‘Permanent Woke Bureaucracy’: Watchdog Organization Criticizes Arizona Medical College’s High Score on Implementing Discriminatory Ideology

Laura Morgan, program manager with the nonprofit watchdog Do No Harm. (Courtesy of Laura Morgan)

An Arizona health care education institution has self-reported to have instituted 95 percent of woke ideologies encouraged by a flagship medical association.

According to a Freedom of Information Act request obtained by Do No Harm (DNH)—a nonprofit watchdog organization that spotlights the emergence of divisive concepts in medical schools—the University of Arizona College of Medicine’s (UACOM) report to the Association of American Colleges (AAMC) touted a high score in what DNH called racially discriminatory admission practices under the guise of affirmative action.

“This means it’s potentially lowering standards in the name of diversity, thereby threatening patient health,” DNH told The Epoch Times.

The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) is a Washington-based nonprofit comprising 157 accredited U.S. medical schools; 14 accredited Canadian medical schools; approximately 400 teaching hospitals and health systems; and up to 80 academic societies.

DNH said UACOM has a “dedicated office, staff, or resources” committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

In November, AAMC issued a report (pdf) promoting woke culture in medical schools with the goal—according to its executive summary—to improve the “climate and culture through collective administration of Diversity, Inclusion, Culture, and Equity (DICE) Inventory.”

“The DICE Inventory is a tool designed to aid leaders in conducting a comprehensive review of institutional policies, practices, procedures, and programs that contribute to a diverse, equitable, and inclusive (DEI) culture and climate for students, faculty, staff, and administrators,” the report states.

The report is based on 101 medical schools’ self-audit of DEI policies at AAMC’s prompting.

According to AAMC, the initiative emerged in response to “repeated calls” from the academic medical community for accountability “to accelerate meaningful change,” calls that were “renewed with a sense of urgency amid the novel coronavirus pandemic and growing public outrage over systematic racism.”

‘Permanent Woke Bureaucracy’

For DNH, this translates as a “permanent woke bureaucracy” pushing discriminatory policies on faculty and students.

UACOM has lobbied for woke policies at the federal, state, and local levels, DNH said.

“This means it’s wading into toxic public debates instead of fully focusing on educating future physicians,” DNH said.

According to DNH, UACOM’s administrators are active within local, regional, and national forums to promote DEI programs.

“This means it’s wasting resources that would be better spent on real medical education,” DNH said. “All told, UACOM has instituted 95.5% of the divisive and discriminatory woke policies listed by the AAMC.”

DNH Program Manager Laura Morgan told The Epoch Times that UACOM’s high score on the Diversity, Equity, Culture, and Inclusion (DICE) survey (pdf) exhibits a willingness to sacrifice quality medical education for discriminatory practices that will, in the end, result in poor medical treatment, as well as a poor relationship between the patient and doctor.

“These policies have nothing to do with how efficiently your doctor is going to treat your medical problem,” Morgan said.

There’s also a high cost to the taxpayer, she said, and the training sessions take up time that could be spent educating the student.

“AAMC wants to make diversity, equity, and inclusion a key learning outcome,” Morgan said. “The key outcome for medical education needs to be about patient care, not identity politics.”

‘A Racial Instead of a Clinical Lens’

Morgan herself was a nurse who was fired from her job as a nursing development therapist in February 2022 for refusing to submit to an assertion that she was a racist that an annual training session required her to acknowledge.

“The whole premise is that I must look at patients through a racial instead of a clinical lens,” Morgan said in a previous interview.

In an opinion piece she penned in The Wall Street Journal in September, Morgan called the idea of “implicit bias”—a euphemism for racism—a woke assumption based on the idea that society is infested with systematic racism and must be replaced with preferential treatment for nonwhites.

“I’m supposed to teach people how to think,” Morgan said of her role as an educator. “However, one of the dangers of this implicit bias training is that it’s telling us what to think.”

Ethical Dilemmas

DNH founder Dr. Stanley Goldfarb told The Epoch Times in a previous interview that when medical schools prioritize these DEI programs, in addition to reducing quality, they open the door to several ethical dilemmas.

Because of its essential limited scope based on a theoretical opinion, there are many staff—like Morgan—and students who don’t agree and will be forced to either quit or compromise their values and go along with it by lying, Goldfarb said.

The problem with the whole conversation is that it’s based on the mistaken idea that there are only two constituencies in the room—the school and the student—while, in fact, there’s also a third, the patient, Goldfarb said.

“They are making this argument that what’s best for the health of the American people is that there be this focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion, which simply cannot be justified,” Goldfarb said. “If you focus on diversity to the exclusion of merit, then patients are at risk of not having the most qualified individual to provide them care.”

UACOM did not reply to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.

AAMC Response

In a statement to The Epoch Times on its report in a previous article on its report, AAMC said its member medical schools are obligated to address factors that drive racism and bias in health care and to prepare physicians who are culturally responsive.

“There is strong evidence that historically marginalized people and people who live in poverty disproportionately experience poor health and inadequate access to quality care,” AAMC said. “These inequities are often rooted in systemic discrimination, including racism, within the nation’s health systems that contribute to lower quality care.”

AAMC said it also has an obligation to support institutions in being diverse, equitable, and inclusive to support those goals.

“The DICE Inventory is a tool designed to aid leaders in conducting a comprehensive review of institutional policies, practices, procedures, and programs that contribute to a diverse, equitable, and inclusive culture and climate for students, faculty, staff, and administrators,” AAMC said.

“Using the DICE Inventory helped medical schools identify areas for improvement for creating a holistic strategy where DEI is integrated into all operations and mission areas. Medical schools reported plans to use their findings from the DICE Inventory to begin making policy changes, inform their strategic planning, and support LCME accreditation documentation and ongoing improvement efforts.”