Chapel Hill, North Carolina — Activist groups against the diversity, equity and inclusion movement say they succeeded in getting the UNC School of Medicine to drop the DEI task force and its recommendations this month.
The claim comes from an organization called Color Us United. WRAL found their statement valid, but it has been over a year since the task force was disbanded.
Kenny Xu, president of Color Ass United, said, “We specifically chose UNC Medical College to launch a campaign to demand the dean resign from the Task Force to Integrate Social Justice.”
The group said it is focused on achieving a racist society and opposes the use of diversity, equity and inclusion guidelines in medical school admissions and education.
Collar Us United provided evidence through a letter from a university attorney, stating that “the recommendation has not yet been put into operation and the Task Force has finished its work.”
The letter also said there are no current or future plans to implement the Task Force’s recommendations.
“We truly believe that the UNC School of Medicine is the beginning of something,” said Xu. “If you can get the UNC to abandon the DEI framework, you can say go to any medical school in the country and follow the lead of the UNC.”
A spokeswoman for the UNC School of Medicine said the DEI task force was formed in 2019 and made recommendations a year later in 2020, at which point it finished its work. The spokesperson added that most of the recommendations were not implemented.
A February 2022 letter from the university details a list of medical school responses to the DEI Task Force’s recommendations.
The task force said it had made 42 recommended changes and had already addressed 37 through existing efforts.
Four are marked as not implemented or no plans to implement, indicating that only one recommendation has been implemented so far.
In any event, the DEI has not been wiped out of UNC’s medical school.
The school maintains an office focused on diversity, equity and inclusion, offering DEI certificates to students who complete workshops such as “unconscious bias” and racial equality in healthcare .
Opponents argue that there is no systemic racism in the medical field.
“There should be no training, curricula, or preferences that try to distract doctors from their mission to provide the best care for their patients,” Xu said.
WRAL contacted the DEI office of the medical school for a response to the view that health care should be racially neutral. The Secretariat has not yet responded.