Major Medical Association Pushes For DEI ‘To Be Embedded In Everything’

The academic association that facilitates medical education in the United States pushed for schools across the country to embed diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives into all aspects of their work and to “institutionalize allyship.” 

The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), which works with 171 accredited medical schools in the United States and Canada, hosted a webinar Thursday on “Allyship” featuring instructors from across the country talking about how to embed DEI into their organizations. 

The webinar was the latest in the AAMC’s Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Anti-racism webinar series. Presenters spoke about implementing DEI in all aspects of an institution through so-called “equity champions” and talked about how “trans men” were useful “allies.”

The AAMC administers the MCAT, a test used for admission to medical colleges, and sponsors the accrediting body for allopathic medical schools. 

AAMC Director of Gender Equity Initiatives Diana Lautenberger said Thursday that the latest webinar was focused on “how do you really institutionalize allyship at your organization” and ”what allyship looks like and sounds like at the institutional level.”

The webinar came after Do No Harm, an organization that pushes to de-politicize medicine, released an exhaustive report on how the AAMC pushes a leftist policy agenda. The report exposed how the AAMC is committed to DEI and so-called anti-racism efforts in addition to pushing leftwing theories about race and supporting transgender procedures on children. 

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“As people outside the bubble of academia become more aware of the endless number of DEI initiatives that the AAMC has spent tens of millions of dollars to push instead of promoting science-based medical education, the public’s trust will dwindle,” Do No Harm Senior Director of Programs Laura Morgan told The Daily Wire.

“People want competent physicians who are dedicated to improving the health of their patients and I’m sure the leadership of the AAMC would want the same; a physician that is able to accurately address their urgent medical needs, rather than being an ‘equity champion.”

One of the webinar presenters was Andreá Williams, an English professor who runs Ohio State University’s The Women’s Place, which pushes women-focused programming at the university. During the webinar, she talked about the “Advocates and Allies” program she had started. 

Williams defined allies as “men or nonbinary people who feel comfortable in a setting focused on men’s transformational learning participate in a facilitated session to become active proponents of equity.” 

She said that “trans men,” women who identify as men, were sometimes the best “allies” for women. 

“But we do see that there are a few of our, for example, trans men advocates who are often some of the strongest speakers in being able to address gender equity because they talk about the different experiences they have in presenting as male and female,” Williams said. 

Slide from William’s presentation.

She said that the allies program was not about getting men to help women, but “to redistribute the labor of working towards gender equity.”

Williams also said that treating everyone the same was not acceptable.

“There are a lot of times that people will say, ‘of course I’m not biased, I’m not prejudiced, I treat everyone the same.’ And while that is laudable, it is often inadequate to actually be able to address historic disadvantages and disparities,” she said. 

Williams said that a way to get institutions to adopt ally programs was by getting executive support, noting that she had built in operating funds for her ally program by including them in operating costs for the Women’s Center. 

Another webinar speaker was Erin Stampp, who works in the DEI office of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Stampp began by making a land acknowledgment, but didn’t read through the whole thing for “times sake.”

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Stampp talked about her “equity champions” program, saying the goal was “to build institutional capacity for advancing racial equity and justice.” She added that there were 46 active “equity champions” in 22 out of 29 of her university’s departments. 

She said that a person can only be an “ally” if the supposedly oppressed person allows them to be. 

“I like to say practicing allies, as we kind of know, we don’t deem or claim ourselves to be allies,” she said. “We practice to be allies and then the people that we’re looking to be allies to can give us the title of ally.”

Slide from Stampp’s presentation.

Acknowledging a recent “backlash” to DEI, Stampp said that “we know how important it is to build in accountability and sustainability.” She said that DEI needed “to be embedded in everything, and that takes time and resources.”

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

Morgan with Do No Harm said that the AAMC’s programing was a waste of time that didn’t advance medical knowledge. 

“The absurd messaging being pushed out by the AAMC via the schools and faculty members they partner with has no professional development value,” she said. “Medical experts hearing an activist speak on ‘intersectional awareness’ or the latest attempts, by speakers like Andrea Williams, to rebrand DEI related language once ‘the public’s awareness about diversity and inclusion becomes more complicated, or more sophisticated’ is a waste of a medical professional’s time.”

The AAMC did not respond to a request for comment on the webinar.