trained Marxists."
See Lindsay & Pluckrose's "New Discourses," Lindsay's website of the same name, and for a quick course: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvgR2MHqucI&t=350s
Marxist by definition are concerned with issues of social class and capitalism. Identity politics might take some of the same political tactics, but it is not marxist. The post-modernist, at least the most influential made that explicit.
Yes, Marxism was originally all about class, and as a matter of fact, anti-capitalism, including admiration for Mao's perspective and tactics, is still an important part of modern leftist politics.
But the focus on class has shifted to other forms of identitarianism, in particular race and gender. You're not wrong about post-modernism, but the two streams of thought have melded into the pernicious hybrid that has taken over the academy and worked its way into government. It's an effective method of social control.
The Marxist hatred of individuality remains. Social shaming, cancellation, speech codes, the corruption of children, dismantling of the nuclear family...all come from Mao's playbook. The term Cultural Marxism fits, even though it's not pure and the emphasis on class has faded.
Of course, one is free to use the term or not.
I certainly understand your perspective and agree with much, but when a black person, who is a successful capitalist (using Marxist term) is seen as oppressed, while a proletariat who is white is considered an oppressor any Marxist analysis has been eliminated from consideration. FYI, Marx predicted globalization, and now that we see de-globalization, we can put Marxist predictions to bed (He wrote his works from the 1840s to the 1860s). Useful for 100+ years, but now the world has progressed in ways he couldn't imagine.
“The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground — what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?” Communist Manifesto
"The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles"......CM
"For almost forty years we have stressed the class struggle as the immediate driving riving power of history, and in particular the class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariate as the great lever of the modern social revolution; it is, therefore, impossible for us to co-operate with people who wish to expunge this class struggle from the movement. " Letter 1879
Dave, I think you would enjoy this analysis, which argues that everything that is going on now IS Marxism. https://youtu.be/OVZPYQS1dFA?si=0yBCHHg6C6J2LBEW
George, I searched around because there was something in the back of my mind that I couldn't dig out, but found it. In the early 1970s there was a famous debate between Noam Chomsky and Michelle Foucault.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky–Foucault_debate
Here is the relevant recounting:
"During the debate, Foucault was critical of what he saw as the hidden political power of seemingly neutral institutions. According to him, power is viewed in European society as something which belongs to institutions of political power (such as the government) and related sectors of society such as the state apparatus, police and the army. But according to Foucault, institutions such as the family, schools, universities, medicine and psychiatry all serve to maintain power in the hands of one social class and exclude the other. He saw it as a central intellectual task to criticize such institutions: "It seems to me that the real political task in a society such as ours is to criticize the workings of institutions, which appear to be both neutral and independent; to criticize and attack them in such a manner that the political violence which has always exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight against them."[4]
Chomsky agreed, adding that he concurs not only in theory but also in practice. However, according to him, the main institutions which have to be fought in modern society are economic: namely, financial institutions and multinational corporations. According to Chomsky, even if they present themselves as subject to the democracy of the market-place, they are still autocratic. Power is vested in a minority of owners and managers while the working majority have no real control over the operation of the corporation. According to Chomsky, such institutions gain their power from the domination of market forces in what he saw were the inegalitarian societies of the West."
Foucault rejected the Marxism of his youth. While Chomsky remains a life long Marxist.
Foucault obviously was the leading post-modernist of the time and it is his post modern thoughts that lead directly to much of what is fashionable in academia today; that is the disbelieve in the objective as it is a hidden locus of power.
George, I did enjoy this video. I understand what he is saying, just not buying in.
Marcuse and the other Frankfurt School philosophers were old school Marxist that after arriving to or observing the USA realized the working class was better off than ever before and pretty happy with their consumer goods, vacations, homes, etc. They then surmised the working class must be alienated and distracted from the "real" (RE: material) conditions of their lives and in the case of Marcuse wrote about how to escape this materialism and alienation from their "true" human potential. They tried real hard to fit modern day sensibilities into their Marxist ideology and their experience with the Nazi's. Shedding the culture was about gaining class consciousness............identity politics could be used to shed the culture, but it was in order to bring about a marxist revolution led by the proletariat's.
I see little of the Marxist revolution in current feminism, Islamist, anti-racism or any other of the stuff emanating from the elites. I do see old fashion authoritarian impulses though which infected the various Marxist revolutions as well as the American right and now the left. I think he conflates authoritarianism with Marxism................
Tim Urban, in his book “what’s our problem?” proposes a very clear and well thought-out analysis that addresses the “why”. It’s the best explanation I have read. An excellent read.
If you have not done so, check out Rob Henderson. He offers some interesting insights.
A very good discussion of the ‘why’ problem was just given here on TheFP with Bari Weiss talking with Chris Rufo and Yascha Mounk on 27 Jan segment titled: Weekend Listening, the Right Way to Fight Illiberalism.
corrosive is the right word.
It seems like McCarthyism. Jordan Peterson has some interesting ideas about the issue of why this is happening.
I mean apart from some broader/generalized and/or "conspiratorial" view, the issues of DEI in medicine and practice do have a basis, as the former Dean acknowledges, there have and currently exist perhaps some biases and disparities when it comes to how practitioners and medical operations treat and deal with minority patients, and with varying outcomes for similar conditions experienced across different demographics. The thing is, this is mostly likely not the result of some deep-rooted racism within White practitioners, or even with practitioners who have a different ethnic/racial/cultural background than that of their patients, and the solution should not be that "white doctors treat only white patients and black doctors treat only black patients, etc", which is impractical on its face let alone "problematic" at its core, but seems to be some sort of desired outcome from modern "DEI" in practice - but is more driven by a probably lack of training and familiarity with treating minority patients and demographic specific conditions and symptoms and medical system interactions.
It's more likely just that the medical field, as it had long sidelined female biologically specific conditions and issues as "hysteria", or used male bodies as the "norm" to diagnose and study various conditions that do have gendered variances in (for example, the symptoms of heart attacks in females turns out to be markedly different than male symptoms, and yet for a very long time the "heart attack symptom list" was predominantly that of male experienced symptoms and most likely did result in many female cardiovascular events going mis-diagnosed and undetected (heartburn, IBS, diarrhea instead), to the detriment of female patients). Etc. So there are also indications that some genetic/metabolic conditions that may be more experienced by minorities often are also under-studied, mis-diagnosed, etc. Or that biases about the backgrounds of various patients may lead to different (and lesser) treatment than symptoms presented by others (pain symptoms in Black women have been found to be minimized/dismissed in practice as "'scrip seeking" while similar complaints in older white patients get the meds).
And again, this may not be the result of "racism", "misogyny" as deeply held beliefs but various biases in medical training, lack of exposure/understanding of the different communities of patients and how they approach the medical system and experience various conditions, etc.
The remedy for this *should* just be expanded medical school training in perhaps using a more diverse patient body study in education and interning, "cultural competency" about how maybe different communities may approach and deal with the medical system itself, etc. With the goal of having a well-trained medical staff that is *excellent* in working with a broad background of patients and recognizing and treating various conditions that may be gender and/or ethnically influenced. But the "in practice" instead is to focus on... "dismantling white supremacy", in the work of dismantling standards, insulting the actual accomplishments in the field as "stolen", etc. Which will make an entire field of medical practitioners of sub-standard quality to serve *everyone* and *anyone*, including the minorities and non-males they are claiming to want to serve. It's so STUPID. It's not only counter-productive to the mission (having an effective field of medical practitioners who can serve a diverse American patient field), but it also discredits the real issues around "DEI" that could be addressed so much more effectively and competently than in its current form of reducing overall standards, imposing rigid ideological conformity and abstract "theories" in the place of established practices, and administrative approved "bullying" of dissenters. And yes - to that end, you can look to more of the other "theories" as to why this approach and implementation of ineffective and corrosive "DEI" was chosen rather than an effective, but less political, and more geared to expertise in the fields rather than administrative bureaucracies : /
"Ironically, the paper also made no reference to the founding of Mount Sinai in 1852 as the Jews’ Hospital, created to provide care to poor Jewish immigrants who, because of antisemitism, could neither obtain jobs as physicians, nor care as patients, in other hospitals."
You mean, Jews are NOT uber-white oppressors, enormously successful in a variety of fields only by marginalizing others?
Who woulda thought.
If I were a brilliant black doctor, film director, or any other professional, I would be upset that my reputation is tarnished by DEI. It’s bad enough that movies must pass DEI standards to be considered for an Academy Award, but if one goes to a doctor and sees that they are black, how terrible that the first thought is ‘are they qualified?’
Imagine boarding a plane and seeing your black pilot and realizing that a few years ago you wouldn't even blink but now you wonder, will this plane fall from the sky? Will our landscape be littered with fallen planes because -- diversity, equity, inclusion. Big yikes.
I think you are starting to understand the real point in all of this. Sowing division and mistrust based on immutable characteristics. They are making people MORE racist so they can point out how racist we all are so they can grab more power and make this less stable. Things like Reparations will do the same thing.
They are creating racism where none used to exist. it's fascinating, ironic and mind-boggling in the most disturbing way. It's actually demonic. I just can't wrap my head around how so many people are this evil/misguided/miserable/ill-intentioned etc. They're ruining everything for everyone, themselves included.
Most of the people (like all humans) are just trying to go with the flow and be 'decent'. Then there is a layer of people profiting over the chaos they are sowing. Greed plain and simple. And then a much smaller layer of people for whom the chaos is the goal. Destabilization tends to lead to populations looking to leadership to fix things, which leads to them having more power. They believe they will largely be insulated from the horrors they are inflicting.
Don't go to any non Jewish physicians is my solution.
Works for me.
We just watched a film about Dr. Ben Carson this past week. We need more like him who realize it's hard work and dedication, not skin color that determines success in a field like medicine.
There is good and brilliance in all humanity. It's not evenly distributed. We get more than other demographics. The blacks get less.
The 'soft bigotry of low expectations.'
There's another side to this that I have seen first hand. We admit applicants to medical school even though they may have lower standardized test scores and GPA (Please, no arguments about that. I was on the admission committee for a UC medical school in the 90s and know this was done.). The student works hard, attend a summer program before classes start, gets tutorial classes, tutors, but leaves the school after a year or two. They now have well over $100k in student debt but no qualification for the kind of salary that would allow them to pay that off. Have we really done them a favor?
The interventions to fix this must begin far earlier than college.
This first picture really sticks with me. I was a medical student in 2014 when the “white coats for black lives” movement started. I was never political but I walked through the cafeteria to get lunch to about 40 students lying down in their white coats with similar signs. I honestly had no idea what was going on until someone informed me that they were lying there for 6 minutes “because that’s how long Michael brown was left with no medical care after he was shot”. Another student nearby said he was an EMT in south Chicago and it was common practice to wait until police or more help arrived before going into a known dangerous area after an officer involved shooting, many times 6 minutes or longer. There was finally a forum about a month later which essentially consisted of an echo chamber and virtue signaling about the incident. At that time the DOJ report had actually come out and given more clarity to the unfortunate events. At the end of the forum I had the opportunity to speak and said essentially a synopsis of what Dr. Flier said, “as doctors we must be objective and have these discussions before making the statement or judgement”. Because of my statement I was asked to speak at a board of directors meeting for the medical school. I was reactant to say yes but was ultimately convinced…..although I was validated in my concerns. I was told to just show up and talk but the “opposition” side had a fancy PowerPoint presentation with school decorum all throughout it and the schools DEI head standing with them. It was a witch-hunt to make me stop speaking up and unfortunately it worked. I just kept my head down in order to graduate.
That is why I am so thankful that there are people continuing to speak up about this. One of my biggest regrets was not continuing to speak up about this lack of objectivity that took hold of medical teaching nearly 10 years ago.
It's in many places in the healthcare industry. Unfortunately business is usual is just to keep our heads down to get by and do our job to help people, as sad as it is.
But it starts to grow and grow to the point where it causes harm and decreases patient care. So IMO it’s not okay to just put our head down and keep following. I’ve had patients refuse my care because I’m not “a person of color”, I’ve seen residents that were borderline dangerous get pushed through because they aligned with BLM, I’ve talked to medical students that were told to acknowledge that one of their classmates identifies as a frog. It has got to stop at some point and we can’t be silent and expect change.
Yes, the growth of the pernicious effects is helped by silence. Yet, since doctors/PA/RN/etc. are licensed professionals, their silence is part of hoping to keep one’s license/livelihood, especially considering the expense of the training for it.
Our youngest son plans to apply for medical school next year. He will take a fifth undergraduate year to be sure he has all requisite pre med classes, and also take the MCAT. GPA is 3.93. He does not check any of the DEI boxes, we're not living out of our car, so "white privelege" might as well be stamped on every page of his application. Ironic (substitute your word) that these decisions are being made by overwhelmingly white academics who never had to navigate this ethical quicksand on their path to professional certifications.
Is our son about to waste a year of his life and a lot of money pursuing a dream that is closed to him? Any practical advice from you would be, well , priceless.
A brief aside; wouldn't you have loved to witness the "OH ______" moment the medical student who identifies as a frog had when time came for the dissection unit in high school biology?....
I was told even back 12 years ago when applying that I better buckle down because I didn’t meet any of the quota boxes for the University of Nebraska’s medical school. They probably weren’t wrong but I also wasn’t the hands down best candidate. It took me 3 years to finally get accepted to a medical school. I think I was just so ticked off by the entire process that I wanted prove a lot of people wrong about not accepting me. Lo and behold I met many other “privileged white males” that were just as ticked as me. That friend group went on to produce some of the highest academic achievers in the school’s history and now are some of the best physicians I’ve been around.
So my main point is that despite all the crap and hoops to jump through, if he is committed enough then it will absolutely be worth it. It will probably even make him an even better physician down the line.
We fight the battles in different ways, and I do in mine; but it is the difference in knowing when to fight and when to wait for the other side to hamstring themselves.
I haven't forgotten the nurse who gleefully boasted on social media about flubbing the blood draw of an elderly male patient who found her "She/Her" button baffling and silly.
The reality is that these people are not morally fit to be involved in medical care.
Between creating woke, Marxist doctors here in America, and importing Muslim doctors from South Asia, where can a Jew go today for medical care by a practitioner that doesn't hate them?
wow, not sure what to say here. Some of the best doctors I've had have come from Asia, where the education focuses on actual care, not politics. What an ignorant statement on your part.
My comment was NOT to question their competency. My longtime PCP is Indian Hindu. I have had two colonoscopies done by a Muslim physician originally from, I believe, Pakistan.
I am questioning whether their anti-Semitism will get in the way of being ethical. If you went to some doctor's Facebook page and you see that he was celebrating 10/7 and celebrated the wholesale slaughter of Jews, would you trust your care to them if you were Jewish? I would be skeptical, to say the least.
plenty of white doctors have shared similar anti-Semitic on social media sentiments after 10/7, as well as similar sentiments about white patients post George Floyd. DEI is now ingrained in US Medical Schools. It's not much different than some law school classmates I had who were openly racist towards minorities (one white dude who called me out repeatedly for being married to an Asian woman).
Balls. Given the current climate--articulated at this site now to the point of irrefutability, this is precisely the awful question people are asking themselves. Is it a thoroughly revolting development? Yes, and I never dreamed we'd be here. But here we are.
Asian and South Asian are very different. A Hindu doctor from India, a doctor from Japan, China, or the Philippines--those are all doctors I would expect to be highly skilled and well-educated in their field.
An Islamic doctor may be skilled and well-educated, but not at all trustworthy around any patient they suspect of being a Jew.
Yes. At the risk of sounding "racist", Asians have a culture of achievement, discipline, and competence and I trust them as providers in the medical field.
See my comment to Hopcat.
If you are referring to a present DEI era medical graduate as a 'woke Marxist' I respectfully disagree. These potentially medically unsound doctors will still want the high earnings their now derided White colonialist, supremacist brethren get.
I hope he writes an opinion piece on how, for lack of another shorthand term, LGBTQ ideology has subverted the foundations of biology and undermined the decades of research and treatment based on the real differences between 'natal' male and female patients.
All it takes is a good doctor, when he's asked to call a man with a Y chromosome and a penis a woman, to stand there and say nothing.
Amazing the similarity in tone isn't it, to the line Spencer Tracy delivers to Burt Lancaster in "Judgement at Nuremberg":
Lancaster (as Ernst Janning) "Those people... those millions of people... I never knew it would come to that. I never knew it would come to that. You must believe it. You must believe it!"
Tracy (as Judge Haywood) "Herr Janning, it came to that the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent".
Overly dramatic? Maybe. Probably. But where are we headed? Where?
Colin Wright is an evolutionary biologist who has been fighting this nonsensical ideology for years, giving speeches, providing expert testimony in court hearings, writing research papers. He also has a very informative Substack called Reality's Last Stand.
Medicine sure has had a rough couple years... I wonder if that lady thinks white lives are equally worth saving? I wonder who thinks unvaccinated lives are equally worth saving?
I promise you she does not think those lives are equally worth saving. The dogma is that the random cis white dude owes society
I graduated SUNY at Buffalo Medical School in 1969. My degree was "Doctor of Medicine" and not architect of social justice. The M.D. degree required us to pronounce, and take seriously, the Hippocratic Oath, which is famous for "do no harm" but also includes the following often forgotten statement: "Into whatever homes I go, I will enter them for the benefit of the sick, avoiding any voluntary act of impropriety or corruption, including the seduction of women or men, whether they are free men or slaves."
Except for examining patients with the knowledge of genetic predisposition to certain diseases based on race, and that distinction was learned SOLELY for the treatment benefit of the patient (such as Sickle-Cell-Anemia in Black people), color of skin or sexual orientation was never a factor.
My preceptor in the clinical years, James Holland, M.D., a world famous hematologist-oncologist, insisted that every patient was addressed as Mr. or Mrs or Ms. (there were no pronoun issues in those days), and we were never allowed to use a first name. That was drilled into us to teach us that EVERY patient deserved formal respect. Another thing he insisted on was that we do not sit on the edge of the bed of the patient as we were talking to him/her, as that patient deserved their formal "space." RESPECT was taught without special courses in D.E.I.; respect was S.O.P.!!!!
Was there racism in America? Yes. Was there racism in medical research? Yes, as the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment certainly proves and that page in history also revealed a violation of standard medical ethics. Is there a racist physician in the USA? I'm certain there is but it is not prevalent in the least bit and, personally, in the 42 years I practiced Ophthalmology I intersected with hundreds of physicians and never met one who ever even expressed racial ideology!!!
Simply put: physicians treated patients with diseases (note "patients with diseases" and not just diseases). Are there outliers? If you watch any TV channel you will see ads for lawsuits against physicians who were sexual predators, so obviously there are outliers, but the outliers are rare and are seen disproportionately because of social media and class-action lawsuits. Except for dermatologists, physicians did not look at skin color.
In 2005, the State of NJ Board of Medical Examiners, required all licensed physicians to take a course in "cultural competency." Most of the contents of that course was preaching to the choir, as those in my lecture hall looked at each other in wonderment as to why are we re-inventing the wheel? On the examination I took for that course, believe it or not, there was a multiple-choice question regarding how to greet a patient who was from the Fiji Islands. So much for cultural competency courses and requirements!
Medical care is so complex and getting more so. Sadly, IMHO, it is being harmed by Wall Street, which includes the hospital conglomerates, the physician conglomerates, the pharmaceutical industry and the insurance industry. If you need an example, just look at the highway billboards and the TV ads, as all fight for the piece of the pie. It is not harmed by the claims of the D.E.I. movement.
D.E.I. will undoubtedly result in lower quality of care and I always thought that quality of care was what the practice of medicine was all about. Just as you do not prescribe antibiotics for a known viral disease, time spent on D.E.I. courses will be a waste, as the treatment is geared for a disease that does not exist. That time would be better spent on learning about real medical issues, such as disease, new treatments, etc.
There was a multiple-choice question regarding how to greet a patient who was from the Fiji Islands
Uum, unless you're in Fiji how about "hi, I'm so and so. What brings you in today?"
Like duh to the equity movement, or is that diversity? In any case, God forbid if I greeted them as if they were from Bora Bora! The trouble is, my own medical profession in NJ succumbed to this nonsense already in 2005.
Have you ever had a concussion from a coconut falling on your head? It really does happen
Thankfully, no. Hell of a way to go.
It"s becoming clear that professionals in Academia are quite adept at lying, obfuscating, manipulating the truth, etc. Why can't a job seeker just lie about their bona DEI
fides? Since those who demand and review this aspect of a persons career are most likely to be great manipulators and less than outstanding intellects they will be easily convinced by the right amount of bull****. Academic institutions deserve what they demand. Wait until the budget cuts and se who's left standing.
Great story and excellent comment. Thanks for sharing.
My doctor, a concierge physician in suburban CT, tells me that residents coming out of elite universities like Yale are wildly unprepared to actually practice medicine. They are well versed in these insane tenets of anti racism but they can't effectively treat patients. He tells me he is very afraid for the future.
I graduated med school in 1980.Medical school graduates are no longer taught physical exam skills or history taking, which are the real basics of diagnosis.
Now they are taught by instructors who do not have these skills themselves.
When I was a sophomore med student we had an entire semester devoted to physical examination and history taking.
I’m a radiologist and can confirm your observations. The number of elective and “emergent” imaging studies has mushroomed to a large degree because of the near complete absence of physical exams and clinical evaluations performed on patients. CT scans for example are frequently ordered by the triage nurse from the waiting room before a patient is even admitted for the ED or seen by a physician.
My wife is a recently retired radiologist. She would wholeheartedly agree with you. Clinical judgement is a dying art.
Very well done Doctor Flier. Thank you for having the courage and in taking the initiative to share this story. A few years ago I read and listened to Christopher Rufo discuss this insanity. He was (and still is by many no question) considered a radical for speaking out against this ideology. It’s encouraging to now see men like yourself choosing to do what you feel is right and just, simply because you sincerely care about the best outcomes for all.
“I suggested that the term anti-racist, though central to the mission of the school’s Racism and Bias Initiative (RBI), lacked a clear definition in their materials. The RBI discussion leader dismissively responded that “anti-racism was simply opposition to racism,” and that “anyone with a terminal degree should know that.” She then stated that the school’s anti-racism program was not about “encouraging pointless discussions of what anti-racism means.”
I couldn’t disagree more.
This ideology seems like a major airliner that took off in a big hurry, with a lot of fanfare, with all kinds of support, on a very noble mission, but not too long after take off they discovered there was no fuel in the tank, and now it is destined to crash.
And what was that noble mission? Go look at the proponents of RBI / CRT etc. They are all race hustlers trying to make a buck and feel important and powerful. And the quote you reference is the perfect example. These are not scientists. These are snake oil salesmen. But the difference is that the snake oil salesman quickly moves on once he fleeces the fools. The RBI / CRT practitioner instead tries to recruit new followers to grow the scam.
It was never a “ very noble mission”
Education has gone out the window with the advent of Critical Race Theory and DEI. Critical Race Theory started in the schools , then to Government, advanced to Corporate America and is now pervasive in every aspect of our society. It is absolute nonsense.
I always thought that medical students would be vulnerable to social justice dogma: they are generally well-meaning individuals who want to do good in the world. I did expect their teachers to be wiser than to fall for it and to offer them some protection from the nonsense. I suppose that enough time has gone by that the professors are now graduates themselves of the social justice school, and that line of defense has crumbled. I confess that in my day at medical school (1976-1981 - takes five years in the UK) the intelligence of my comrades made them relatively resistant to BS, and whilst they learned to say the right words, they were cynical about things like the place of sociology in the curriculum. It took experience and maturity for me to see the value of a good social worker!
But the fact remains that it is hard to come out of medical school having learned enough not to be dangerous to patients. Any teaching in those few valuable years that is not aimed at making new grads safer is going to make it harder still by replacing important medical teaching with claptrap. And while our system of clinical trials is sometimes corrupted by pharmaceutical manufacturers, it is the best we have to be as sure as we can be about medical innovations actually working. It makes my blood boil to see "other ways of knowing" being introduced here. We might as well use a crystal ball or a divining rod to determine if a treatment works if we are going to do that.
Someone here referred to medical schools as trade schools, and that is largely correct. There is tradecraft to be learned, and just as I don't want, say, indigenous science and decolonized mathematics to be used in designing any aircraft I might fly in, I don't want such things to be influencing the treatment I receive from my doctors!
If I ever get sick when in North America I will make sure to get treated by a physisian who is at least 50 to avoid these Critical Justice Shamans....
Over fifty and Jewish FTW
The problem is, that I grow older, my doctors are retiring as well. Searching for a new physician is mind-boggling.
I ask for the older doctors anyway. In general they will have seen more and know more, though no doubt there are exceptions.
This reminds me of Columbia School of Social Work DEI programs: Decolonizing Social Work and their PROP curriculum. Social workers and doctors provide excellent mental healthcare. Care should be evidence-driven- not a political agenda.
And Hofstra. My friend in their MSW program was required Ibram X Kendi's book to write a paper on and was soon regurgitating the fiction that "black trans women are the most oppressed." That brainwashing will surely come in handy when she's out in the field.
Ugh this comment pissed me off (not you); we got this kind of garbage in my counseling program. I was not popular for pushing back against it, but we had to read "A Race is a Nice Thing to Have" and all of my rhetoric, logic, and debate training from undergrad almost gave me a damn aneurysm reading the circular logic, presumptions, and false assertions. I'm sorry your friend got ideologically captured. If it didn't mean potentially losing my license for having the opposite views and getting investigated, I wouldn't write under a pseudonym.
OMG. I'm too old school to have dealt with that without obvious scorn on my face. Needless to say, any paper I wrote in response would have been scorched earth.
Terrifying for the future of medicine.... so, isn't "racism" treating someone differently based on the color of their skin? Or does it depend on WHICH color? I thought the color of ones skin had no bearing on their.
aptitude, abilities, intelligence, skills...etc. and certainly for medicine, shouldn't we be focused on TRUE color-blind equality to get the best doctors, surgeons, medical personnel? This SURELY should be outcome driven. DEI flies in the face of getting the best-qualified people in the appropriate spots!