All but two of the top 25 medical schools in the United States require students to undergo some form of critical race theory training, according to new data from a database that tracks such programs in higher education.
The database criticalrace.org, a project of the nonprofit organization Legal Insurrection, found that students, faculty, and staff were required to undergo some form of training on diversity, equity, and inclusion, which often incorporates aspects of critical race theory.
Critical race theory, or CRT, has generated nationwide controversy over its presence in schools due to aspects of the theory that claim America’s institutions and culture are systematically racist and oppressive to racial minorities, especially black people.
OVER 200 COLLEGES REQUIRE STUDENTS TO UNDERGO CRITICAL RACE THEORY-BASED TRAINING, REPORT FINDS
The list of prestigious medical schools incorporating critical race theory includes internationally renowned schools, such as Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Michigan Medical School.
The incorporation of critical race theory varies by institution, with some merely recommending resources, such as the book How to be Antiracist by critical race theorist and Boston University professor Ibram X. Kendi, while others mandate training for students and faculty.
Johns Hopkins University is among the schools that mandate training, according to the database. The institution announced in September 2020 that “all faculty, students, trainees, postdocs and fellows will be required to complete a virtual training session on unconscious bias. It will be followed by anti-racism and then bystander intervention training.”
The medical school at UCLA requires all “community members” to complete an “annual subset of anti-racism trainings,” as well as “provide resources and education” to the medical school community “on critical topics of privilege, allyship and dialogue, encouraging self reflection, self-awareness and a shared sense of responsibility for advancing social justice in science, medicine and health care.”
William Jacobson, the founder of Legal Insurrection, creator of the criticalrace.org database, and a law professor at Cornell Law School, told Fox News that “the racialization of medical school education is troubling” and that it was “one thing to recognize the health needs of different populations,” but it was “entirely different to inject racial politics into medical care.”
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“Demanding that medical school students become activists is dangerous,” Jacobson said. “The mantra of the so-called ‘antiracism’ movement has no place in medicine. Current racial discrimination in order to remedy past racial discrimination is wrong generally, but is downright dangerous in medicine.”
