‘Mount Rushmore Of DEI’: How A Major Academic Association Is ‘Destroying’ Medicine

 The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), a group that facilitates medical education in the United States, has wielded its influence and prestige to politicize the medical field and push diversity, equity, and inclusion, according to a report first shared with The Daily Wire. 

Do No Harm, an organization devoted to de-politicizing medicine, published an exhaustive 80-page report on Tuesday documenting how the AAMC has integrated DEI into its influential academic programs and advanced a leftist public policy agenda. This includes allowing ideology to creep into medical school testing, pushing racially-focused medical theories, and promoting transgender medical procedures on children. 

“The AAMC corrupts medical education by blatantly embedding DEI into American medical schools,” Dr. Jared Ross, a senior fellow with Do No Harm, told The Daily Wire. “Our report offers practical solutions to restore excellence in the medical curriculum. The medical education system in this country should be focused on science-based teachings rather than forcing students to engage with a radical political ideology.”

Founded in 1876, the AAMC works with 171 accredited medical schools in the United States and Canada, over 400 teaching hospitals and health systems, and 70 academic societies. It also administers the MCAT, a test used for admission to medical colleges, and sponsors the accrediting body for allopathic medical schools. 

“Through its demonstrated commitment to activism over meritocracy, the AAMC has firmly planted itself on the Mt. Rushmore of DEI-centric organizations,” the report says. 

Ian Kingsbury, the director of research at Do No Harm, told The Daily Wire that the association had infused DEI ideology “into all facets of medical school application, education, and then placement into residency.”

“These are politically radical people who are destroying medical education in the United States,” he said. 

AAMC’s Open Embrace of DEI

While many corporations and educational institutions have backed away from DEI programs and policies over the past year, the AAMC is still fully on board with the ideology. 

On its website, the AAMC lists “diversity, inclusion, and equity in health care” as one of its four primary mission areas. In another section, the website says that DEI “in medical education and the physician workforce is critical for everyone’s health.”

The AAMC says that it is “committed” to DEI and has published numerous DEI-focused articles and hosted numerous webinars on the topic. 

“Advancing anti-racism is a continuous process that requires a variety of approaches and strategies. Below is a list of resources to further assist institutions in catalyzing change in academic medicine,” the organization says. 

It points people to the work of leftists like Kimberle Crenshaw and the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research directed by Ibram X. Kendi. 

In a “health equity” guide produced by the AAMC and the American Medical Association, the organizations claim that narratives advantaging white men need to be “deconstructed.”

“Narratives grounded in white supremacy and sustaining structural racism, for example, perpetuate cumulative disadvantage for some populations and cumulative advantage for white people, and especially white men,” the guide said. “Patriarchal narratives enforce rigidly defined traditional norms, and reinforce inequities based on gender.”

The AAMC’s Outsized Role in Medical Education

“The AAMC’s influence touches nearly every step of the medical education experience,” Do No Harm wrote. “The revenue generated by its services that all U.S. medical students and future residents must use – more than $200 million in 2022 – creates a near-bottomless well from which the AAMC can draw.”

The AAMC has a tremendous role in shaping medical education and policy throughout the United States. In addition to administering the MCAT, the association runs the Medical School Admission Requirements database, runs the American Medical College Application Service, and is a co-sponsor of the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), an accrediting body for allopathic medical schools.

Each of these projects has been impacted by the association’s DEI focus. For example, one of the foundational concepts for the MCAT is “social inequality.” Topics under this category include “environmental justice,” class consciousness, intersectionality, and privilege.   

AAMC resource: Do No Harm report.

“Institutionalized racism and discrimination are also factors which prevent some groups from obtaining equal access to resources,” the association says. 

 

The association also says that MCAT test score disparities are the fault of “societal inequalities.” 

“Research suggests the differences in MCAT scores for examinees from groups underrepresented in medicine based on race/ethnicity and other background characteristics reflect societal inequalities in income, education, and other factors rather than test bias,” the AAMC said in its 2024 analysis of MCAT data. 

For its American Medical College Application Service, a centralized medical school application service, the association allows future doctors and surgeons to select a variety of gender identities. These identities include “trans man,” “trans woman,” “genderqueer/gender non-conforming,” “nonbinary,” and “agender.” The prospective students are allowed to write in the identity of their choice. 

Application gender selection

The application also allows students to highlight their “social justice/advocacy” work. This is an experience where an applicant “worked to advance the rights, privileges, or opportunities of a person, a group of people, or a cause.”

“The medical community recognizes that social justice/advocacy is a core value for those working and learning in medicine and medical education,” the association explained. 

Additionally, the LCME, which accredits nearly every medical school in the United States, has diversity requirements. The Do No Harm report highlights how schools are supposed to recognize “the benefits of diversity” and focus on diversity in recruitment and retention. 

In one instance, the LCME pressured the University of Utah School of Medicine after it said the school’s “diversity/pipeline programs and partnerships” were “unsatisfactory.” LCME later claimed that it had a broad definition of diversity that expanded beyond race and gender. 

The AAMC has also pointed students toward student programs intended only for minorities. It recommends that students take part in the Summer Health Professions Education Program (SHPEP) organized by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. SHPEP is a “free summer academic program” for medical students who are “underrepresented in the health professions.” 

According to the AAMC, students who “students who identify with a group that is racially or ethnically underrepresented” are “encouraged to apply.” 

“From the moment that prospective students decide to apply to medical school up to the day they receive their acceptance to a residency program, they are met with AAMC messaging that reflects a clear intent to indoctrinate, rather than educate,” the Do No Harm report says. 

The AAMC’s Promotion of Leftist Policies

The AAMC has taken a strong stance in favor of race-based college admission and vigorously criticized the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn affirmative action policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina in June 2023. The group filed an amicus curiae brief in favor of race-based admissions before leadership at the school spoke out against the ruling. 

“Today’s decision demonstrates a lack of understanding of the critical benefits of racial and ethnic diversity in educational settings,” leadership of the AAMC said in a statement at the time. “We will work together to adapt following today’s court decision without compromising these goals. The health of everyone depends on it.”

The association also encourages medical schools to look beyond MCAT scores, and consider “holistic” experiences.

“By looking at students’ applications holistically, taking into account their educational opportunities, lived experiences, attributes, and other factors, you can show your commitment to excellence and equity in medical education,” the AAMC said. 

One justification for its DEI policies is the questionable theory of “racial concordance,” the idea that black and Hispanic patients do better with doctors of the same race. It has done this through various platforms and publications.

“There’s no indication whatsoever that patients benefit from doctors who look like them,” Kingsbury told The Daily Wire. “The reason they have to insist that that is true is they want you to imagine that there are tradeoffs here in terms of how the process works for medical school admissions.” 

The AAMC has also prompted life-altering and irreversible transgender procedures on children. 

A 2016 webinar called “The Nuts and Bolts of Caring for and Teaching about Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Youth,” available on the association’s website, claimed puberty blockers were “reversible” for children and that cross-sex hormones are partially reversible. Puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones have been shown to damage bone development, cause infertility, and lead to heart problems. 

AAMC slide on transgender procedures.

The AAMC has also taken a consistent stand against Republican-led states that have moved to protect children from transgender procedures. 

“Efforts to restrict the provision of gender-affirming health care for transgender individuals will reduce health care access for transgender Americans, promote discrimination, and widen already significant health inequities,” the association said in 2021. 

The Continued Fight Against DEI

The Do No Harm report concludes by arguing that the fight against DEI must be continued at both the state and federal levels. The report highlighted actions taken by a variety of Republican-led states to push back and praised federal legislation from Rep. Greg Murphy (R-NC) that would pull federal funding from medical institutions that adopt DEI policies. 

Additionally, the report recommended that there be more steps taken for accountability for both the AAMC and LCME. 

Despite the seeming decline of DEI in the last year, Kingsbury said it seemed as if the AAMC was too ideologically committed to back off. 

“For their purposes the political headwinds look pretty strong, both on the DEI front and the gender front,” he told The Daily Wire. “By any measure people are pretty tired of this stuff and looking to move past it. The challenge is that based on the reactions that I am seeing from the AAMC is that this is an ideologically captured institution.”

Kingsbury said that it may take the federal government to restore sanity to health care education. 

Do No Harm said the result of all of its current policies and direction will end up with lower quality health care, less qualified doctors, and a continued erosion of merit-based academics. 

“The AAMC claims to be in the business of bettering everyone’s health through its service to academic medicine,” the report concludes. “Yet, closer inspection reveals that they repeatedly undermine merit – the best predictor of clinical success – by promoting a system that prioritizes identity group status and allegiance to radical political orthodoxy.”