A glimpse into the radical student organization taking over American medical schools
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CounterCurrent: Riding the Coattails of Modern Medicine
A glimpse into the radical student organization taking over
American medical schools
CounterCurrent is the National Association of Scholars’ weekly newsletter, bringing you the biggest issues in academia and our responses to them.
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Category: Science Education; Reading Time: ~2 minutes
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** Featured Article - White Coats for Black Queer Abolitionist Socialism by John D. Sailer ([link removed])
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At the start of every academic year, tens of thousands of bright-eyed students begin their journey through medical school by donning their first-ever white coat. The moment is so significant that most medical schools host a White Coat Ceremony ([link removed]) during orientation, in which students receive their white coat, put it on in front of their friends, family, and the medical community, and recite the Hippocratic Oath. The obligation to care for each and every patient is front and center during the ceremony, and the white coat serves as an emblem ([link removed]) of the trust that these future doctors must earn from their patients.
According to the national organization White Coats for Black Lives ([link removed]) (WC4BL), this obligation isn’t enough. Since its founding in 2014, WC4BL has been working to attach a new ideological agenda to the tails of the white coat—and it appears it is succeeding.
WC4BL’s mission ([link removed]) is radical and far-reaching. In its own words, its “job” is “1) dismantling dominant, exploitative systems in the United States, which are largely reliant on anti-Black racism, colonialism, cisheteropatriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism; and 2) rebuilding a future that supports the health and well-being of marginalized communities.” It wants medical students and practitioners across the country to lead the charge and use their white coats to push for a whole host of progressive policies, all laid out nicely in its “Vision and Values” ([link removed]) document.
Some of the policies WC4BL endorses are par for the course for a left-leaning medical organization, such as establishing universal healthcare and increasing access to abortion. But others are only tangentially related to the medical field, if at all: establishing universal child care and universal paid parental leave; abolishing prisons, ICE, and immigrant detention; decriminalizing sex work and drug use; deprivatizing water; dissolving oil and gas industries; and returning land to indigenous communities—and that’s just a sample.
On top of that, the WC4BL value statement is riddled with alarming claims that undermine the very foundation of modern medical practice. It decries Western medicine as “an exclusionary field that privileges wealthy, white, cisgender men” and declares that “physicians have utilized violence to oust women and femme healers [and] monopolize medical care and knowledge.” It openly rejects the “colonial hierarchy that places doctors as the experts on a person’s health” while simultaneously reminding its members that “[b]lame must be shifted from individuals/decisions…to the systems of oppression that contribute to disease manifestation, risk, and management.”
White Coats for Black Lives has made it quite clear that it intends to “dismantle” the “hierarchical, professionalized medical practice,” and it won’t stop until it’s finished.
In this week’s featured article ([link removed]) , National Association of Scholars Research Associate John Sailer traces WC4BL’s influence in medical schools across the country. The organization has been quite busy these past couple years, and it’s seeing no shortage of results:
At UC Davis, WC4BL presented recommendations and its Racial Justice Report Card to the School of Medicine. The administration found them “largely feasible ([link removed]) ” and responded by creating the Administrative Action Plan to Address Racial Justice. ([link removed]) The plan institutionalized, among other things, “a clear system to ensure that perpetrators of racial microaggressions are required to complete corrective action.” Meantime, the school of medicine at the University of Utah received demands from its chapter of WC4BL on June 12, 2020 ([link removed]) . By December 9, the School of Medicine’s Executive Committee had approved a long version of those demands, declaring that “Racism is a Public Health Crisis” and updating student evaluations to solicit feedback on
the “cultural humility” of faculty.
At Columbia University, WC4BL played a part in inspiring ([link removed]) the medical school’s anti-racism initiative. One top recommendation in Columbia’s plan ([link removed]) involves creating “faculty development” run by “individuals grounded in critical race theory.” At Michigan Medicine, the WC4BL chapter sent a letter demanding a curriculum redesign that employs “an intersectional framework that incorporates critical race theory.” Michigan Medicine adopted that demand almost verbatim ([link removed]) , adding only that the new curriculum should draw from the work of Ibram X. Kendi.
The medical schools that Sailer highlights in his article ([link removed]) are only those that have openly acquiesced to WC4BL’s demands. The organization’s scope of influence is undoubtedly even wider than suggested here, and if the past two years are any indicator, it will only grow.
Let’s hope that America’s white coats resist the social justice siren song and remain dedicated to caring for patients’ medical needs first and foremost—regardless of what they’re taught in medical school. America’s health and wellbeing depends on them.
Until next week.
Marina Ziemnick
Communications Associate
National Association of Scholars
Read More ([link removed])
For more on identity politics in science education:
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December 7, 2021
** UNC School of Medicine's Quiet DEI Revolution ([link removed])
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John D. Sailer
For over a year, the subordination of healthcare to political aims has been underway at the UNC School of Medicine. We should hope the trend is reversed.
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December 1, 2021
** Identity Politics is Taking Over Astronomy ([link removed])
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Ian Oxnevad
An astronomy profession guided by identity politics and cultural Marxism rather than scientific evidence could produce a distorted view of our solar system and the cosmos.
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July 1, 2021
** Is Harvard Sacrificing Science for Wokeness? ([link removed])
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Christopher Sanfilippo
We ought to publicize information on just how much money is being spent on DEI programs instead of the true aims of the university—education and research.
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January 8, 2021
** Journals Must Decide: Science or Censorship? ([link removed])
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David Randall
The journal Nature Communications has joined the parade of institutions that subordinate science to political censorship.
** About the NAS
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