An online database called “Critical Race Training in Education,” created by the nonprofit Legal Insurrection Foundation, includes a breakdown of the presence of critical race theory in the nation’s top 100 medical schools as ranked by U.S. News and World Report.
According to the Washington Examiner, 58 of these 100 medical schools “require mandatory education in anti-racism, diversity, equity, and inclusion, or some other form of critical race theory-linked program, either through mandatory training or in the curriculum.”
One of those 58 is the University of Minnesota Medical School. Links compiled in the database show how embedded “anti-racism” is in the school curriculum.
In 2018, the University of Minnesota reported that a “multiracial group of various health professionals” helped develop “an anti-racism curriculum for first-year medical students at the University’s Medical School.” According to the university, the group of researchers used a “Public Health Critical Race Praxis that helps researchers remain attentive to issues of equity in their work.”
More recently, in March 2022, a City Journal article on the “increasing emphasis” on “diversity, equity, and inclusion” measures mentioned how the U of M Medical School “collaborates on its curriculum with the Medical Education Reform Student Coalition (MERSC), an offshoot of the activist organization White Coats 4 Black Lives.”
“We aim to make the University of Minnesota Medical School an actively anti-racist institution,” the group says on its website.
The database also claims the U of M asks students on their admissions application to “share your reflections on, experiences with, and greatest lessons learned about systemic racism.”
University of Minnesota Medical School students took an oath to “promote a culture of anti-racism” during an Aug. 19 white coat ceremony. Additionally, the school is participating in an “anti-racist transformation” program.
Per the Critical Race Training database, the second of the top 100 American medical schools in Minnesota, the Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine, does not include critical race theory in its curriculum or require its students to participate in “anti-racism” training.
However, the school does have an “Office for Education Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” and has offered a third-party resource titled “Being An Upstander: Racism.” The resource listed Ibram X. Kendi’s “How to be Antiracist” and Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility” as books for additional reading.
The office also offers programs to students at various levels to help “ensure Mayo Clinic’s learning environments offer the added dimension that diverse students and faculty bring to our schools, and ultimately to patient care.”
Kendi popularized the term anti-racism and explicitly calls for discrimination in his writings.
“The only remedy to racist discrimination is anti-racist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination,” Kendi writes in one of his books.
Evan Stambaugh
Evan Stambaugh is a freelance writer who had previously been a sports blogger. He has a BA in theology and an MA in philosophy.
