Drexel med school module makes ‘antiracism’ and CRT part of doctors’ ethical duty

Drexel University’s College of Medicine pushes an “Antiracism in Healthcare” module for medical students that a conservative organization accuses of “prioritizing ideological indoctrination over scientific inquiry.”

The module, which appears on the college’s website, promises to teach students to “explain how structural, cultural, and individual racism have shaped our common history and have led to vast societal disparities in education, policing, wealth and healthcare,” and to “commit to being antiracist in your attitudes and behaviors.”

[RELATED: Temple medical school rebrands DEI without removing it]

One module section, titled “Medicine and the Myth of Race,” pushes the idea that structural racism accounts for health disparities.

“Perhaps the great majority of healthcare providers would deny that they are racist or let biases influence their patient care,” the module says. “Yet there are great disparities in healthcare and health outcomes between racial groups. Certainly, structural racism accounts for many of these disparities.” 

The module provides examples such as “policies that have affected access to care, insurance coverage, biases in hiring and lending that suppress earning potential of people of color and much more.”

Another section in the module is dedicated to “Critical Race Theory” or “CRT,” which, the college says, asserts that “race is a social construct and that racism is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice but has become structural.”

Do No Harm, a conservative nonprofit organization that advocates for removing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) from medicine, criticized the Drexel module for valuing an identity-based ideology over science.

“Drexel University College of Medicine’s ‘Antiracism in Healthcare’ program relies on disproven theories and discriminatory ideas,” Dr. Kurt Miceli, Do No Harm’s Director of Medicine, told Campus Reform in an email Monday. “The school’s effort to present ideological indoctrination as medical education is unacceptable and dangerous.” 

“Drexel should prioritize training future physicians to provide high-quality care, rather than producing social justice warriors who infect healthcare with radical ideologies,” he continued.

Do No Harm published a commentary on the module on Dec. 3, accusing it of “prioritizing ideological indoctrination over scientific inquiry.”

“Drexel is training a generation of doctors more attuned to grievance politics than to genuine medical excellence,” the piece continued.

[RELATED: Harvard Medical School rebrands DEI office to ‘Culture and Community Engagement’]

In October, the conservative organization launched the Center for Accountability in Medicine to rank medical schools and track DEI.

Schools with low scores “do not prioritize academic excellence in admissions, dedicate administrative resources to divisive, harmful, and regressive DEI practices, and broadcast an institutional commitment to identity politics that is antithetical to a commitment to excellence in clinical practice.”

Do No Harm produced a report in November that found the Medical College of Wisconsin compelled students to participate in a DEI workshop titled “Race Matters Workshop.”

Campus Reform contacted the College of Medicine for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.