New York-based medical school implementing ‘anti-bias’ curriculum, documents show
Jeremiah Poff
EXCLUSIVE — The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City has taken steps to overhaul its curriculum and approach to teaching to incorporate extensive anti-racism and diversity, equity, and inclusion principles.
According to internal documents obtained by the medical watchdog group Do No Harm and shared with the Washington Examiner, the medical school has resorted to evaluating teachers for their contributions to DEI and is advertising job postings that require applicants to share their commitment to DEI principles.
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In a job post for an “educational consultant” position, the school says it is reforming its curriculum and needs an applicant who will “co-develop with the Department of Medical Education’s Office of Curricular Affairs an integrative anti-oppressive framework to be used in the redesign of the curriculum that is expected to be launched in the fall 2024.”
“The educational consultant should have a good grasp of anti-oppressive education, anti-bias curriculum, curriculum design, student centered learning, and be open to aligning the work with the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Competencies Across the Learning Continuum,” the job posting says.
The school has also modified how it evaluates faculty. In 2017, faculty evaluations were fairly standard, with no DEI principles or anti-racism efforts included in assessments. But in 2022, faculty were evaluated for their incorporation of the topics of “racism, bias, diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
The 2022 evaluation form contains five sections: Scholarship, Teaching, Research, Clinical, and Service/Professionalism/Citizenship. Each section inquires how the faculty member addressed “racism, bias, diversity, equity, and inclusion” in that specific area of evaluation.
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For the Clinical section, faculty members are evaluated for “initiatives that improve access to high quality disease prevention, diagnosis and care for diverse populations in a demonstrably equitable manner, Programs directed at care to patients regardless of their racial, gender, cultural, socioeconomic or other attributes that historically contribute to disparities in care.”
The Teaching section says faculty are evaluated for their “curricular integration of topics related to racism, diversity, equity, and inclusion, bias, and other socially constructed –isms into lectures, courses, electives, and the clinical learning environment.”
The medical school did not respond to a request for comment.
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Do No Harm Program Manager Laura Morgan criticized the school for incorporating the ideas of Ibram X. Kendi, a Boston University professor and author of How to be an Antiracist. She told the Washington Examiner the school was degrading its medical education by incorporating DEI concepts in its curriculum.
“The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is sprinting down the road of ‘anti-oppressive education’ and ideological division with this so-called ‘curricular reform,'” she said. “The school’s Educational Consultant job posting demonstrates its commitment to Kendi’s promises of discrimination in the present and the future and the degradation of medical education. These ideologies have no place in medical school, and the infusion of them into Icahn’s MD curriculum must be stopped.”