Critical Race Theory Mandatory for Medical Students

Fifty-eight of the nation’s top medical schools now require classes in critical race theory (CRT), according to the Legal Insurrection Foundation (LIF).

“Medical School education is in crisis, with ‘social justice’ and race-focused activism being imposed on students, faculty, and staff,” William Jacobson, founder of the CriticalRace.org website, a project of LIF, told Fox News.

The website reports that of the top 100 medical schools, based on U.S. News rankings, 58 have mandatory CRT training for faculty and staff.

Jacobson, clinical professor of law at Cornell Law School, founded the website and created a database that tracks CRT requirements for 500 undergraduate programs, private K-12 schools, and military service academies, in addition to medical schools.

“An outgrowth of the Marxist European school of critical theory, critical race theory is an academic movement which seeks to link racism, race, and power,” states the website. “Critical race theorists argue that American social life, political structures, and economic systems are founded upon race, which (in their view) is a social construct.”

‘Race-Focused Activists’

While CRT-related indoctrination throughout the education system is troubling, Jacobson says, it can be especially harmful in medical schools.

“Patient care and people’s lives are at risk when doctors and medical providers view patients as proxies for racial and ethnic groups in sociological and political battles,” Jacobson told Fox News. “We increasingly see the medical establishment, including the American Medical Association, demanding that medical students and physicians become race-focused activists.”

Among the institutions requiring some form of CRT-related instruction is the Department of Surgery at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, which pledges to “assess and improve upon the current state of surgical training evaluation to eliminate the impact of implicit and explicit bias,” CriticalRace.org reports.

The David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) says it will “work together … to ensure a robust focus on anti-racism, structural and social determinants of health and health equity throughout all four years of the medical school curriculum.”

The University of Colorado School of Medicine set aside the month of April 2022 to encourage its “faculty, staff, and trainees to participate in a 30-Day Anti-Racism Challenge” to address “power, privilege, oppression, equity, and social justice” as part of “recognizing racism as a public health threat.”

The University of Illinois School of Medicine states, “Education on racial inequities, microaggressions, caring for diverse patient populations, improving teaching techniques/content that is free of bias and encouraging engagement of active bystanders will be some of the content presented to faculty and staff in order to improve the environment for students and the college community.”

‘Ace Your CASPer’

Many medical schools require prospective students to pass a CASPer (Computer-based Assessment for Sampling Personal characteristics) test before they are admitted.

According to “BeMo’s Ultimate Guide to CASPer Test Prep,” published by BeMo Academic Consulting Inc., CASPer “is a web-based situational judgment test (SJT) claimed to assess how you approach and consider different real-life scenarios and the problems within them.”

Originally designed by Canada’s McMaster University to screen its medical school applicants, CASPer tests focus on the personal characteristic of applicants.

A good CASPer score is more important than a high grade point average (GPA), according to the study guide.

“[R]egardless of how well you do on your admissions test and how high your GPA score may be, without a competitive CASPer score you will not be invited for an interview and you will likely be rejected,” states BeMo. “On the other hand, even if you have a below average GPA and admission test scores, you can still gain admission, if and only if, you ace your CASPer test.”

‘Choose a Different Profession’

Changes in medical schools’ curriculum and admission standards will discourage qualified students from pursuing medical careers, says Merrill Mathews, Ph.D., resident scholar at the Institute for Policy Innovation.

“The more time medical schools spend indoctrinating medical students in critical race theory, the less time they spend teaching medicine, even as new advances require more learning time,” said Matthews. “It creates just one more reason for the promising students to choose a different profession.”

The majority of medical school students are racial and ethnic minorities, says Matthews.

“Ironically, this development comes at a time when medicine is no longer a bastion of white males—and hasn’t been for a while,” said Matthews. “Medical school students are quite diverse, with only 42 percent of the 2022-23 medical school matriculants self-describing as white.”

‘Public Health Crisis’

The focus on CRT could damage the quality of health care, says Donna Jackson, director of membership development for Project 21, a nationwide network of black conservatives.

“This could lead to a real public health crisis,” said Jackson. “Graduating ill-prepared medical professionals will lower the quality of care in the United States for all races. It sends exactly the wrong message at a time when schools are already experiencing a decline in academic performance.”

Many U.S. medical students are from foreign counties, attracted by the high qualify of American medical schools, says Jackson.

“As woke policies take root in more medical schools, we will no longer be able to attract high-quality international students; they will choose to study in countries where the medical curriculum has not been corrupted.”

Bonner Russell Cohen, Ph.D. (bcohen@nationalcenter.org) is a senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research.